3/1/07

Forget the weather – just go fishing
By Terry Madewell

The weather may be warm or cold. It may be windy or calm. It may rain or be bright and hot. That’s just the reality of March fishing.
Just go fishing. It’s March and fishy things are now happening on lakes Marion and Moultrie. Being the eternal optimist has its drawbacks, but it also has its advantages.

Even if fishing is slow, you’re still fishing … right? You can’t catch fish if you don’t go fishing, so finish reading this report and go fishing. I bet they’re biting.

The crappie are really beginning to make a strong move and beginning to scatter into some of the large creeks. Good catches were being made in the mouths of many of the creeks but fish were beginning to pile into the creeks into staging areas in 8-14 feet of water. Most of the fish had been caught on minnows or jigs tipped with minnows, but look for small jigs to begin producing well as the water temperature warms back up.

Drifting as well as trolling has produced good results when covering large areas. If you have some brush piles in these water depths, you can expect to find fish scattered on them. If you make enough stops picking up a few crappie here and a few more there, you’ll wind up with a limit of fish fairly quickly. Some really big crappie are now being caught, so go now if you want to stock up on slab crappie fillets. The shallow water crappie fishing is just around the corner. We’ll likely see some decent action around the March full moon.

The largemouth bass fishing is still good and getting better. Look for the fishing to get much more consistent during the next couple of weeks. It will only take a few days of the 60 degree-plus weather to get things back on track in this area. Bottom bumping baits such as the jig and pig as well as plastic lizards in the pumpkinseed pattern have been producing well.

In addition, bright spinner baits – chartreuse and yellow – have been producing some large bass as well.

With the influx of water from all the rains, the catfish are at least beginning to do their spring thing. The fish are on the verge of moving to the shallows and some huge fish will be caught in the very near future. Big catfish are caught all year on lakes Marion and Moultrie, but never more consistently and in such shallow water as they will be over the next couple of months.

Fishing for a variety of species of fish along the coast is very good right now. Redfish are being taken in the flats on gold spoons and live mud minnows. Speckled trout are being taken on one-quarter ounce green jigs as well as on mud minnows. The offshore fishing for bottom fish has perked up with black sea bass, grouper and some snapper being taken.