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ALTAMAHA ADVENTURE
by Ron Morris (aka Altamaha Jones)
Editor's Note: GRF member Ron Morris and Jason Strickland
recently took a five day fishing trip on the Altamaha River and was gracious
enough to write up a story about it complete with some great pictures. Enjoy.
May 1, 2004
The SS Disaster launched from Bell’s Ferry
Landing on the lower Oconee at approximately 2:30 pm Saturday afternoon.
It was a long awaited beginning to a trip that had already been postponed for a
year and was once again threatened by excessive rain. The participants of this
excursion consisted of myself (Altamaha Jones, above right) and my fishing
partner of nearly twenty years the Warden, Jason Strickland. Jason and I had
seriously considered another postponement due to an increasingly deteriorating
forecast calling for thunder storms stretching into mid week. We had both
monitored the forecast via the internet and the Weather Channel as well as the
local news until we were convinced we were facing the storm of the century. We
had experienced plenty of ill-fated camping trips together before, and seemed to
think that by now we should have learned that sometimes you must choose the more
intelligent choice. A weekend camping trip in the rain can be miserable enough
but a week long trip would try the stamina of even the most seasoned adventurer.
I went along with a temporary postponement
until Saturday morning. When Jason called I had come to the realization that,
rain or shine, I needed to go ahead, or in all likelihood my marriage would
never survive the weekend. I was growing grumpier and more discontent by the
moment. I told Jason I was ready to go and I thought as long as we got somewhere
before the rain started and got set up we could ride it out till it passed. He
said it was already raining at his house and he felt we should give it another
day. The discussion continued and we came to a point where if we could not begin
before the weekend was over we would be forced to put it off until the following
week because we’d have no one to drop us of at the launch site. I was almost
convinced until the subject of fishing came up. “You know if it rains like
they’re predicting, the rivers going to be rising by then and be muddy and
fishing will be shot.” That was the turning point for us both.
I drove the seventy five miles to his house
in record time. I noted along the way that though it had rained over most of the
area the night before it did not appear to have rained that morning. I still
felt like we had a chance to get on the river and get camp set up before the
rain returned that afternoon. We hurriedly loaded the gear into his boat and
were on the road shortly after noon. We made a quick stop for bait and to top
off the gas tanks in Hazelhurst before we got to Bell’s Ferry. It seemed
as if the sky cleared almost immediately when we got on the water. I had no
doubt we had made the right choice.
Neither of us had ever been on the Oconee and
were pleased to find it reminiscent of the Altamaha, which should have been no
surprise since we were only a mile above the confluence with the Ocmulgee and
the beginning of the Altamaha. The first order of business was to toast
the beginning of the trip with a cold one then begin trying to catch some fish
before we were off the Oconee. Within a hundred yards of the landing I caught a
small ten inch bass and felt this was a good omen of things to come. By the time
we reached the Altamaha I had caught another bass, a channel cat and a half
dozen redbreast on a beetle spin. Jason had done equally well pitching crickets.
I had high expectations of what the three
river junction would be like and was surprised that there was little or no
turbulent flow at the junction. The entrance of the Ocmulgee could have been the
entrance to an oxbow or large creek. I suppose at higher levels it would be more
evident that this was indeed another free flowing river. We were well past the
junction before I remembered I had brought my camera and got it out to get some
photos of the beginning of the mighty Altamaha. Our plan was to go down
river and camp in the vicinity of Benton Lee’s Steakhouse which is located at
Gray’s Landing right on the Altamaha. It’s a deservedly well known place to
dine and we planned to indulge ourselves with a good meal to kick of the
beginning of this long awaited sojourn. I was certain we could easily make it
that far down river but we fired up the motor and began to look for a good
sandbar to camp on.
We passed the 221 bridge and I told Jason
some tales of times I’d spent on this portion of the river as a teenager. Soon
Gray’s landing and the steakhouse came into view. We went on down river a
couple more bends and picked a sandbar to set up camp. It was a long sandbar
with several little points extending into deep water and a big cove on the back
side of the lower end leaving sort of a peninsula surrounded by deep water. The
cove side was still and calm and the river side had a clear breakline and back
eddy formed by one of the protruding points up river. It looked like a good spot
to catfish from at night and had access to both moving and calm water of good
depth. We set up our tents and stowed any gear that we didn’t want to get wet.
