Christmas Creek Entrance

UPDATE: 10-25-13
The Christmas Creek entrance this year is to the North of the creek mouth. As you go South along Cumberland Beach you'll see the shoaling a few hundred yards East of the mouth of the creek. Enter Christmas Creek between the shoaling and the beach as you go South. As you enter the entrance between the shoals and the beach, look for your hard right turn to go directly into the creek mouth. Best to try at least an hour after low tide for that area. If you plan on coming out after high tide, best to be at the mouth no later than 4 1/2 hours after high tide unless your boat draws less than a foot like flats boats and Carolina Skifs. I like to go in about an hour after low tide and fish through the rising tide and then make my way out.

I made this update because this Blog post is one of my top posts which I wouldn't have know when I originally wrote it.

Christmas Creek has some of the best fishing around and if you are new to it or would like to try it out, email me and I can give you tips and a diagram to get in and out safely. It can be dangerous going in and out and many don't take into consideration the wind direction. Coming out with a high tide and wind blowing from shore to offshore creates nightmare conditions in that shoaling area.

My Dad's last big redfish from Christmas Creek!

I love checking my 'stats' to see which posts are popular, where people are when they post - shout out to my Uzbekistan readers, and the Google search querries that bring them to my blog. I saw where my blog came up on a Christmas Creek Entrance search querry.

Christmas Creek is a very popular fishing area that is reached from the ocean side of Cumberland Island. Anglers say it is named Christmas Creek cause when you go fishing there it's like Christmas time. There are excellent opportunities to take speckled seatrout, redfish, tripletail, flound and tarpon. The entrance tends to shift around as the very dangerous shoals that guard the entrance shift. This year, 2012, the entrance is reach by heading South along Cumberland's shoreline about 100 yards off the beach then making a very hard right hand turn into the creek mouth. Personally, I prefer to come in about an hour after low tide or 4 hours before high tide. This way you can see the entrance part much easier than when the tide is higher and only a few inches may be covering the beach.

Don't get me wrong, more than once I have had to get out of the boat and push it over some very shallow sand just making it in before losing draft on my boat. Of note, Christmas Creek is a treacherous creek to enter when the wind is blowing from land to the sea. The wind will cup the waves that are breaking on the shoals making for a harrowing exit from the creek. Several times I was concerned enough to ask my fishing buddies to don a life jacket. One especially bad time, my Dad and I came out at sundown on a high tide with an offshore wind. We both donned life jackets and I attached the marine radio to my Dad's life jacket in case we went in the water. A few times, my 19 foot center console boat was at about 50 or 60 degree angle and I thought for sure we were going to flip end over end. My boat, a 2004 Seaboss, handled it very well although I skipped Christmas Creek for a while.