I grew up in southeast GA fishing mostly in small rivers like the Satilla. As a child, I spent many Saturday mornings going fishing with my dad instead of sleeping in and watching cartoons. It definitely paid off, as the memories I made are way more valuable than a few episodes of the Smurfs!

So now as a 31 yr old adult, I rarely go fishing with my Dad - he works an obscene amount of hours and just never seems to have time. But I did get him to commit to a fishing date!

Personally, I have never caught anything larger than about 4 lbs., but then there aren't many large bass in the Satilla. My dad had an 8lb mounted on the wall for most of my childhood, and has topped 10lbs only twice.

I grew up watching Jimmy Stewart, Bill Dance, and Doug Hannon videos with Dad, and I would just love to have a productive day fishing with him - though the time together is most important.

So I guess I should get to my titled question. What places are good within 1 1/2 hours here? I have looked up info on St. Johns, Black Creek, Rodman Reservoir, and Lake George, but I'm having trouble deciding. Is one place easier to fish than the other, better access, less congestion, better fishing, etc? What places would I, or *gasp* my dad, have a better chance at breaking our records?

For any that reply, thanks for your input! As you can probably tell, I'm pretty excited.

Where in SE Ga are you from?  I grew up in Hazlehurst.  I'm in the Navy and was stationed in Kings Bay for 8 1/2 years and will be heading back there in October.

My Mom lives on Lake George now, there's good fish there but you have to find them, it's a shallow lake with lots of eel grass and reeds.  If you fish there watch the birds and shad, they key you to where the fish are.  I've mainly fished the east side of the lake around the 9 mile area.  My step dad got an 11 lber out of there a couple years ago and I've got a few 5-6 lbers over the years, nothing really to brag about.  Frogs and flukes in the pads, spinners and senkos through the eel grass are usually what we get them on.  Any dark color is good and gold blades seem to work best.  I hear the St. Johns is good around Palatka, it's tidal so check the tide times there.  A buddy of mine fished a tourney in Palatka in January and the word he got was Rat-L-traps were the way to go dragging them over sandbars.  Hope this helps!!

Hey ya YNC and thanks for the reply!

I'm from Waycross, GA and I've been through Hazelhurst several times. Kings Bay / St. Marys is about an hour north of where I live now.

When I was probably 12-13, we took a trip to Lake George for a couple of days of fishing. We found out later that we didn't actually get into Lake George - we only went into Little Lake George!

I appreciate the tips - hopefully I'll get to use them soon.