The afternoon had turned out beautiful and there was little threat of any rain
but showers have a way of popping up out of nowhere. We gathered some wood for a
camp fire and inspected our site for potential fishing. After we got things
situated I noticed some disturbance in the water right off the sandbar at the
camp site. I retrieved my light rod with the beetle spin from the boat and on
the first cast caught another little ten inch bass. And to think just a few
hours earlier we had almost decided not to come. Things were definitely looking
brighter.
It was a little after 7 pm when we decided to
head back up river to Benton Lee’s and eat. Being unfamiliar with the river it
seemed like a good idea to make the trip back up in the light. We had gotten
about midway up the sandbar to the point extending into the main flow of the
river when we saw the obvious signs of a striper feeding frenzy going on in the
cove formed below this point. We hastily tied on some minnow type lures and I
hooked up on the first cast into the midst of them. Jason was trying to hold the
boat in position and fish which was difficult in the swift flow. I managed to
get what I guesstimate was a 5-6 pounder to the boat but lost him when I tried
to hoist him into the boat by the line rather than lipping it. Jason had his
hands full and eventually we ended up running into the school which seemed to
spook them. Neither of us got any more strikes and all the activity stopped. I
was grinning from ear to ear when we arrived at the steakhouse.
Sunday, May 2
I got up about six AM and got out the makings
for a pot of coffee and put it on the trusty Coleman stove. About the time it
began to perk, I saw the stripers feeding off the point again. We grabbed our
rods and ran across the sandbar to cast into them from the point. I landed a
small two pounder, then a couple more four or five pounders back to back and
eventually one more smaller one. Jason caught the biggest one and lost a couple
more before the action stopped abruptly. We released all but the biggest and
took it back to weigh it. It measured twenty two inches and weighed just shy of
six pounds. I thought I had a picture of Jason holding this fish but it did not
take. I can’t describe the feeling I had having caught four stripers before
I’d had my morning coffee. The coffee turned out fine, by the way, and we
enjoyed a cup as we each gave our accounts of the landing of each striper we had
just caught. I’ve got to learn more about fishing for them. Until this year
I’d never caught anything but really small ones sometimes while catfishing.
These fish are remarkably strong fighters and will not give up at all.
We found a deep ledge along another large
cove across the river from camp and we fished the blowdowns along the bank and
caught a few small bream. We then tied off on the upper end of the cove at the
edge of the flow and tossed out some wigglers along the deep ledge. While
waiting for some catfish to bite I caught a few more bream under the willows we
were tied off on. We each landed a 2-3 lb flathead, which surprised me because
I’ve always been told they would only eat live baitfish. I suppose that may be
true for the larger ones but I guess live wigglers qualify for fish of this
size. We caught several pan size channel cats and were content to have that
night's supper taken care of already. We tried a few more spots and returned to
camp for a light lunch. By now the sky was darkening and we could even hear some
thunder rumbling in the distance. We decided to try a little more fishing but by
the time we picked a spot and had gotten situated, the bottom fell out, and we
high tailed it back to camp.
We quickly donned our rain gear and secured
several items, including my tent, which the gusting wind seemed determined to
blow into the river. The rain continued and sent us scurrying for the shelter of
our tents. As the wind and rain raged outside I snacked on some granola bars and
began to record some of the events in my journal. There were a few lightning
strikes and thunder booms near enough to make me a little uncomfortable, but it
all passed quickly, and though the sun never came through completely, it was
obvious that the worst had passed, at least for the time being. As Jason pumped
the rain water from the boat, I prepared the grill to cook our supper. We dined
on grilled fish and fried taters. It looked at this point as if the rain
was over. About the same time as the evening before, the stripers feeding at the
point started up, and again we raced to the point and began to cast into them.
Jason landed one and hooked and lost a couple, one of which he swore had to be
much larger than any we had caught so far. I had changed lures earlier and
couldn’t get anything interested in what I was tossing. When the action
stopped I kept giving Jason a hard time about losing the “big one” mostly to
divert his attention from the fact that I had not even hooked up at all. After
we had bedded down for the night the rain returned with a vengeance. It poured
off and on throughout the night but really wasn’t a problem since we had
already turned in.
