Night Shrimping
Night shrimping has the advantage of taking you out from under a fiery sun and putting you on the river during the cool evening hours. After nightfall, shrimp come up out of the deep river channel onto the shallow (3 feet deep) grassy flats to feed. Because the shrimp can spread out over a considerable area of grass flats, it's necessary to attract the shrimp to your boat with a light and bait. A typical bait is a mixture of rock salt, flour, and shrimp meal made into meatball-sized patties. Most people use a Coleman lantern or its equivalent for a light source.
Go out onto the river at dusk and pick out a shallow, grassy spot. I prefer to run straight across the river from the Governor's creek boat ramp in Green Cove Springs. If you are not sure where to go, inquire at local bait shops or the place where you buy the fixings for your shrimp bait. Alternatively, look for other boats anchoring up and putting out lights. Once you find a spot, anchor up very securely so that your boat will not swing off the baited site. Two anchors, bow and stern, often are necessary.
As soon as it starts to get dark, hang your light so it shines on the water. Then throw out a dozen or so baits all around your boat not any further away than you can throw a cast net. Periodically make test casts until a shrimp or two appears in your net, indicating that the evening run has started. Continue with frequent casts, pausing only occasionally to re-bait your site, until you have your limit, it's well after midnight, or you are exhausted!
Now all you have left to do is find the boat ramp somewhere on the far side of a dark river, drive home at some awful hour, and clean 5 gallons of shrimp. Loran or GPS makes quick work of the first task, lots of coffee helps with the second, and if you iced down the shrimp soon after they were caught, it's O.K. to put off cleaning them until you've had some sleep. Clearly you don't try night shrimping if you have to go to work the next day!
Daytime Shrimping
If you prefer to keep banker's hours, then daytime shrimping is for you. During the day shrimp concentrate in the deep river channels in nearly 20 feet of water. Often the schools can be spotted with a good quality fish finder. Alternatively, you can look for a gathering of boats whose occupants are crazy enough to repeatedly throw cast nets in the heat of the day!
The secret to catching daytime shrimp, after you have located them, is to have modified your cast net so that it opens fully while sinking to depths of 20 feet. This means two modifications: (1) extending the length of the retrieval line so the net will reach bottom without being pulled closed and (2) applying duct tape or lawn furniture webbing to the net, just inside the lead line, to cause it to fan open as it sinks. Once you have done this and have located the shrimping fleet, drift along the edge of the river channel in about 20 feet of water while watching your fish finder and periodically making test casts. When you start to bring up shrimp in your net, anchor and have at it! Just be sure to bring lots to drink and keep an eye out for afternoon thunderstorms
