Morning surface water temperatures have dropped to about 70 degrees inshore in Little River and the ocean water is dirty.
Even if the species are a bit re-arranged this week it’s still wide open fishing at the top of South Carolina coast, and Captain Buddy Love of Captain Smiley Fishing Charters (843-361-7445) reports that it’s hard to find a tide right now when the redfish are not chomping. He’s catching them on the high fall, the low fall, and throughout the rising tide. They are even catching them on dead low sight-fishing in a foot of water or less when they see fish pushing water. Overall, live finger mullet, cut mullet, Vudu Shrimp and more are all working.
Most of the fish they have been catching are in the slot or over, but there are also still tons of smaller redfish around. If you fish shrimp or smaller pieces of bait you will catch them.
While not the numbers they will be soon, there are also a few nice trout around. They are catching them in moving water, generally with live mullet on flounder rigs since they aren’t targeting trout as much yet.
Speaking of flounder, they are catching less fish right now and the bite is bit tricky. Perhaps some of the finicky bite is because they are having to use big finger mullet that are harder for the fish to swallow. Support for that is that, while they are catching less fish, what they are catching has been bigger. The best place to look for flounder has still been creek mouths on falling tides.
They are also catching black drum on fresh cut shrimp around rock piles, oyster beds, and creek mouths. Again, the falling tide is better.
In the Little River inlet the bull red drum fishing is still hit-or-miss, and it seems like you either strike out or catch 6-10 good fish. It’s unclear why.
Finally, before yesterday’s rain there were still some Spanish mackerel off the beaches that could be caught trolling in 15-30 feet of water. They were also catching some casting at schooling fish. However, this bite can’t last much longer.
