I have been taking my son fishing from the time he was old enough to walk. I’ve never had to ask more than once if he wanted to get up early and go fishing. Now that he is old enough to drive, he’s found a couple of friends and he is spending some time exploring and fishing without me. I’ve always heard people talk about Jason’s Lake, on the Botany Bay Plantation at Edisto, but I have never been there to fish.
Last weekend my son shared some of his fishing knowledge with me to and took me out to Jason’s Lake for the day. We arrived about mid-morning and I was not sure what to expect. I looked at the lake and saw the large pipes that feed the lake with tidal flow and thought, this is where we need to be fishing. We did fish there for a short amount of time and had a few bites, but no real success.
My son said, “come on and I will show you where we can find some fish”, so we grabbed our rubber boots and set off through ankle deep water across a large flat area. About half way across we saw redfish in an area that was just deep enough to cover their backs. A couple of cast out in front of their wakes and we were hooked up with small, but feisty fish. We continued to make our way around the perimeter of the lake to another area. Again standing in angle deep water, he explained that there was a trough right out in front of us and it would be holding fish. A moment later I witnessed something I will remember forever. Keep in mind this is all in the setting of a lake. I saw a shrimp skip on the top of the water followed by several attempts by a hungry trout to eat this shrimp. After the third miss, the trout came entirely out of the water and crashed down on his prey. This scenario played itself out over and over again. Each time the action started we would cast out into the fray and catch a trout or redfish. We ended the day with several nice redfish, trout and flounder and smiles on our faces.
Jason’s Lake is strictly a catch and release lake and is for kids to have an opportunity to fish.