From May 11, 2000</font id=blue>
It was a hot day in July without a breath of breeze blowing, and the tide was high around mid afternoon. Dad’s friend Larry O’Neal was in town from Columbia and we slipped the boat in the water hoping to put him on a Kingfish before dark. We headed out of the Charleston Harbor in search of some menhaden for bait. After spending almost 2 hours trying to find a good school of menhaden (to no avail!), we decided to run in behind Morris Island and try for some mullet. Despite the strong sun we managed to catch 5 or 6 nice mullet in the cast net. Mullet can be difficult to catch in the bright afternoon sun (they often see the shadow of the oncoming cast net and they scatter). A few were better than no live bait at all so we ran on out to the Charleston Jetties.
By now the tide had turned and we were quickly running out of time to fish in the clean water. We set anchor at the end of the north jetty and balloon fished for about an hour. After not seeing any action we decided to cover more ground by slow trolling the mullet. We found the mud-line from the outgoing tide about mid-way down the jetties and started working it.
I was at the helm when Mr. O’Neal said, “There’s a brown fish in the baits!” I watched the brown shadow for a couple of seconds and then it disappeared. All of a sudden the port rod started screaming! Mr. O’Neal picked up the rod and the battle was on! I dropped the boat back into neutral and helped dad clear the other lines. The fish had hit a 10 to 12-inch mullet on a 20-lb. live bait rod with a Penn 980 reel filled with approximately 320 yards of twenty-pound test. Seeing the gold paint at the bottom of the spool, Mr. O’Neal started getting nervous. I turned the boat and started heading toward the fish. Suddenly, the fish came to a screeching halt, turned, and headed straight for us. Mr. O’Neal reeled frantically, trying to keep the slack out of the line. The fish swam straight to the boat and within 5 minutes he was within gaffing range.