Thought it might be time for a refresher in the historical aspects of SC Shrimp Baiting…and Yemasee’s Shrimp Festival
Shrimp Baiting to Shrimp Festival
How a Little Idea Went a Long Way
In the mid 1980's, a group of shrimpers from Florida came to Yemassee. These men were using bait to catch shrimp, and they kept their main ingredient a secret from the people of Yemassee. Now, baiting shrimp was not an unheard practice in Yemassee at that time. It was about twenty years earlier that two gentlemen, Hud Moats and Buddy Sloman, were baiting shrimp at Riverbend. No one knew what they used either, however, some days they would catch shrimp and on others they would pull up an empty net. The bait the Florida shrimpers would use caught a good many shrimp. A Yemassee man, James Polk, had a connection with the Florida shrimpers, and he found out their secret ingredient. It was dog food. A few of the Yemassee men took the dog food idea and with the help of a stocking were armed to catch shrimp. When the men of Yemassee figured out that it was the protein in the dog food that caught the shrimp, the face of recreational shrimping changed forever. If dog food caught quite a few shrimp, then how much could something higher in protein catch? They found fishmeal. Menhaden Fishmeal has sixty percent protein to the thirty percent protein found in dog food. The fishmeal is then mixed with clay or mud, to anchor it, and formed into a patty to keep from rolling. These shrimpers were now catching thousands of pounds of shrimp a week. They were beginning to rival the amounts being caught by the Commercial Trawlers. Imagine being able to catch that much shrimp without any laws that limited what you could catch. Cane poles were used to mark that place where the bait had been thrown out. At one time, Harold Harmon had three hundred poles lined down Wimbee Creek. These early baiters would carry shotguns in their boats to protect the part of the river they had baited. The coastal rivers of the Lowcountry in the