Last week I had been eyeing the tide and the weather for the tailing tide Friday night. The wind was supposed to be 5 knots and the tide was going to be high right at 8:00pm just before dark. Thursday night my whole plan was changed when my wife asked me if I would take her niece, husband and two daughters fishing along with my two kids and her. Being the great guy that I am, I smiled and said absolutely. I knew right off that eight of us in a flats boat was not going to work for fishing the grass it would be dangerous to hand all the kids a rod and let them start casting, so I made a plan to take everyone to Morris Island and fish in the surf. I knew that I would probably be very busy baiting hooks, casting rods, catching bait and keeping everyone fishing so I did not bring a rod for myself.
There is one thing that you are reminded of when you are fishing with kids and that is the pure enjoyment of fishing. As adults, many times when we plan a trip if things do not go according to our plan or we do not catch a particular species we were targeting the trip may not have as much enjoyment for us. We are always caught up in trying to make the trip go according to how we want it to go instead of being flexible and going with how things develop. I really did not have much room to throw the cast net so I waited until we were at the island to try and catch bait. While I found plenty of mullet they were all very small and not at all what I normally like to fish with in the surf. After several casts I decided I needed to get everyone fishing or we would run out of daylight, so we set up each of the kids that wanted to fish with a rod and that left 2 for the adults to hold. We ended the night with a few sharks and a whiting, not exactly what I consider a successful trip. I was feeling kind of bad that we did not get any big redfish or any of the fish I like to target in the surf, but the kids thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Our niece and her family had never been to Morris Island and they thought it