12/13/07
Fishing news still good on local lakes
By Terry Madewell

The fishing news is still stable and relatively good, similar to what it has been for that past few weeks. Based on reports received, the fishing may not be exceptional, but if you can get your boat in the water, you have good chance to catch some fish.

I did receive a good report from Manning’s Inky Davis. He reported largemouth bass activity as good and has seen and heard a good bit regarding striper fishing recently as well.

On other fishing fronts, there is some crappie being caught, a scattered bream or two and some catfish action. Overall, for mid-December, the fishing is pretty good.

Inky reported folks can still launch boats at the Alex Harvin (Wyboo) and John Land (Taw Caw) landings. He added that small boats can be launched at Jack’s Creek. He say that if the water drops much more, the two big landings will become very difficult to use.

As noted before, use extreme caution if you try to motor fast to a surface feeding school of stripers, or anywhere. Stumps and logs you’ve never had to worry about are now lying in shallow water waiting to knock off a prop or rip a hole in the boat. As we always should, wear a life jacket in this cold-water time of year.

The striper fishing continues to be active throughout area lakes. Some schooling action is occurring, however drifting live bait and trolling, such as in the lower end of Wyboo Creek, has been productive over the past couple of weeks.

Largemouth bass action continues to be good with crank baits and spinner baits. Davis repots that chatter baits, plastic worms and jigs have also been productive. Bottom-bumping lures are also producing.

Reports received indicate striper action is best for schooling action early and late using buck tails or top water lures. Fishermen using live bait are also making catches during that time as well as during the midday. Find schools of stripers using your sonar equipment and drift live bait through the school of fish, at or just above the depth you mark the fish on your graph.

The crappie fishing news is fair to good with the best catches being made along the drops in deep water 8-20 feet deep. Fish your bait or lure around submerged brush piles. Green, blue or chartreuse jigs or small- to medium-sized minnows seem to be producing best results.

The catfishing action is still very good as well for blue catfish, with some action on channel cats and flatheads as well. Live bait such as perch, bream and shad are producing flathead action and cut shad is producing best on the big blues. Look for the best fishing action to be in or near deep water.

The news from along the coast is there continues to be excellent fishing for trout and very good action on redfish. Artificial lures such as gold spoons on the shallow flats are producing good catches of big redfish. Green jigs and live bait are producing the trout action.