Monday, May 3
I awoke and got up early again. The sky was
dark and grey and it looked as if we were in for a long, wet day. I started the
morning coffee again keeping an eye out for the stripers. I don’t know if the
rain or what was the reason but they did not return that morning. After coffee
and a bite to eat I went and cast off the point for a while in a light drizzling
rain. I did catch one small striper and a largemouth before heading back to
camp. We talked about staying put since the rain appeared to be set in and
everything was wet. Again Jason pumped out the boat while I checked over some
other gear that needed to stay dry. Then, at about 9 AM, the sun appeared out of
nowhere. In no time at all it cleared and we decided if we could get the gear
dry enough to pack we would load up and head on down river. We were loaded and
set out drifting by noon. The next couple of landings were not too far
down river, but once we passed the US 1 Bridge it was a long way to any other
landing to which either of us were capable of giving anyone driving directions.
We cast for bass as we drifted along. Though the sky had cleared, there was
still a strong wind, and it pushed us down river along with the current at a
pretty good pace. We fired up the motor a couple of times in some places where
the river narrowed and the flow was swift and there were many blowdowns to
navigate through. We ate lunch while drifting past Plant Hatch and joked that we
might start catching some bigger fish below the nuclear plant. There were very
few boats on the river and we were still being pushed along by a stiff breeze,
hoping to make up some time since we stayed two nights at our first stop.
We were hoping to get to where the Ohoopee
empties into the Altamaha just above the 169 bridge, which appeared to be about
the half way point. We also decided we would stay two nights again, then split
the second half of the trip with the remaining night. We were soon past the area
I was familiar with and it was difficult to judge how far we’d gone or how far
we had left to go. At about 6:30 PM we started looking for a spot to set up
camp. We looked for a sandbar with deep water access to allow getting the boat
near the bank and also a spot that had some potential for fishing nearby. Our
reason for staying two nights was so we could fish all day Tuesday, since
setting up and breaking camp took up the best parts of the day for fishing. We
found a nice place that met all the criteria and as a bonus had a large dead
tree about thirty yards from the rivers edge which provided a good supply of dry
firewood. We ate light that night and got a good nights rest for the following
day of fishing.
Tuesday, May 4
We rose early and headed straight to a slough
just below camp that we had spotted the evening before. We started right off
catching several redbreast and bream but they were small so we decided to move
on. We attempted to go up in the slough, but turned back after a short distance
because it was too difficult to navigate in the shallow water and numerous
stumps. It looked like it might open up and we talked about coming back later in
the day and wading it to see if there were any deep holes back in there. We went
back up river from camp to a creek mouth we had passed, and tried some
catfishing again. We caught a good mess of pan sized channel cats as well as
several bream.
Around mid-morning we moved again, and found
one of the best fishing holes I’ve seen on any river. It was the on the lower
end of a sandbar that extended along an outside bend in the river for probably
50-75 yards. The sandbar formed a ledge following the bend but left a
channel four or five deep and twenty feet wide between it and a bank of over
hanging willows. About mid-way was the mouth of a slough with several deadfalls
and cypress stumps at it’s entrance. We could toss a cricket anywhere in the
channel and catch redbreast one right after the other. I also caught several
running a beetle spin along the edge of the willows. Again, they were mostly
small fish, and the bite eventually slowed. We decided to go to camp and cook
some catfish for lunch so we’d be free to fish the late evening. After another
good meal of fish, taters & fried biscuits I pulled my chair to the edge of
the sandbar and napped while soaking the sunburned tops of my feet in the cool
water. After a short nap I took a quick dip to wash away a couple nights
worth of smoke and grime.
As evening approached, I told Jason I wanted
to go back to the place we had fished that morning and wade the sandbar ledge
and use the flyrod to pitch back under the willows. We anchored the boat on the
lower end and began to work our way slowly upstream. Jason continued to use
crickets and I started out with a popper. It was soon obvious the fish were not
there, or at least not biting like they had that morning. Eventually the Warden
found one little spot he could catch fish from every time he tossed a cricket
into it. I switched to a small beadhead nymph GoneToSeed (GRF member Steve
Rushing) had sent me last year when I first started with the flyrod. Soon I
found a similar spot, and as long as I could place my cast within about an
eighteen inch area, I too could catch one fish after another. We probably ended
up with thirty five fish between us before it was over. We released everything
we caught except the few catfish we kept each day to cook.
We returned to camp tired but satisfied.
