The Phenomenon of the color PINK in Brackish Waters for Sunfish......

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

As an active member of Bigbluegill.com the last several years, I have learned a lot and shared many ideas that have proven successful for Sunfish in the waters I fish. Prior to becoming a member I had several secrets that remained in my pocket and only my closest fishing buddies had ever even shared in this success. This isn't to say others weren't fishing the same baits in a similar style and catching fish or using baits of their choice and finding similar success.  I was a young kid with numerous anglers in my extended family and I learned early from my grandpa Foster Abney, who always told me to listen when I got around fishermen and think about things that might help me or work where I was fishing.  I was fortunate to be pretty close with an Uncle on my mother's side of the family that lived one town over in Southeastern Louisiana. He grew up and lived near the banks of the Tcefuncte River in the small town of Madisonville, Louisiana and only fished two bodies of water during his eighty plus year life.  A fact that many folks close to him never knew is he fished live grass shrimp for some 60 to 70 years and I couldn't begin to tell you how many Bluegill, Shellcracker, Warmouth and Crappie that he caught over the years.   One Thanksgiving day in the early 1970s as our 100 member family assembled in Folsom, Louisiana for the best dinners we ever ate, Uncle Kenny walked out to an acre pond that was dug on the family farm to stock with fish for the 20 plus grandkids in the Sharp family.  I was there casting a beetle spin when he asked if I had a scoop net with me. I did and we went over to some grass beds near the shore and made a quick scoop and filled a bucket up with little crustaceans called Grass Shrimp. He said put a cork and a bream hook on there and let me show you something. I eagerly followed his instructions and a few moments later we were pulling out big bluegill one after another.  This went on for quite some time and my Uncle explained if you ever run out of Grass Shrimp "Jeffie" and can't find more, take a pink soft plastic jig and fish that in the same areas. He explained that I wouldn't be disappointed and don't be afraid to tip the hook with a worm, grasshopper or a cricket if you have some.  I went home armed with the advice and went through seven or eight tackle boxes my dad and I had but no pink in any of them. I couldn't believe it but surely I'll find some the next time at the bait shop.  A few short days later my dad and I visited the local bait shop and I rushed the fishing tackle, both shelves and found two packs of little curly tails that had a mix of white and pink, they were mine and I was excited to let Uncle Kenny know I had found some and was eager to try them as soon as I could. His only clue was Pink was the best match for live grass shrimp in our brackish waters. He explained saltwater anglers have realized it for some time but freshwater fishermen have failed to make the correlation and they are truly missing out. In the weeks ahead I will go into detail how I fish these jigs and hopefull answer many of the questions I have received about the mystery of pink.

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

As of right now Tony, there is 262 photos and two of them are your's...........

[Tony Livingston]

Well I got it loaded completely this morning, (not as much net congestion this early).....Out here in the sticks, (or is that the Styx??) we don't achieve the advertised download or upload speeds, and our computers will time out or freeze if there are a lot of graphics, or photos. I recently uploaded a couple of videos, and each one took over 20 minutes to complete.....

No big deal here, I check into the site several times a day, so I will simply stop the page from loading before the photos complete. The text loads first, so it should work fine.

[Allen Morgan]

I used to do that, when I was limited to dail-up.  You can right-click on a picture, and select "view picture", I believe, and your browser with load that one pic.

How long were the videos that you uploaded?  I'm on cable, and I've had a couple videos that took almost 2 hours to upload.  I've been shooting all my vid's in 1080 HD lately, and this one was easily 7 minutes long.

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

After a few more wrinkles from the Summer sun....we have been blessed with milder temperatures for a couple weeks in September and this has facilitated water temperatures falling back to near 80 degrees and the gills are responding. I load up on crickets and grass shrimp and take off for the 11th time this month so let's see how it turned out....

Now it's the evening of the 26th and I've had another great month with a few more days to go...My local rivers have been great and what a good time it's been.....I lose a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with my buddy so my next trip will be up on Northwest River in a few days....

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

Here we go, the final weekend of September is here and we have had great weather in coastal Carolina and the full moon is Saturday night and what a great way to send out a month in which I've already caught over a 1000 fish combined on six different rivers. My buddy and I are going to hit the Northwest River for another Fall trip...Eric wants to treat me to some great telescopic pole fishing from the Crappie Chariot...Surely it can't be any better than the trip we had earlier this month...

