Suwannee River in December

[ArthurLK11]

Greetings all. I currently live in South Florida, but me and two friends from New Jersey were thinking of getting a house for a few days between Christmas and New Years on the Suwannee River in North Florida. I have never fished in northern Florida and I'm not sure what to expect that time of year. Temperature wise it looks like it will be in the 50s-70s, but I don't know how that translates to fishing there. What are my chances of getting some decent action during that time of year. Either largemouth bass or suwannee bass would be the main target, but I wouldn't mind fishing for crappie or some sunfish species either. Thanks. 

[N Florida Mike]

The suwannee has been on my bucket list for years, but Ive never fished it. I have fished the Sante Fe river though, which flows into the Suwannee. I have caught suwanee bass, mostly with red shad culprit worms fished near Cypress trees.

I would fish with beetle spins or roostertails in there for panfish or just get live worms and fish around the cypress. 

Itll be a scenic trip, on a beautiful river...

[bigbassin']

Which part of the Suwannee? I’ve only fished it once and it happened to be at that time of year. Temp that day was in the mid 40s just after a front.

 

Fished fairly close to the coast, even caught a few redfish on crank baits. Only got a handful of bass, boater did lose one in 5 pound range at the boat.

 

Very scenic river.

 

Now I’ve spent a lot of time wading the Sante Fe which is a tributary to the Suwannee. Always did great with Suwannee bass and largemouth. Very easy to catch either on jigs or t-rigged craws, suwannes were always a big fan of KVD 1.0s tossed against large rock and lay downs.

 

if you’ve never targeted Suwannee bass, I’d strongly encourage it. I think they are the hardest fighting pound for pound bass out there and they are much more aggressive than largemouth.

[ArthurLK11]

On 9/26/2020 at 2:15 PM, bigbassin' said:

Which part of the Suwannee?

We ended up getting a house on the river in Live Oak. Much further than where you were fishing. I hope it's not too far north for Suwannee bass. Any chance at getting striped bass or white bass that far north?

[bigbassin']

2 hours ago, ArthurLK11 said:

We ended up getting a house on the river in Live Oak. Much further than where you were fishing. I hope it's not too far north for Suwannee bass. Any chance at getting striped bass or white bass that far north?

Suwannee’s can be caught in the river all the way up into Georgia so there should be some around Live Oak.

 

I don’t think there are any stripers or white bass in the Suwannee. Always possible FWC stocks sunshine bass (mix between the two) like they do in the St. John’s, I’ve never heard of it though.

[ArthurLK11]

1 hour ago, bigbassin' said:

Suwannee’s can be caught in the river all the way up into Georgia so there should be some around Live Oak.

 

I don’t think there are any stripers or white bass in the Suwannee. Always possible FWC stocks sunshine bass (mix between the two) like they do in the St. John’s, I’ve never heard of it though.

Thanks. The FWC as well as other sources lists the striped bass as occurring in the Gulf of Mexico as far south at the Suwannee River. This made me think they were in there, but I guess that's just the southern most extent of their range. 

[ArthurLK11]

One month away from the trip and just wanted to revisit this in case anyone else could help out. From my research it seems that crawfish are the most common/popular forage species in the river. I stocked up on a few different crawfish soft plastics and some crawfish pattern crankbaits. Hope that'll do the trick for the bass. It seems that this has been a rather wet fall all over Florida. Water levels (by volume) have been 2-3x higher than normal for this time of year. Any suggestions for fishing this river if the water levels are higher than normal?