03/09/14 – Oak Hill Shrimping Report

3/09/14 – Oak Hill Shrimping Report Florida –

Capt Lee enjoys shrimping in Oak Hill Florida, the shrimping Capital of Florida. Her reports are both informative and educational.

My shrimping lights I used were (2) GW 75/75 MacDaddy with the green and white strip. I fired off both strips. My light configuration was 9pm and 3 pm set. Imagine looking at a clock. I pulled the 6pm scout light which I deploy when I want to upwell the fat daddy’s lurking lower in the water column. If there are none, I pull the light and in this case I pulled the 3rd light.

 

thFireworks-01-june.gif   5 hard gallons   thFireworks-02-june.gif

  • Tide turned 8 something and not 10 pm.
  • Tides always messed up after we spring forward day lights saving time.
  • Boats – Many from North of Ramp to Lopez
  • My set up in Oak Hill at – CM 5 (channel marker 5)
  • Dipped 1st shrimp at 8:15pm
  • Stream weak but steady with flurries of a dozen or so
  • Sizes – Impressive, saw few dinks
  • Winds – Calm with skeeters for hours until winds switched
  • # people on my boat – 2 dippers

We set sail early to avoid the river chaos, and as it turned out the tide changed almost 2 hours sooner than expected. We got hammered by many boat wakes who bomb on through with their bay boats. my 17 foot skiff boat was not where I wanted it and finally mid tide I was forced to re-throw anchors. People if your going to bomb by while people are standing on bow dipping, keep a further distance or SLOW down before you hurt somebody!

 

Commercial guys 2 hours into the tide all clustered around CM 6 in the (center of channel), and they came thru at high speed and were the ones who dislodged my anchors.

 

The Dip:

 

I took out my shovel net, it has a 34″ bottom bar. As it turned out, this net was to my determent  and I did NOT have a 2nd back up net. The shrimp knew the shovel net was there. It came as no surprise. We watch them approach my shovel, and dive inches before going into net, this did not happen on Jan’s round net. We conducted experiments all night and finally we retired the net because the shrimp were diving and it was not pulling bugs.

 

Why?

For the same reason I pull my top bar out of the water on my frame net (see pic). When the current gets strong, the shovel net bottom bar diffused the water causing a vibraton the bigun’s could feel 6 inches out. They took correction action jumping over net or diving. Now, my friend and I have a problem, we only have 1 round 30″ dip net and a frame net to use. My friend and I took turns doing shared dip net shifts, we moved a lot of water, we had moon influence throttling the current and it was strong. The crickets were deep and the water was ABSOLUTELY filthy, if you did  not have strong lights, you were compromised.

 

We retired our MacDaddy GW 60/60 3rd center light, and went down with a pair MacDaddy GW 75/75 Mega Macs (150 LED’s) (field goal, 9 and 3pm deployment set) and used the white & green mode at the same time which powered thru the filth allowing us to mark shrimp.
We limited with 1 dip net and frame net by Midnight (4 hours).

 

Tons of boats on water, we limited early compared to other boats, and then BOOYAH, my engine won’t start, my anchor light is dim. My crank battery I bought last year ( interstate batt) was dead. Called Capt Frank who was on charter, and he sent WishinIwasFishin over and Mike was able to dig out my trolling motor and switch it out with my crank and all was great. We were wet and cold.

 

Shouting

 

This is my frame net hooked on a pipe and out and away from light field. Note, my top bar is out of the water so that water does not vibrate off the bar causing the biggones to dive and avoid the opening. Those antennae on their head are their sensors. They feel displaced water.

 

Shrimping frame box net collapsible

Shrimping frame box net collapsible

Frame net pulled about a gallon, grass was a problem for little while, 1 mantis shrimp we released, saw few cannonballs.

 

Collapsible Shumaker box frame net 4x4 foot, 17 foot sock 1" stretch, 1/2" mesh

Collapsible Shumaker box frame net 4×4 foot, 17 foot sock 1″ stretch, 1/2″ mesh

 

image

 

Here is shovel net, 34″ bottom bar that bounced water allowing shrimp to sense the diffusion and avoid this net. This net failed me during my extensive testing on this night. For now, I am back to using only a round 30″ Shumaker dip net.

 

Shovel shrimping dip net

Shovel shrimping dip net

 

 

 

This night was a back breaking physical “pick”, there was nothing easy and breezy. It was hard work digging deep, moving water aggressively so they did not dive on us as we swept the multiples. The current felt like we wer moving 500 pounds, and to power thru doing figure 8’s physically beat up these 2 old ladies.

 

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