[Jman]

I fished the hardest I've ever fished Friday thru Saturday and caught 1 channel cat that might have been 12" at best. I've never been to Santee in the past 2 years without catching something in the canal but I got skunked Friday night. Friday I drifted outside the hatchery section for 3 hours before moving over to Hogs swamp for another 4 hours. I finished the area SW of the canal entrance for a couple hours to finish my day on the lake. I drifted areas from 4 feet deep to 30 feet with not even a pull down. Later that evening I fished 6 areas on the canal, some of where I have had great catches in the past and didn't get a bite. Saturday I fished the area NE of marker 20 for 5 hours before calling it quits. We were surronded by 7 other boats all of who were catching nothing. At the canal lake camp I only saw 3 people cleaning small catches of fish. Early on Friday there was a group who had about a dozen blues and one 52 lb flat. Later that evening there was a guy who had one 20 lb blue and a handful of smaller ones. On Saturday one of the guides had a party of 5 and they caught 1 fish of no size. They were fishing NE area of marker 20 and the guide had spotterd me and asked me how I did when I was putting my boat up. I was using very fresh gizzard shad and bought some herring to try and switch it up some. Nothing worked.It was a very frustrating weekend and to me strange for one of the best catfishing lakes in the country. Has somthing changed? Joel

 

[catch & release]

1. There are fewer catfish in the lakes than before. Mostly due to poor recruitment over the last few years. I'll be suprised if you don't see a creel limit on blues next year unless we get a good hatch this year.

2. Fishing always gets tough this time of year due to the spawn. You can have some really good days, but also some awful stretches as well where you have those 1 fish days

3. Fishing has been below average for about 2 years now. In the past 2 years, we've had the lowest water levels the lake has seen, the highest sustained water levels the lake has seen and this winter the coldest sustained water temps I ever recall........I don't think any of those things help fishing

 

[Meow Mix]

Joel I hate to hear that. I thought for sure you would do ok out by the hatchery. Should have told about a spot on the other side of the lake by Bonneau. PM me if you want. Anyway I'm going for six days starting Thursday next week. I hope I have better luck than you did.

 

[Loudon Brooks]

Joel, don't feel bad, I was there with four buddies last week, two boats and we managed one fish Tues, one fish Wed, zero Thurs, six on Fri, and zip on Saturday. biggest was 12 lb blue, another 10, and the rest were channels. We drifted lower lake for hours and hours wed afternoon through Sat. I have had little luck in the last few years also. I'll tell you this though, we had a blast and the beer was cold !! I'll be back again in August. LB:cowboy:

 

[krowbar]

There's plenty of fish in Moultrie. You just have to find them when there feeding. Not sure where you getting your info from about being less fish in the past 2 years. Maybe you just not fishing for them right. Every year I've fished Moultrie I've caught more fish than the year before. Bigger fish as well. Everyone is going to have bad days but as for Santee Cooper. Plenty of Fish. You just gotta know how to fish for them. If you find the bait you'll find the fish.

 

[catch & release]

There are fewer blues in the lake than there have been in years. I base that on personal data that I keep from each trip and the trend for numbers has fallen off noticably. I've been keeping data of every trip since 1989. I normally fish santee between 80-110 days per year. The fisheries data from annual gillnet studies show the same trend of a decreasing bluecat population. The number of blues has decreased to the point that a biologist I talked with recently told me "if it were up to him he'd go ahead and impose a limit on the number of blues that can be kept". We are hoping the improved flows in 2010 will allow for improved recruitment. The channel cats and flatheads seem to be more stable. The good news is if you like big blues, the average size in the lake now is excellent(which is also due to the reduced numbers). That said, you can still have some great days on the water with both good numbers as well as size. Keep praying for rain!

 

[WylieCat]

Ask the guides!!!

Many of the guides seem to think that you can kill all the fish you want out of Santee Cooper without any negative results down the road. Seems like I heard the same thing from oceanic striper and bluefish anglers back in the 70's and 80's. How long did those fisheries take to recover?

 

[catch & release]

Guides are in a tough situation. While some do encourage more released fish than they used to, the majority of parties come to catch fish and keep fish. As a guide if you push the issue too hard you won't be a guide for long, as repeat business is a big part of the business. 95% of the people that think it's OK to keep every fish will never change their opinion....ever....no matter what. Most of my family falls in that category

For years at Santee the recommendation was to keep every fish you caught(especially the little ones). For the most part I agreed with that idea. There have been times where I thought there were too many catfish in the lake. That is not the case now. The 36 inch rule was a step in the right direction.

As lakes age they become less productive in terms of total biomass they can sustain, so its only natural that we see changes in species and populations. The bottom line is fisheries will change, and we as fishermen need to be willing to change with it.

I'm confident that our undermanned DNR will do what they can to maintain the quality of catfishing at Santee. When the striper fishing fell off the map in the early 80's it could have been devastating to the money they pumped into the lake region.....thank goodness the catfish picked up when they fell off. Santee can't afford for catfishing not to be a lucrative fishery.

