Had been out of town for the past month, and the last 5 or 6 times my wife and I fished in October we had crushed them. Feeling confident we had it dialed in, went out at 11 AM, fished some usual spots in the Stono, Folly and Kiawah. Caught 4 10-13” trout during the last couple hours of the incoming and first few hours of the outgoing. Spots that always produce weren’t yielding any hits much less fish.
Started getting bummed out thinking all the progress over the past 6 months wouldn’t translate to the winter and I’d struggle for the next few months just like last year.
On the way home hit up a spot in the Stono we’d tried first this morning. After a couple of casts and no action i said let’s call it a day. Wife said she wanted a few more casts. I put my rod up and cracked a beer. On her next cast she caught a 15” red. I pulled the rod back out and caught one on my next cast. For the next 45 minutes we caught a fish almost every cast. I’ve never had anything like this. We probably caught 30 reds and 5 trout in a 10 ft x 5 ft area. Numerous double ups, combined probably had a streak of 15 casts and 15 hookups.
I’d say ~20 of the reds were 15-16.5 inches, 8 or so were in the 17-18” range, and we caught a 23” and a 26”.
Biggest trout was 18” and a couple others were 14-15”.
A couple caught on a pogy (including the one that made us stay), and the rest were caught on live shrimp. Went through 4 dozen of them and only stopped fishing because we ran out of bait and were getting cold. Who knows how many more we’d have caught if we kept at it.
Thank God wife wanted a few more casts, otherwise today would have been a failure and I’d have questioned / changed our tactics going forward. Still need to figure out how to catch them in the winter at higher tide and incoming tide, but at least we know what to do on the lower part of the outgoing.
Can’t wait to get back out.