We went fishing as planned yesterday but I was skeptical that we would not catch anything. I typically have a hard time finding fish especially on an incoming tide.
Anyway on Thursday night my son visiting from Boston made the final decision - “let’s go tomorrow!” I had already told him that we’d need an early start if we wanted to fish any of the dropping tide. He was all for that but I was thinking to myself “let’s see what your enthusiasm is like in the morning.” He was excited as he helped me prep for the trip and then he and his wife drove back to her parents’ house for bed. We agreed that he’d come back by 6:00 and we’d get on the road as quickly as we could. I was secretly thinking “ya right, I’ll really see you at 6.”
My alarm went off at 5:45 and I hit the snooze dreading getting up and thinking he’d be late. 5 minutes later he’s standing by the end of my bed saying “dad, get up! we going?” I guess some things haven’t changed since he was 5 years old.
That sparked me and I jumped up and we left the driveway by 6:30. We put in at the Broad River ramp along hwy 170 just before 9:00 and headed toward the ocean to fish the last bit of dropping tide at the creek mouths on the eastern side of the river.
We had frozen finger mullet on Carolina rigs and several artificials. It was real slow and we didn’t get any bites so when the tide hit low we decided to move and look for fish coming back to the grass when the water came back up. I moved down about a mile or so and we saw a fishy looking flat against the grass. I poled the boat a good ways to get close enough to check it out. We spooked a small school of redfish that we didn’t see until we casted to them. I was encouraged that we found fish. For the next hour or so I poled along the grass line and we settled on another flat that looked like it had potential. As I poled around the area we saw a small school of reds but when we casted to them we spooked them. There were a lot more than we saw and the water blew up with sizable fish a
Excellent 
Glad you found some with your son. It takes some practice. Great picture too.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
Glad you found fish and got a bite…that experience will count loads toward the next outing!
A little advice for this time of year with the reds schooled up and the water clear. You may already know all this, but I offer it as info only.
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Stealth (you’ve already seen how easy it is to spook 'em)
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Try and determine what direction the school is moving once located
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Use a “stealth” rig (see 5 & 6 below) to cast out in front of the fish…and wait for them to get to your bait.
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Avoid gold spoons, swim baits and especially cork rigs and other big baits that are splashy and noisy when fishing spooky schools.
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Instead use a stealthy “flutter” (weighted) hook of 1/16 or 1/8 oz with a bait keeper built on it to hold a Gulp!, Z-Man or other jerk bait or shrimp (I prefer Gulp! due to the smell)
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Thread the Gulp! 4" jerk bait or a 3" Gulp! shrimp onto the bait keeper and bring the hook thru the bait and out the other side leaving the hook barb exposed, but along side the bait so it remains weedless, but penetrates when a fish strikes.
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If the school partially moves over your bait and no bite, just use a little wrist action to twitch the bait…
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Hang On! 
Good Luck!
wildlifesc,
thanks for the tips.
i certainly learned the value of stealth. although i thought we were pretty stealthy, we still spooked them. the one thing we didn’t do was go with small baits. our lead heads were 1/4 oz. and we also had carolina rigs w/ 1 oz. egg sinkers.
appreciate the help that you and cracker larry have given me.
thought about going tomorrow (1/1) but i don’t think that will happen now.
maybe saturday b/c the weather looks pretty rough thursday & friday.
Flicker, Check out our report under “Striper/Fogman” from this past Saturday. I’d highly reccommend Murray if you get the chance to fish in the next 3 or 4 weeks. Just stay out of the muddy water.
Will do Spooonman.
I’ve been wanting to learn striper fishing.
Thanks for the tip.
Great report. Nice photo:smiley:
Miss Libby 2
26’ World Cat