New to Charleston and want to take the family shrimping. When’s the best time year or water temps. It sounds like multiple seasons/runs anything around July-Aug? Familiar with north bulls down to the harbor.
Welcome to the site Charleston1!!
Outside of sight casting on Shrimp, for bait, I never caught the Shrimping Bug.
The search function here can be a huge asset to you. Topics cover everything from water depths, bait balls, deep holing, to identifying Shrimp on your sonar, appearing as candles.
Don’t forget to get your Shrimp Tags, if you plan on baiting for them.
SCDNR usually opens the Shrimp baiting season near the end of September.
Good luck, and keep us posted on your adventures!!
Thanks, Mixed_Nutz,
There’s a ton of great information on the site about baiting techniques and sonar for deep water. However, I still can’t seem to find any details on the timing—is it effective year-round or based on migration patterns? Would anyone on the platform be willing to give me a crash course?
You can catch them along the grass edges any time now, generally they are smaller and good for bait. Often times you can throw randomly in the creek center and luck into larger shrimp.
When the tide is high they are in the grass and not castnetable. When the tide is low look for them back in the creek in pockets of water.
I personally love the little brown creek shrimp. Sweet sweet.
Mid September thru mid November you can make baitballs out of fishmeal and clay, throw them out in more open water and throw a castney over the balls and catch larger shrimp.
That’s it in a nutshell.
I missed stuff, I know, so ask specific questions and someone will be a long to help.
Deepholeing is altogether another deal. You need a boat with a good sounder (and know how to read it) coupled with a proper net with at least a 30 foot hand line, a strong back, and some luck.
Welcome to the site. Don’t be a stranger
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If you’re wanting to try n get a limit, it gets a little easier in the fall when they bunch up more… otherwise, they’re scattered around from Bushy Park to the Ocean. They never completely leave but they do stay moving. I would guess up the Wando too.
Like the other’s said, creek shrimp are avaliable now when the water is not in the grass. They are almost eating size, great bait size.
As far as sonar goes, its keeps me guessing. Sometimes the graph looks amazing and I come up empty, other times it’ll look barron and come up a netful… who knows… anyway, good luck, and youll never get em from the couch.
No net heavier than an empty net - Me
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Go to edisto and hook up with one of the shrimpers that show u the ropes so you can see exactly how they do it, it’s $500 bucks split between 5-6 of ur friends, but the knowledge is well worth the charge, before you buy a license and troll net for $1200-2000 bucks… also btw welcome to the site
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That’s a good suggestion
Lots of very small shrimp swimming thru the 3/8ths, some decent sized. FM too. Zoom in on what looks like leaves in the bucket.
On their way to being Door Mats… 