04/04/14 – 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.
MacDaddy 3 light deployment
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. Look at numbers 1 and 2 of the diagram.
I pulled the 6pm scout light (GW 60/60 shrimping light = 120 leds) (number 3 on diagram) 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.
5 gallons 2 hrs 15 min, still on river and slob sizes.
Total GALLONS:—-> 5 gallons
Size Breakdown:
% 4 Inch ————- 30% (any thing in 4 inches) SMALL
% 5 Inch ————–60% (anything in 5 inches) MEDIUM
% 6 Inch ————- 10% (any thing 6 inches up (LARGE)
% 7 Inch ———— Count = 6 (JUMBO), .00001%
Comments – We measured EVERY shrimp for accurate size break down
COTTON Disease [quantity]: 1
Kill Zone [Nbr Lights Used]: 03
Type Of Lights Used [LED, Starfire etc]: MacDaddy GW 75/75 (Green/white), 1 GW 60/60
Location: South of Lopez
Water Temperature: 74.4
Wind: South blowing 5-8, laid down 9:30 steady 3-5 mph
Water Clarity: Murky
Debris Issues: Grass but not enough to cancel use of frame net
Frame Net Used: Shumaker 1/2″ mesh, 1″ stretch culling, got a gallon, 2 dumps
Shrimp Stream [Weak, Mod, Soup]: weak with multiples flurries 3-4
Anchor SetUp Direction: horizontal
Boat Congestion On River: Full House, from North ramp to CM 9a
Dipping Time: 2 hours, 15 mins as soon as the sun set
# Dippers: 02
Tide– Strong South wind, setup by 5:30pm, dipping at dark 8:15pm tide was going out. Daily savings time wrecks tide times, so I make sure I get there early until I trust the tides again. Right now I do not and assume tides are changing at the new daylight savings time, meaning I think the tides are an hour off. My frame sock was going out at 6:30pm in daylight. Go out early by at least 1 to 1.5 hours to be safe. Nobody is reporting tides etc, but March and April are always screwed up when we change the clocks. Plus, South wind brings the tide in early.
The shrimp remain robust sizes high 4 to 5″ consistent, Mediums, gallons of these great sizes, saw very few dinks. Oak Hill is NOT known for these sizes, normally a full bucket is 3 gallons of dinks and 2 gallons nice sizes. This year the sizes are high majority of small type mediums to robust mediums.
The night was lot of work and fussing with my “Mega” MacDaddy GW 75/75 (green/white) field goals and my GW 60/60 MacDaddy center light. Consistent brown outs which I believe to be bait swirls dimming me down. Reset lights all night to ensure both Fish On and I were dipping sock for sock.
Strong top water agitations means the shrimp are going to run deep, barometer fell below 30.00. Shrimp tell you everything. I set up a 9, 6 and 3 pm “blow it off the bottom” light set. The fat Daddy’s made their ascent to the top and right into our visuals. We lost visibility at 3 foot, so we used a sacrificial 3rd light to force them up. We would NOT have made the 5 relying on top water or upper column runners, we had to manipulate and bring the shrimp in the lower column into the top 3 foot.
Shrimp tell you everything you need to do.
You always set your frame net into the water column where you are marking shrimp. I added galvanized chain to my frame bridal, sunk net 2 foot down and hung on my pipe. An hour later, softball. I raised the frame 1 foot below water line, and on 2nd pull we had a gallon giving us a heavy five after removing the frozen water bottle.
It was a dipping “5” night and the stream was 1-2 with flurries of 3-6, both dippers were dumping sock for sock. This is where the light fussing consumed me. If both dippers are not dipping even, something is wrong. This is a symptom and you need to recognize this if a dipper is shut down. I keep saying the shrimp tell you everthing, and I could tell my light was further out than Fish On’s 9pm goal post forcing the shrimp to head all to her shutting me down. There were times in the night where my light walked out further and she was shut down. We note this immediate and go into corrective mode, and BOOM, both dippers are in a sweat.
Note – So murky could not see where my lights were, it was shrimp behavior alone that alerted me to have Fish On pull in her light, looking at lights you could not ID this problem, we due a blind faith tug on light alteration guessing , and the shrimp are ON again both dippers…this is how much I rely on shrimp observation and behavior
This was a night of light babysitting, pushing,pulling, moving, re-throwin all night. This was necessary to keep us both dipping sock for sock. We first felt grass was the brown out but we fought dim light field all night but the MacDaddy powered thru the brown out giving me visibility even tho compromised from bait rolling around lights. We were always trying to shake them away and ended up re-throwing lights just to be in a brown out again.
It was a tough night for visuals, it was a night of constant light manipulation and ensuring both dippers were productive. It is so easy to shut down your partner if the lights are not even in the set (3 and 9pm).
Sacrificial light is not a dip light visual set, it is a blocker to blow up the fat daddy’s who turned into the goal posts and dove to darker water below the light, they dive down and then ascend to the top like an elevator and pop right into your visuals. The water was so murky and it took blowing them off the bottom into our sight because where they were coming from where WE COULD NOT SEE THEM.
Crap, I have not worked my lights this hard all year, but that is what it took for us to win the smack down. We probably re-worked our lights a dozen times in 2 hours.
My location is NOT magical, you can put me any where, I go South to get out of the chaos. Unfortunate an hour into the chase, a boat has plenty of river and decides to be 25 yards from us running stinky generator with a South wind making us nauseated from the fumes. THANK GOD his anchor lines pushed/slid him west of us 20 mins later. People who have generators need to be “FUME” responsible….that was miserable. We were to close to getting the bucket to consider a move and jump him to get some clean air.
My best advice is to watch the shrimp’s behavior, they will reveal where you need to drop your frame, they will tell you if your lights are balanced to keep everyone dipping. The light field is the ball game. When they are deep you have to change it up and blow them up so you can mark and net. We blew up a high majority from the lower column we would never have seen. It was not a top runner night, set your lights once and off you go. Wind chop changes the game.
&nsb;
