Just got back last night, and first off, wanted to thank those who posted and/or send me a PM… thanks for the advise. And, you were correct… tough bite! I will post a series of pictures for all to enjoy, as well, following the post.
First thing I noticed about Pool 13, was the slop is WAY different than Pool 7 and 8… ALL mud bottoms, little cabbage, little eel grass, little milfoil… all pads, and only pads for the most part. Can retrieve a spinner bait through them… buzz baits over the top… Interesting. The other general observations is that Pool 13 is muddy, has plenty of mud, and mud is abundant! Sand is really only found in the channel, and that is even muddy.
I bought a Hot Spots Map” of Pool 13, and studies it the nigt before… I quickly became a bit overwhlemed… 34.5 miles lock-to-lock… Wow. I had no idea of the size of the pool. Its my opinion that Pool 13 is not as beautiful as Pool 7 and 8, but still is absolutely gorgeous… probably because every time my dog had to swim, she brought caked mud into my boat!
Another observation worth noting was the bass boats… HUGE motors on HUGE boats… an 18 footer in Savannah is small, relatively speaking of course… I saw several 22 footers with Merc 250XS, 21, 20… all with 225 or bigger… Mostly Rangers, but some Triton and Basscats… Just plain big! Pretty impressive tournament launch out of the Savannah Marina on Sunday morning… I thought I was in Iraq it was so impressive sounding. Saturday there was a smaller BWS tourney… desent bags weighed, or so I could muster. There was a bright orange Ranger, too… very different, and very cool… my wife said it looked very “bachelor-esque”… no way a woman would let THAT be parked in the driveway!
Anyway, back to fishing, it took me a while to figure out any pattern… I started the morning hitting the rocks, and caught some saugar and small bass, all largemouths. I decided to take some people’s advise and work my way up into Brown’s… that took awhile because I wasn’t familiar with the water and that you should stay on plane, or forget about it! Anyway, I only caught one and had some strikes. There were about 8 boats up in there, and I never saw anyone set the hook… it is supposed to be a great location, but the water level has dropped several feet over the course of a couple weeks (including 5-6″ Saturday to Sunday!). I spend the remainder of the time pitching to wood all the way from the north end to the south end of Running slough, almost 4 miles of narrow, heavily wooded waters… slight current (this was key to finding fish). There is the picture of the log jam… LOTS of those on 13, pretty cool, and very fishy. My final spot was wood, right of the channel… which produced the biggest fish I found… 2 bookend 17″ largemouth with 10 minutes of finishing the trip… great way to end.
All in all, a great trip. And the scenery is worth the drive by itself.
