Blackwater Bream

The Experience

This is a redbreast river. Redbreast sunfish is the hardest-fighting, best-eating panfish in the Southeast, and it lives tight against the undercut banks and root wads of a stretch almost nobody gets to fish — because both banks here are private.

Abe runs the boat. You fish. Three hours covers most of our frontage at a fishing pace, idling the banks and putting a cricket or a small spinner into every laydown, every root mat, every seam where a sandbar falls off into a hole. The bite on this river is steady rather than frantic. By the end of an evening you have a good mess of fish.

Black water changes how you fish. Light barely gets through it, so fish hunt by feel and smell and hold hard to cover, and you fish the wood rather than the water. We do it the way this river has been fished for fifty years: a long pole, a small float, and a thin-wire hook that bends open on a snag instead of breaking your line.

One flat rate for the boat rather than a price per angler, because four people fit and the trip costs the same either way.

Bring a Florida or a Georgia freshwater fishing licence. The St. Marys is a boundary water, so either state’s licence is valid from our bank — we send the link when you book.

• Abe as your guide for three hours
• Boat, fuel, rods, tackle, and bait
• Life jackets
• Cooler and ice
• Your catch cleaned at the landing

• A Florida or Georgia freshwater fishing licence
• Closed-toe shoes
• Sun protection and bug spray
• A hat and polarised glasses

• Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters
• A corporate outing for four
• Anyone who has fished a lake and never a blackwater river
• An add-on to a retreat or an overnight stay