Off the coast, the word is ‘Shhhh’

Hundreds of islands harbor a bounty of fish and beaches

February 21, 2010|Patricia Borns, Globe Correspondent

SHELLMAN BLUFF - If there’s a place where “Keep this a secret’’ comes to mind, it’s the Georgia coast, strung with barrier islands as big as Bermuda, and back islands - 1,600 of them - as large as hundreds of acres to the size of a pickup truck. To find so many wildly beautiful islands in one state is remarkable enough, but it’s the fishing that draws anglers here.

Around and between the islands, a mighty 8-foot tide flushes 378,000 acres of salt marsh with brackish, food-rich water: the chemistry of a great fishery. In May schools of 60 to 100 redfish start cruising the mud banks. In June, tarpon over 100 pounds roll a boat-length away. Tripletail, a fine fighting and dinner table fish, lie inches below the surface, and a kingdom of critters, from snowy egrets to wild boar, join in the feed. “It’s the last East Coast outback,’’ says Steve Holley, a tournament sportsman who manages a fishing camp here.

My family and I loaded up the car and headed to Holley’s neighborhood, the Bluffs: Shellman, Contentment, Pleasure, and Dallas bluffs, to name a few. On a coast known for fishing, the unincorporated speck north of Brunswick is one of three hot spots. Although resorts and mega-yacht marinas have yet to find the Bluffs, Georgians have fished here for over a century. At Contentment Bluff run by Holley, they rent the circa 1930s cabins or spend weekends in trailers with gleaming center-consoles in tow.

In Shellman Bluff Lin Rogers poured a Jim Beam and soda and handed us the keys to Moonpie Cottage. Rogers, who drives a 1998 Cadillac DeVille with 81,000 miles on it and a golf cart with twice that, manages the area’s best portfolio of vacation rentals, ranging from Airstreams to designer homes.

On the water, the Bluffs rise out of the spartina grass on the Julienton and Broro rivers. While my family slept in, I took my first tidewater turn, sight-fishing for reds, with Captain Scott Dykes and his friend Ronnie Chambers. A lemon sun rose as we pulled away from “downtown’’ Shellman’s waterfront of boat lifts and the Shellman Fish Camp store, where a Coke costs 60 cents. Due east, Sapelo Sound stretched emptily. A hard current dragged the buoys, and brown, detritus-rich creeks snaked in dizzying array.

“Let’s try 153,’’ said Dykes, referring to an Intracoastal Waterway marker. A good 60 hungry redfish schooled alongside the bank, too big for keepers but great sport. Next we nudged against a mud flat Dykes had recently discovered and cast to the fish moving toward us, their tails flashing above the shallow water's surface as they grubbed the bottom for food.