We’d spent the better part of the day on the water and figured we’d caught
sixty or seventy fish between us. Our ice was fading fast by now, but all we had
in the cooler other than beverages were some eggs and bacon so we decided to
cook that for supper. I don’t see how we could have been hungry after the
fantastic lunch but we devoured a half dozen eggs and pound of bacon. We stoked
up a nice campfire and spent the evening talking of the day’s success and
making plans to continue downriver the next day. So far everything had gone
wonderfully. Luckily the SS Disaster was not experiencing anything the name
implied.
Wednesday, May 5
We got up and broke camp, getting an early
start that morning. The next known landmarks were Tippen’s Lake, a private
lake that a friend of the Warden said we should fish, and the mouth of the
Ohoopee. We drifted a good ways but our pace was much slower since the wind that
pushed us along before had calmed. It was during this time we encountered a
gator that drifted lazily along side of us for a good ways but finally submerged
as we kept inching closer to take pictures. We got to the lake and Jason called
his buddy on the cell phone. He insured him we should fish up in there and just
tell anyone that questioned us he had invited us. His exact quote was,“
Mention my name and they’ll treat you like a king.” That should have been
enough to make us know better but we entered past the posted signs and were
promptly made aware that we not welcome by the first fellow we encountered.
Apparently the Warden’s buddy neglected to mention he had been exiled.
Shortly downriver we came to the mouth of the
Ohoopee. It was much more obvious than the Ocmulgee had been. Here there was a
distinct mud line caused by the currents of the two rivers coming together and
the water darkened noticeably the further up the Ohoopee we went. We still had
long ways to go since we still were not quite half way but we wanted to try to
catch at least one fish from the Ohoopee. We spent as long as possible but were
unsuccessful and finally had to move on. By now I was beginning to experience
some equipment failures. My ultra light, with which I was doing most of my
fishing, had run out of line and I had not prepared for this. We continued
to cast for bass and troll behind the boat as we drifted, but had no luck at
all. I think I remember Jason missing one strike during the entire length. We
asked a couple fellows how far we were from the 169 bridge. One told us maybe a
mile and the next one said about five miles. Obviously they were no better at
judging river distances than we were.
We continued to drift, confident that we had
enough fuel to reach the end from 169. But when we determined the remaining beer
was getting warm, we decided to make up some time and try to reach Beard’s
Bluff, which used to be a fish camp and campground. There we could get more ice
and would be back into familiar water. We could spend the last night along there
and easily finish the remainder of the trip by late Thursday afternoon when
Jason’s wife was supposed to pick us up. Well to our surprise, the camp had
changed hands and they no longer operate the store. You can still use the ramp
for a fee but the store had closed over a year ago. We choose a sandbar just
below there to camp our remaining night. I worked on my reel and spooled it with
some 4 lb line Jason found on his boat. We ate another fine catfish supper with
all the trimmings and washed it down with the remaining beers while they were
still cold enough to enjoy.
Thursday, May 6
The river begins to change noticeably below
169. The steep banks and rock formations characteristic of the upper part of the
river are no longer evident. Increasingly, the willows overhang the edge of the
river along the shallower side. The flow is noticeably slower as the river
widens. As the surrounding terrain flattens out there are more sloughs and
oxbows along the river. There also seemed to be far more boats on the river at
this point. Occasionally there is a high bluff, but they are not nearly as
frequent as on the upper part.
We were well into familiar territory for the
Warden, and we fished several spots for redbreast and bream. By now I had
completely forsaken the cricket fishing and was having a ball pitching beetle
spins under the overhanging willows. We continued to catch good numbers of
redbreast and bream and I caught several more small bass. I lost one I think
might have gone over a couple pounds after a long battle that ended when he got
me wrapped around the anchor line. Four lb test line really doesn’t allow you
to control a river bass. We reached the original take out point by early
afternoon and still had a couple hours before Jason’s wife could pick us up so
we continued on down river to the next landing. We pulled out of the river about
3 pm.
Overall the trip went really well. Not a
single thing went wrong and we had a great time. I would love to do it again,
but I’d want more time to allow for more exploration of creeks and oxbows.
I’d want to travel lighter so relocating each day would be less time
consuming. I know I’ve left out many details like being serenaded to sleep by
whip-or-wills and the gentle rippling of the river passing along the sandbar
edges. Another thing that I can’t describe with words was how the full moon
illuminated the sandbar each night so well that we never even lit the lantern
after the first night. I think I only got a flashlight out once and that was
only to work on a reel one night. We talked of going the rest of the way to the
coast next year and definitely plan to make more trips of this length and
duration.
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