I drove down to HHI after work last Thursday for a quick weekend of yak fishing. All the weather reports, tides, etc. seemed to be in perfect harmony for a productive fishing trip. On Friday, I launched at Trask Landing on the Colleton River in Bluffton about 2 hours before low tide and paddled towards Sawmill Creek. The wind was a-blowin’ like crazy and I was headed right into it. I estimate that I went about 1 mile in 45 minutes of hard paddling. Paddled up into a creek thinking the reds would be up in the shallows waiting to attack whatever I threw their way. Didn’t get a nibble, bite, or any sign of fish at all. Fished the creek until low tide, then floated back to the mouth of the creek. Fished there a while, then started floating back towards the landing, working the shoreline and the break line from the flats to the channel. Nothing. Chalked it up to too much wind, wrong place-right time, lack of skill, bad breath, etc.
Thinking Friday was just a fluke, I just knew I’d tear it up on Saturday. Since low tide wasn’t until around 3:00pm I grabbed my Hot Spots map and went out early to explore some areas I haven’t been to before. The Hot Spots map isn’t a good road map so I used the Google Maps on my Blackberry to find a couple of small boat ramps on creeks that are tributaries of the Broad River. I launched from Bolan Hall Landing about 12:30pm and decided to paddle upstream against the tide. Wow, the tide was ripping out of there and I again found myself paddling really hard to gain just a little bit of distance. I anchored in a few different spots around a small island and threw every lure in the bag. Still didn’t get a nibble all day. But I did get to witness one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. I almost always see dolphins when I’m fishing around HHI, and I always enjoy it even if it does mess up the fishing. This time they were doing something called “strand feeding”. I had read about this in a novel by a Lowcountry author a few years back (Pat Conroy, Anne Rivers Siddons, not sure…I read a lo