I woke up Saturday morning after a Friday full of torrential downpours to find temps in the mid 70’s and a starry sky with a few scattered clouds at 6:00. The heavy rains helped with my decision of where to fish, so I set out for Copahee Sound - aka redfishville. The only problem would be that I’m fishing the last 1/3 of the out going tide, less than idea conditions at the 'ville.
I hit the landing about 6:45, so I was driving when the earthquake hit Summerville. The roads are bad enough in Dorchester and Charleston counties that it takes WAY MORE than a 3.2 to get your attention when you’re driving. The water was lower than I expected, but not nearly as muddy as I thought it would be. I tossed the cast net and came up with a dozen shrimp and a blue crab…mmmmm red and bonnethead bait. I ripped his claws off, crushed them and put them in the minnow trap while I threw the net a few more times. In 15 minutes I have 2-3 dozen good shrimp, 1 blue crab , but a GAZILLION mud minnows. I’ve never seen so many mudders in such a short time.
7:00 launch
Paddle out of the creek to the main creek heading for the ICW and set up on a point. Toss out a shrimp under a cork (yeah I know, but it works ) and BAM
itty bitty blacktip shark, again , shark, again, bluefish, again, shark… time to move.
I head into the sound and by now the oyster mounds are totally out of the water with mud banks exposed everywhere. Lots of bait and more stingrays than you can imagine. The water is boiling all over the place as fish smash bait, but when I look all I see are stingrays.
Set up on a grass edge with a drop off hoping to find a trout or flounder, so I toss out a mud minnow on a carolina rig. Bam, shark, again shark, again stingray, again stingray… this isn’t working; time to find some deeper water.
Meanwhile Flipper shows up and starts herding fish up onto a mud bar. There are 3 or 4 dolphins flopping around in about 6 inches of water just crushing a school of fish.
So I paddled out toward Dewees Islan
