North Florida boating in January.

Double Barrel, Bumblebee, Sanders, Johnson and Shired creeks are all similar to Big and Little Trout creeks. Expect lots of barrier bars, deep holes, mud and oyster bars. You’ll see some simple stakes marking their entries, but don’t rush. This is not a place to lose your lower unit and to row home from. Shired, Johnson and Sanders are good places to kayak-fish, as well. There’s a nice public boat ramp north of the Shired Island campground, accessed by SR 351 and SR 357 out of Cross City. It’s a good launching spot for shallow-draft and hand-powered boats, and some flats boats don’t scrape bottom there on higher tides.

Once inside the creek of your choice, fishing rather than boating expertise takes front seat. Light-to-medium spinning or baitcasting rods and reels are the preferred tackle as these creek-bound winter fish are not huge. These are not the big trout that cruise outside bars during the rest of the year, nor are they the bull reds that school up offshore in late spring. These are nice slot-size fish and should you keep a few (remember, trout season is closed here in February) for dinner that night, they’re tasty, too.

Livebait anglers seem to do best in the creeks using live shrimp on jigheads under popping corks, although I’ve seen lots of reds caught using dead mullet chunks dragged along the bottom. Corks seem to reduce snags, as well as catfish.

Fly fishermen are becoming a regular sight in the creeks. Most blind-cast near bars while wading or from small boats using 7- or 8-weight rods with weedless or “hook-up” flies such as the Redfish Candy or Clouser Minnow. Red-and-white and chartreuse-and-white are good color combinations to start casting. Make slow retrieves, as the fish can be lazy and lethargic, especially on colder days. Far and away, the most popular bait used in the Suwannee creeks is a slow-sinking plug, retrieved very slowly just off the bottom. Many lures are used, including the D.O.A. Bait Buster, Corky Mullet and Rat-L-Trap, but the all-time, all-around favorite is the MirrOlure. Not only are these great lures for casting toward bars and into holes, but they also work well when trolled. In fact, many anglers slow-troll MirrOlure 52MRs down the middle of the creeks, sometimes only in 5 or 6 feet of water, until they get a trout or redfish strike. At that point, they stop, anchor and begin casting. The 52M, 52MR and the newer S52MR holographic styles all work well for trolling, while any of the heavier TTR (Tiny Trout) models are deadly in deeper holes. As a rule, the brighter the color, the flashier the lure, the better. There have been recent cold winters in which it was virtually impossible to find some colors and styles of plugs in north central Florida!

Jay Peacock hooked up in Johnson Creek.

At the end of a day of winter fishing in Suwannee’s Gulf creeks, you’re likely to be cold and wind-burned, but not to the extent you would if you had spent the day on open water. You’ll probably have more fish in the box, too. Gamefish know when it’s too cold. Their prey head toward more comfortable habitats, and they follow. And we follow them.

FS