By Rich Miller
This summer is going by faster than I can keep up with it! I never thought summer was going to get here, but when she showed up she came in like a fire-breathing dragon. Every day it seems to be getting hotter as the summer goes along.
For the last couple of months, all my family and I have been doing is getting ready to go on vacation. Back in the winter, we rented a house in Edisto Island for the week of the Fourth of July to vacation all week. My wife had plans to lay on the beach all week but all my little boy and I could do was think about fishing most of the week. My sister, brother-in-law and nephew were going with us, as well, so my wife would have some one to lay on the beach with while the boys were on the water.
The first day we were there, we had a great morning but the tide was coming out of the grass early so we were on the water at daylight. Needless to say, the boys stayed in bed so it was just my brother-in-law Steven and me. There wasn’t much wind, which was a good thing, and the tide was just leaving the grass when we pulled up to the first spot we wanted to fish.
It was a little slow at first, but as the wind started to pick up the fish started biting. Steven caught the first fish and, luckily, it was a keeper. The fish was 18½ inches long so we put it in the live well and kept fishing. We kept getting a lot of hits but we couldn’t get the fish on. Another hour went by before Steven tied into another fish, but we could tell immediately that he wasn’t a keeper – he was way too big. After chasing him around a few minutes we got him in the boat and then released him. That fish was a good one but he was 30 inches long. Redfish have to be between 15 and 23 inches to be able to keep them.
After that, it got slower until I caught a couple of trout; but neither one of them were big enough to keep. A couple of days later we went back out ad the boys decided they were going to get up and go with us. The problem on this day was the wind and it was blowing really hard. It was all the trolling motor would do to keep us off the bank. Steven caught the first fish again and a little later my nephew Porter tied into a fish all by himself. He must have thrown the bait in the fish’s mouth because as soon as the bait hit the water, it got eaten. It was a keeper fish, too, and I think Porter enjoyed it; but the best part was he caught a fish and I didn’t. We fished a little longer, but the wind was bad and we couldn’t find a place to get out of it. So we ended up on the beach with the girls that day.
Those were a couple of the good fishing days we had, and we got shut out by the wind a couple more times. Another good part was a buddy of mine, Rich, was coming down later in the week with his big boat and we were going offshore if the weather was permitting. That will be the story for next time, though.
