The stronger the current the better.

I tried my hand at shrimping YET again last Friday night.  Headed out a little earlier then normal, pretty much right after I got home from work and loaded the boat.  I really had no expectation for this trip; after getting my ass kicked on Tuesday, I was back to square one.  I got on the water around 10 pm because the low tide was expected to hit around 1230 am. I had a little time to kill so I messed around with different light setups to see if it would give me a different glow putting them one way or another. It didn’t really, so I basically just dropped them right over the side of the boat and let them sink about 2 feet.  I halfway planned on trying to get some clams while I was up there but it didn’t work out. I ended up not ever trying. The night got off to a slow start: about an hour or two into the low tide I only had about a gallon of small bugs. I had told Blythe that I was going to stay out till I got my limit whether it took all night or not.  So the hours passed and the shrimp trickled in little by little.  At about 4:45 am, I noticed the current really picked up and it brought a few more shrimp across the lights but they still weren’t “running.”  At about 3:00 am, I looked over at a pontoon boat about 20 yards to the east of me and I noticed they were dipping pretty regularly.  What the heck?  I watched the regular dipping turn into a frenzied dip and I again thought, what the heck?  I wasn’t seeing anything.  So I did what I would normally never do: I pulled anchor and moved 10 feet east almost behind them but about 50 yards back.  I don't think people mind if you get close to them up in Oak Hill, everyone's pretty cool about the lack of space up there. When I tuned my lights back on and looked down into the water, I couldn’t believe it. I think I said something like “HOLY SH!T” and “WHAT THE F!!!” Shrimp EVERYWHERE!!!!! Then the frenzy began. I was dipping only from one side of the boat and I gained 3 gallons in and hour and a half. WOW. One thing to note is that there was a much stronger current at the second spot.  I ended a tough night of waiting out a rainstorm, abandoning a clamming expedition and ultimately no sleep with about 4 gallons of sweet morsels from the Mosquito Lagoon.  I would have gotten that five gallon limit but my net released TWICE!  Thus losing about a half gallon each time. Dumping an entire nets haul back into the water where they go on to live another night.
This week, 1st Mate Ross is back in town for Easter and we will be going north once again to try to get that elusive 5 gallon limit.  Jonah is planning on coming too so we might try to buddy boat and combine our lights close to each other to try that method out but we’ll see.