I am not sure exactly how much rain I got at my house but it was certainly no less than anyone on the island. The past few days the creek in back of my house seemed almost empty, even the gar were gone. Yesterday and today, I noticed a few menhaden and mullet moving around and thought I might have even seen a shrimp. The water is still pretty stained, of course.
So, I decided to head out and do some scouting/fishing in the South Edisto area. My plan was to avoid the big water (which I reasoned might be very muddy) and see what was happening. My expectations were low and I hoped I could find bait – brought some frozen shrimp just in case.
I was surprised and shocked when on my first cast, I caught both shrimp and mullet. All I could think about was all that fresh water in the creeks and rivers. I guess a “thousand year rain” is not such a big deal to species that have been around for a million or so years.
I easily found enough bait and fished some of the areas I can usually find fish. Store Creek was really muddy but I managed a keeper trout and missed a few more, moved to some of the smaller creeks and ended up with about ten trout and a couple of reds. The redfish were slot fish and about half the trout were keepers. Everything was released - think it is okay to eat them with all that bad stuff in the water?
I wasn’t sure where everything had gone, but I was pretty sure I would not see things rebound so quickly. Nature is resilient!
WIll try again tomorrow.