It’s been a while since I have posted a report or fished for that matter. Those that I know me personally from this site know there have been lots of life events in the last two years. I have not even wet a line in more than a year. FINALLY a Saturday with good weather, and a green light from the Admiral. My longtime college buddy Sometrout1980 and I set a plan for a turn and burn from Charlotte to Charleston and back in 26hrs. Looked for crew all week to fill out the roster, picked up another college friend and set the plan. Dreamed all week about the epic day we would have both trolling and bottom fishing. I was excited I would have some fish in the freezer again maybe even some to share with friends and family. Left Shem creek around 5am with 500 other boats. Ran south to Edisto Banks. Stopped in 155 ft to start our day.
While deploying the first ballyhoo in the spread it gets nailed when I get to the end of the rigger. Fish on…no no short strike dropped into free spool to entice another strike. Nada nothing. This is promising I thought to myself. We ran 7 or 8 lines all morning with no more action. Picked up and ran to 226 hole and got the spread out again no action again until we had a little surprise right around noon when a billfish swam just below the surface right underneath the boat. We had some hope we might get some action. We dragged the spread right by him and he was not interested. We even saw some mahi swim by the boat and they just did not care about eating anything we had. We decided to head north towards some bottom. We got enticed again when we found a good rip with big weed patches and a solid temp break on either side. We trolled there for an hour and nothing again.
We stopped at Comanche on the way back in to salvage some quick groceries apparently everyone else had same idea. Managed a scamp for the ride home and nothing else worth keeping.
It was a tough humbling experience for me yesterday. It’s calling fishing not catching for a reason. It was still great to be on t
Nice report, Cliff. Glad you finally got back out there, as I know how busy you’ve been. And like you said, a “bad” day of fishing is still time well spent; the fish are just a bonus. Besides, we both know the reel* reason behind your slow day…
“I’m not a hundred percent in love with your tone right now…”
It would have been fun to have you along Scott. I need to get the pioneer out for a bottom trip. Any idea why my picture is side ways on the computer but on my phone or tablet its right side up?
I remember back in the day when the bite was solid through June and didn’t start to taper down like this until mid-way July… And, you could still catch dolphin in July if you put some time in… These past few years have been poor.
This is a Reel* report. Thanks for sharing and nice to hear you got salty once again. On Friday, we found Big weed lines and rips. We cruised them searching for pitching baits since we were on our way to bottom fish. Only thing we saw on them was a remora. They were thick and strong lines. I don’t know if it was the type of weeds they were being the straw type weeds and not the coral looking stuff. All day it sounded on the radio that things were slow. A 10’ shark dropping off 2 big Cobia and a school of 3 chickens and a big bull that came up to us in 160’ while bottom fishing saved our day as all we managed was a small bag of bottom groceries.