We are having a wonderful afternoon catching dozens of Gills and Fliers, but the Crappie bite is awesome and I'm catching fish on Silent Stingers, and three different patterns of Gronaw Grass shrimp.....Lets see how the rest of the day went.....

What a great September day and most of it on pink and grass shrimp mimics......One more trip to capture for September 2012.....Coming Soon!

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

All the Crappie are cleaned and we had some tasty dinners but I had to reload on Grass Shrimp and Live Crickets for one last trip for September 2012.......This time I'm hitting the gills on the Pasquotank River again.....Morning temperatures were in the 50s....I got some new pink mini-mites and the Cotton Candy Silent Stinger is hot right now....Here's how it went....

The month will end like it started.....amazing Bluegill fishing on pink baits and tipped with live baits......I would traditionally put September fifth in the rankings for the best month of the year for gill fishing but it's hard to believe the fishing could be any better than it was this month......I will always remember this year....Let's see if I caught any more gills that day.....

Time to put some new line on the telescopics after these battles....I may need more Silent Stingers too as the ones I have are getting pounded.....I still can't believe these grass shrimp patterns and mimics are doing so well in so many places.......I will talk about September 2012 for a very long time......Some amazing trophies and many on pink.....It may not be your color and I understand but if you're fishing the brackish waters of the deep south or mid-atlantic you may want to give them a shot......

[DAVID L EITUTIS]

Great pics and tutorial Jeffrey!!!!! You are right of course on the color pink down South , but here for me at least, the hot thing this year was Blue and combos of it . The crappie pics were especially of interest to me and can't wait to see more ...........

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

Here are some of my personal favorites to introduce pink/red in my brackish waters.......

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

So the second month that ends with the letter "r" is here and change is officially in the air and on the water.......Water Temperatures have continued to fall back through September and we are in the high 60s to start out Octoberfest 2012.......I went twice during the first week of October and shared the memories with friends on both trips.......Once in Tulls Bay in North Carolina and the second trip was on the Northwest River in coastal Virginia.....Let's see if pink is still working........

Despite a chilly start and cooling water temperatures...we still ran into some water moccassins having a good time in the creek.....

So my friend "Doc" and his son and I had a great trip on Tulls Bay in early October....Nothing big but a nice variety and a good harvest for a family style fish fry......Notice the variety of pink jigs that I used on this day........I purposely wanted to try as many as I could to see if the bite changed but on this day it was steady no matter which one I fished........Next Stop is on the Northwest River....

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

We continue to have relatively decent weather so I meet my buddy Eric up on the Northwest River to take on a good day's fall fishing in a beautiful location. Here's how it went on a chilly day with light rain.......

So we're eight days into October with a small drop-off for the larger gills but the Flier bite is amazing and we secured a 50 fish Crappie limit as well.....We tipped with Live Minnows. Crickets and Grass Shrimp.....the Fliers were really pounding the Grass Shrimp and when the Crappie were cleaned their gut was packed with grass shrimp.......Thanks Eric for the invite and another great trip on the Northwest River.........

 

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

It's mid October now and I scheduled a couple trips during the second week of the month.....we had experienced a few cold nights and water temperatures have fallen to 60 degrees or lower in a couple locations...Let's see how it went....

The first trip of the week was back on the Northwest River and my buddy Eric and I crushed the Crappie again and caught a few nice gills and some awesome Fliers... The bait of choice on this trip was a Baby Shad Pink Panther tipped with either live minnows or grass shrimp........a great day on the water and I'm headed for the Dismal Swamp Canal next to check on some Fliers.....

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

With my bait restocked I head back to Virginia to fish the acidic waters of the Dismal Swamp Canal which borders Highway 17 in Virginia and North Carolina from Chesapeake to South Mills......It's a cold morning and water temperatures are down around 53 in this heavily shaded location......

Wound up with a 50 sunfish limit mostly Fliers and a few Warmouth on tipped Pink Silent Stingers fished deep near bottom......Caught several Bullheads that couldn't resist the pink either.....Not a lot of Bluegill in these low oxygen waters.......