From the Bucket to my Belly...

Once again Jonah and I decided to head out late Friday night to go shrimping in Oak Hill. I had spent some time last week researching the tides and relating them to the recent trips we had been on to try to establish a trend. I think we figured out some things this weekend. The forums are full of advice, of course, but deciding which of the advice to take and place in the old memory bank is the tough part. We decided to go, regardless of the tides, on more or less a fact-finding mission…yeah, that’s what we’ll call it. We showed up at the tail end of a lower than average high tide. It should have been a major indicator that it was going to be a long night when we noticed an empty parking lot. HHMMM? As we were staging the jon boat what few boats that happened to be out were all coming in for the night. Remember, self, we’re on a fact finding mission… self.

So off we went into the darkness, no boats to avoid this Friday night; the channel was empty and we had our pick of wherever we wanted to set up. We headed south to the second green flashing channel marker, set up, and didn’t see a thing. Decided to move around for a while and get the lay of the land, so we idled south a half a mile or so, zig-zagging across the channel along the way, looking at docks and checking out the different contours of the mangrove-covered shorelines. At one point we slipped into a small lagoon where the water was completely covered in finger mullet; I took a video to try to show everyone, hopefully you can see some. I think you'll be able to at least hear them-- it was almost deafening listening to them jumping around. After we came around the backside of an island (after about an hour of looking around), we were close to the spot we were at a few weeks earlier and we decided to anchor up and wait till the low tide that was scheduled to change around 0230. One of the things I noticed right away is that at about 0200 the commercial guys started popping up all around us. Hmmmm, good indicator. Sure enough, 0230 was the ticket, the shrimp started to run and they ran thick. We ended up with a solid three gallons and much more valuable experience on how to time these things. In conclusion, when the New Smyrna Inlet/ Halifax River are at low tide on the tide chart, the shrimp will run at River Breeze/ Oak Hill. You may come away asking, "So why should I care, Nate?" Well, think of it this way: If you're interested in shrimping, then I’ve done all your work for you. I’ve gone out and gotten skunked, stayed up all night and boiled it down so I can show you how to optimize your time on the water and increase your trip to shrimp ratio. All you have to do now is look at the tide chart and see when the low tide is at a manageable time so you’re not waiting out there for hours and just starting to see the little crusties at 0200 in the morning. For example: we’ll take a Friday night in April, let's say 4.08.11. The low tides are at 0549 and 1805. Neither of those times are worth losing sleep over. However!!! Next Friday, April 15th, is going to be a full moon as well as the low tide hitting at a convenient time of 0105, first thing on Saturday morning, which are much better currents and times for salvaging the weekend's "pre-planned activities." This way you will get home around 0300 and get more shuteye (instead of getting in at 0630 and having to shower and go right to work like I did this weekend). Anyway, that’s my take on this whole shrimping thing, hopefully this helps.