Travel Report: George L. Smith State Park (Georgia)

Happy Monday Spacefish!

Happy Monday Spacefish! I hope all of you had a wonderful Father’s Day weekend! My family and I road tripped up to Georgia to spend a big family weekend at my brother’s place. On Friday morning, my brother and I loaded up our kayaks and went to George L. Smith State Park, which is located about 35 miles north of where he lives. This is a place I have wanted to kayak fish for a while, because it is an absolutely, stunningly beautiful place for a paddle – it is frequently listed as one of the state of Georgia’s top destinations for paddling, as it features a winding cypress swamp. As a school teacher by trade, summer is my best time of the year for travel, so here is a special travel report.

If you ever find yourself traveling through Georgia on the I-16 corridor this is a place worth stopping off at to paddle, or fish, or both! The park offers kayak rentals if you don’t have the ability to bring your own craft.

Launch Spot

There are two places you could potentially launch from, the first is the actual designated kayak launch area in the front of the park, located here – George L. Smith State Park. The other option, which is what we did, is to go to the back of the park, and launch at the boat ramp; located here – Park boat ramp. We did this so we could fish in the thicker cypress areas, and stay shaded as long as possible. We got on the water right at 7 am, and worked our way back towards the main lake, and got down to the dam, and then worked our way back north again.

Topwater Fishing

I was able to find some action early in the day on the Hendrix Voodoo Frog in Midnight Potion (Black). I was throwing this bait up tight against the trees and popping it, while fishing slow and keeping it around the trees as long as I could. I have a couple of videos up on my instagram now spacefish_kayakangler that show how I was fishing this bait around the cypress trees. This made for a fun and exciting style of fishing! My brother fished a plopper style bait, and didn’t catch any. The fish were not very aggressive; so I think the popping style frog, keeping it close to structure was the ticket.

Other Stuff That Worked

Once the topwater bite slowed down, we switched over to the subsurface baits. Of course you probably already know, but I fished a Zoom Junebug Red Speedworm on a pegged Texas rig with a tungsten weight. I only caught one Bass on this presentation and it was a little one. Like I mentioned earlier, they were hugged up pretty tight to structure, I was able to find some matted vegetation later in the morning and get a few to bite once I started punching a Bitter’s Bug in Toho; I rigged this on a casting setup with 50 pound braid; and a double pegged 1 oz tungsten weight and a heavy 2/0 flipping hook.

My brother caught a nice Bass fishing a Bitters Skip Shad in Native Shiner. He rigged this presentation weightless and weedless on a 3/0 EWG Wormhook. He fished this bait by skipping it into shaded pockets and fishing it with a jerk-jerk-pause style retrieve.

Conclusion

We only fished for 4-4/12 hours. We knocked off around noon and went and grabbed some lunch before heading back to his farm house in Cobbtown where he has 3 ponds on the property. We spent the rest of the weekend fishing with our kids. I will report more on that next week.

I could not recommend making plans to detour off of I-16 in Emmanuel County if you ever find your self travelling in Georgia. The fishing was ok, but the experience was awesome. One of the things about kayak fishing that has always been special to me, is not just the fishing, but in getting a chance to have intimate experiences with wildlife, and offer a chance to silently glide through some truly breath-taking natural areas. George L. Smith State Park is a paddler’s destination for a reason, and you will not regret spending some time on the water in the cypress swamp, if you ever get the chance!

I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read, and I would like to thank Kayaks By Bo for being our paddle partner for this weeks adventure! I hope everyone has a great week ahead, tight lines everyone! Until next time!