Grow the Hunt

Redfish Redemption

-By Rich Miller

Friday afternoon my wife, my little boy, and I were packed in the truck and heading to Edisto Island for the weekend. They were going to hang out on the beach while my buddy Mark, his father Bobby, and I were going to try to get some revenge on the reds that put it on me last month. I couldn’t wait until we got there. Mark kept calling me last weekend telling me that I should be there and all about the fish he was catching.

As we were getting closer to the island on Friday the skies were looking darker, and by the time we hit the little town of Ravenel the clouds unloaded on us. It was raining so hard we had to slow to a crawl. When we finally arrived at Mark’s, the storms were still in the area and they hung around until dark. The storms had knocked us out of an afternoon of fishing.

Saturday morning, we were easing the boat off of the trailer as the sun was starting to make its daily appearance. The wind was blowing out of the south and seemed to be blowing hard, as it normally does down there. We started off at one of Mark’s hot spots that we call Big Buck Point. We call it that because the first time he and his dad fished there a big buck ran across the marsh and came right by them.

The week before Mark had caught several fish at Big Buck Point and it is usually a productive area. As we started fishing, I think it was Mark’s second cast, he caught a flounder. Even though it wasn’t big enough to keep, it gave us a positive start. As the day went on the water kept getting dingier until it turned just plain muddy. We were not sure why it was so muddy. We didn’t know if it was the wind or the incoming tide, but we couldn’t get the fish to do anything.

After moving around a few times we were able to find some water that was a little clearer. By this time the tide had come in and we were looking for fish tailing in the grass while feeding on fiddler crabs. The water was clearer at this place but the wind was still blowing, and that made it difficult to see the fish. After poling around for nearly an hour we spotted several fish feeding and tried to get as close to them as possible. After making several cast to them they just disappeared and we never saw another fish.

Determined not to let the fish get the best of us we were back on the water Sunday morning bright and early. We didn’t go back to Big Buck Point because the wind was blowing hard again. We opted for a spot that we thought might be protected from the wind with hopes that the water might not be so muddy.

We were fishing an incoming tide and the water was just starting to get up on the oyster banks when I caught a flounder that was about 16-inches, and finally the monkey was off of my back. After I landed the flounder the fishing turned on. Bobby caught a trout and I had another flounder on, but this one came off right at the boat. Not too long after that Mark caught a keeper redfish and before lunch we had caught several more reds that were keepers and a couple more that were too big to keep.

Now isn’t this our luck? The fish were really eating it up Sunday and we didn’t have very long to fish because Bobby and I had a long drive back to Anderson ahead of us.

As the tide started getting into the grass, we left this spot and ran back to where we could see the fish tailing. When we pulled up, the wind died down and the water was clear. We spotted a few fish but they spooked as soon as we cast to them. We started heading out to the point where we had seen the fish tailing on Saturday and I was just blindly casting along the edge of the grass when I had a monster red come out of the grass and inhale my Yum Money Minnow swim bait. It was on! As we got him in the boat we knew right away that he was way too big to keep, and while I was releasing him, Bobby made a cast in the same little area. As soon as his bait hit the water it was inhaled by an 18-inch red that was a keeper.

By this time our wives were waiting on us to load the cars and hit the road so we headed to the landing feeling pretty good about our live well full of fish, especially after the kind of day we had on Saturday.

It is amazing how different the fish can be in just one day. The good thing is that we had some fish to bring home on this trip. It would have been a long ride home knowing that I had spent another weekend down there and still had not caught a fish. Not to mention I would have had to listen to Mark and Bobby tell me how I brought them bad luck. Instead, in the closing hours of the trip I got what I had driven down there for, a little “redfish redemption”!

Trout on the Chattooga

-By Rich Miller

After getting skunked fishing while I was on vacation, I thought I might try to redeem myself with a trip a little closer to home. I have been trout fishing on the Chattooga River since I was a little boy. I grew up following my dad around the river trying to keep from falling in. All the years that I have been going to the Chattooga I have just made day trips, but I’ve always wanted to pack into the rural camping area and stay for a couple of days. The place I was planning on camping is only accessible by foot so I was going to pack light and that is something that I am not very good at. I have a deer hauler that I use when hunting walk-in areas so I figured I could load it down with all of my gear and make one trip from the truck to the campground.

I invited my uncle and he said he was in, so we planned on heading up Thursday afternoon when I got off of work. By the time we arrived, got everything hauled in and the tent set up, we didn’t have very long to fish the first afternoon. However we did manage to catch five or six each before darkness fell on us. It was a shame it got dark because we were still catching fish. It gets very dangerous trying to wade in the dark, much less walking the trail back to camp in the dark also.

Friday morning we were awake and finished with breakfast before the sun came up. We hit the trail for a two hour hike up to the area we wanted to start fishing. Trying to catch some of these bigger trout is no different than trying to kill a trophy buck; you have to get away from the crowds where they haven’t been pressured very much. Usually, when we go to the falls we never see another fisherman.

Even though we started off in the dark we made pretty good time. We got to the falls in less than two hours. It was pretty refreshing stepping into that cool, mountain water after the long hike. I bet I had not made three casts when I caught a nine-inch rainbow. The problem is the limit is eight fish, so I didn’t want to start keeping smaller fish early in the day and then have to release some bigger ones later in the afternoon.

After catching one or two smaller fish below the falls, the fish just shut down and we were not getting a bite. Even when we moved above the falls we still were not getting the bites like we normally do. Now, whenever you are trout fishing you always want to fish up stream. Trout almost always will be facing upstream and feeding on bait that comes floating by. When a fisherman starts fishing above, the trout coming down stream the fish will not only see you but they also know something is in the river because of the debris that the fishermen have been stirring up while coming down the river.