 

[Jman]

Joel I hate to hear that. I thought for sure you would do ok out by the hatchery. Should have told about a spot on the other side of the lake by Bonneau. PM me if you want. Anyway I'm going for six days starting Thursday next week. I hope I have better luck than you did.

Thanks Rick, Keep us posted on your trip. Joel

 

[gotta go]

I use to be one of those fisherman. If i caught it,it was mine to do with as i pleased. If i couldn't eat it i could give it away. I was catching a lot of big fish, Santee was a big lake (if you are in a slow pontoon) and when i got the Key West with the bhig 225 the laqke became smaller. Catfishn caught on, closest thing to striper fishn and the stripers were now gone. I was catching large #'s of big fish and one day as i looked out across the lake at all the boats, it dawned on me, what if all these guys are catching a lot of big fish. Now if you fished Santee a lot in the 90's it seemed every day was the wk end with a lot of boats. Only bad weather would keep them away. Then i read an article in IN-Fisherman about how the stripers had been long gone in Santee due to over fishn and how that the bluecat was in danger. It became real to me and even though i started releasing fish it was hard at first because it seemed i was the only one. Later i seen a few others and i started keeping what i wanted to eat only. Now, most of the time i don't even have a cooler on the boat unless i'm keeping eaters. They have a program at the church i attend that helps people that was on drugs. Its sort of a half-way-house that they must attend until there time is up. Sence the guys there like fish, i sometimes keep fish to help them out. Its called "The Turning Point" and i have even though about asking the guys at tournament to keep all the smaller fish they catch and the ones they don't want give them to me for this program. With the fish advisery on Wateree it now cuts it to once a month. This program helps these people because they must stay clean of drugs and they must attend church every time the doors are open. (and in my church the doors are open a lot)
I guess i got off subject a little but it just goes to say a lot of people have reason to keep fish but they just need to use there head if they want to continue to see that rod bend double.

 

[Jman]

There's plenty of fish in Moultrie. You just have to find them when there feeding. Not sure where you getting your info from about being less fish in the past 2 years. Maybe you just not fishing for them right. Every year I've fished Moultrie I've caught more fish than the year before. Bigger fish as well. Everyone is going to have bad days but as for Santee Cooper. Plenty of Fish. You just gotta know how to fish for them. If you find the bait you'll find the fish.

Jason, I've always followed the line of thinking that finding the bait will lead you to the fish. I know how to read a deph/fish finder very well. Fishing for stripers I've learned to recognize different schools of fish, striper strikes and suspended catfish. Over the weekend I marked many schools of bait fish in many of the areas I was fishing. Espesially out from the marker 20 area in 25 ft of water. We sat over a huge group of bait fish from 7:30 thru 11:00. There was no catfish to be found. My guess is like others is that the majority of fish were moving into spawning stage. But even with that we should have caught a couple fish shallow late and early and didn't see anything. There were plenty of people that know how to fish for catfish last weekend struggling to find fish. There was a cold front that moved through on Thursday evening and that could have turned the fish off. But with the amount of people fishing I would have expected to see a lot more fish being caught than I did. Thanks for your response to the post. Joel

 

[Meow Mix]

Joel on one of the last trips that we took out on Moultrie we saw the same thing. It was late summer/early fall last year. I found a school of baitfish about the size of half a football field. I know how big it was because I could see it right under the surface as we drove the boat beside them. Anyway I pulled the boat right around behind them and drifted with them for hours just knowing I was about to put seven guys on the best fishing they had ever seen. I even told them, you guys watch this I bet we'll have six or seven rods go down at once. We caught one fish within two minutes of locking the reels down and I was standing there waiting for some more rods to go down. Then the funniest thing happened. Not another bite. For eight hours not one bite. I drifted with that ball of bait for three hours before I gave up. We moved and still nothing. Moved again nothing. The day before same guys, I wore them out. The fish and the guys. Lucky for me the first day was stellar so they didn't mind the second day. The point is, even you do everything that you know is right to catch fish and have the best ball of baitfish you have ever seen it doesn't matter. It was not in the plan for you to catch em that day. That is the test that you have to take to be a fisherman, a true fisherman. If you pass that test you will know and when you know, oh man watch out now.

 

[gray_toy]

Hey guys I'm new here but not to catfishing! First of all, I went to Rimini 2 weeks ago and only caught one blue about 15 lbs all night, worse trip ever in 10 years. My question is do any of you ever go there or would you rather fish big water? We go there so we can go up river and put out a few limb lines. This trip we stayed out of river and fished in the flats.

 

[lucas_donaldson]

We bank fished last weekend and like most said it was tough. Me and my brother fished the rediversion canal Friday afternoon and all night and managed 3 blues and one nice channel. The blues were 16, 13, and 10 pounds. They started pullin water at about 11 Friday night and I thought it might turn the bite on but it didnt. Saturday night we tried the Russelville boat landing and caught nothing but a huge soft shell turtle. The wind howled Saturday night.