03/21/14 – 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 (two) GW 75/75 MacDaddy (150 Led’s) 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  (GW 60/60 shrimping light = 120 leds) 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 3rd light and in this case I blew the big boys off the bottom.

The river was choked down when I arrived on the scene. Here is a pic of the river around Lopez (CM 6 and South) , a popular strip of inter-coastal in Oak Hill, Florida.

We are 35 minutes into the hunt and here is what we have to show. We are posting live from the boat using the YUKU android/iphone app with REELCHICKSFISH as the forum we are posting live too. Its my huge message board community and its free to join. You have to do a welcome post before accessing the report forums, this tells me your a real person and not a computer script trying to access my intel. You can access the forums from the menu at the top of the site.

The number of dippers were just 2 senior aged ladies. Note we use a 1/2 gallon milk judge as our freeze pack to keep our crickets temperature controlled so they do not spoil. The reason I prefer milk bottles is because loose ice is brutal to pick out if FWC stops you and wants to measure your pull in a 5 gallon bucket. The water jug is easily removed when you need that last little bit of space to top off.

Shrimping in Oak Hill, Florida

Argh, the one thing I hate to see when I have 3 lights out and 2 anchors. A BARGE! Had to pull all my gear in and it is now one big maze of wires. The barge ripped the shrimp vein up and I am now off my numbers. I am going to reset, and tough it out and see if I can top off or go home short of my goal.

This was the right decision, I dialed back into the bugs but what I did not realize is I had an envious boater who jumped me. This is what happens when you know what your doing and neighboring boaters are in envy of how much we are dipping. They believe we are dipping strong because we are in the right spot when in fact it is not the location making us successful, it is the health of the light field I set. So this boater raced to sit on the numbers I was on prior to the barge coming thru.

Problem is this boater is 20 yards dead in front of me cutting off my stream. He had a child on board. When I asked him to offset and move away from me, he engaged displaying a less than stellar attitude setting poor example in front of his child. Since my stream was shut down, I took my handheld torch light and blinded his face so he could not dip. It took 15 mins but he pulled anchor and left. We got back to business at hit the 4 gallon mark. Florida law allows us to keep 5 gallons per 24 hour period. We have no size regulations.

Shrimping in Oak Hill, Florida

Final pictures of our 5 gallon of winter shrimp (brown and pink) from Oak Hill, Florida. My cooler I use on the boat is a little marine cooler from Walmart, it holds about 28 quarts. I prefer a cooler over a 5 gallon bucket because the sides of a cooler provides better cooling insulation vs. a thin sided 5 gallon bucket.

We got our 5 gallon in 2 hours using 3 MacDaddy shrimp lights, a Shumaker collapsible frame net, and 2 female dippers (seniors). Click Marker69.com banner below to go to the store to read about the gear used in detail.

Oak Hill, Florida winter shrimping

Oak Hill, Florida winter shrimping