I am sure you have guessed our problem, when we made the turn above the falls there were two guys coming down the river toward us fishing. This just shut the big fish down and I feel like that was the reason we didn’t catch very much below the falls. We got past those guys and there was another really good stretch of water that we always catch some good fish in. As we came around the next bend in the river to start fishing this great stretch, there were two more guys standing in the middle of the river. You talk about being disappointed.

Once we passed these two guys we decided to take a break and eat a bite and let everything settle down a while. After waiting about thirty minutes, we started fishing again and it did pick up a little bit the further we got up river. I managed to catch one brown trout that was about fourteen-inches long and lost a rainbow that was about the same size. My uncle caught a nice rainbow that was about twelve inches. I ended up catching around twenty five fish the whole day, but I never got the really big fish that I was after. We both managed to bring out a decent limit of fish but we had to work our tails off for them.

We got out of the river around 5:30pm and after a 40-minute hike we were back in camp. When we got the fish cleaned it was time to do a little cooking. I don’t know about you, but after being in the river all day I really work up an appetite. We grilled up a couple of deer burger steaks and fried up some potatoes and onions. I don’t know if it was because I was so hungry or what, but I don’t think a meal in a five star restaurant in New York would have been any better. After getting our bellies full it was all we could do to stay awake until we got everything cleaned up. I don’t think I moved until the next morning when we got up and started packing. We had planned to leave Saturday morning because that is when the river gets crowded. Of course, I don’t know if we would have seen many more people than we did on Friday.

A Bad Day Fishing Is Still Better Than a Day At Work

-By Rich Miller

After nearly a week of sitting on the beach and playing in the sand, by the time Mark arrived Friday I was ready to get on the water. He did not get there until later in the afternoon and we were not sure where the tide would be by the time we got on the water. The plan was for us to go after redfish and flounder. The tide was going to be high and up in the grass, so the fish should have been in there feeding in the shallow water on fiddler crabs and bait fish. We were hoping to see the fish’s tails out of the water while they were feeding so we could cast our baits past them thinking that they would take our baits as we reeled them into the fish while they were in the middle of their feeding frenzy.

Once we got the boat in the water we realized that it was a huge tide. It was the highest the water had been in years. That was not good news for us because the fish would be more spread out and harder for us to locate. We headed into the marsh until it got so shallow the trolling motor hit bottom. We pulled up the motor, got out the push pole and kept going. We had probably been in there about thirty minutes when we spotted a couple of fish tailing. I made a couple of casts but didn’t get them close enough for the fish to see my bait. Then Mark put his on one of the fish’s noses and he was hooked up with a really big fish. He may have had the fish on for two minutes when it just came off for no reason. The fish was too big to keep but it would have been nice to get him to the boat and land him so we could have released him.

South Carolina has a slot limit on red fish and they have to be between 15 to 23 inches before they are legal to keep. After losing that fish it got really slow and we weren’t seeing very much action. We started getting worried that the tide was going out and we didn’t want to get stuck on the mud flat and have to spend the night out there. We took the boat out to the edge of the creek and anchored it there. At that point we bailed out of the boat and started wading where we had spotted the fish earlier. Besides seeing the fish, we were also finding a lot of pieces of fiddler crabs floating by as we were wading in the water. We had only been in the water a few minutes when Mark hooked up another fish. The only problem with this fish, it was actually a two and a half foot shark! He finally got the shark in and I was able to release him. The really bad part was we were wading around in knee deep water with sharks during feeding.

After the shark incident it was pretty slow for the next hour until we saw a fish cruising by that looked like an underwater torpedo by the wake he was leaving. I was able to make a good cast and get my bait in his face and he inhaled it! That is when we encountered another problem; this was a really big redfish for the light tackle that I was using and this fish wasn’t slowing down. He made a long run and all I could do was hold on until he got in some thick reeds and made a turn. I guess the combination of the amount of line I had out and the grass just gave him enough slack to get the hook out of his mouth and he got off too. After Friday afternoon the score was redfish 2, Mark and Rich 0, but we planned on being back on the water first thing Saturday morning.

Back on the water Saturday morning around 6:30, we had an extra rod in the boat. Phil, a friend of Mark, decided to tag along with us. We planned on going to the same spot that Mark and his dad had caught all the fish the week before, so we were all pretty confident while heading across the inlet. When we reached our destination the water was still a little high.

The plan was to catch the fish that were staged on some oyster banks and were feeding on the bait that was coming out of the marsh as the water came out. Then we were going to cast up and down the bank and cover as much water as possible. We were not sight fishing like the day before, though every now and then we would catch a fish breaking the water while chasing bait.

For the first couple of hours it was really slow until Phil caught a keeper trout. Then Mark caught a couple of redfish. All the while I was getting a few bites, but I couldn’t put anything in the boat. Sometime after lunch Phil hooked up with a big redfish that gave us some much needed excitement. This fish ended up being 27-inches long so we had to release him. Phil didn’t care much because he had so much fun just catching him.

After it was all said and done I think we ended up with three redfish and one trout that were keepers and, no, I never did put a fish in the boat. Even though I was skunked during my two days of fishing, which Mark took every opportunity to remind me, I still enjoyed every bite of the ones those guys caught! I am planning on going down again next month for a couple of days so that hopefully I can redeem myself . . . but if I don’t I am sure Mark will let me know about it.