Morning surface water temperatures are around 81 degrees inshore in Little River and the water is dirty.
There are plenty of flounder to be caught in South Carolina, but with the North Carolina season only open a bit longer Captain Buddy Love of Captain Smiley Fishing Charters (843-361-7445) reports that it’s hard to stay out of that state if you want to catch keepers. They are catching them on both mullet and Gulp! baits, and the best tide has been the rising tide in skinny water.
They are also picking up a lot of black drum, particularly around holes and in creek mouths. The best time to fish for them is around low tide on the last of the fall and the first of the rise, and with shrimp so abundant they only seem to want live shrimp or very fresh dead ones.
While there are a few trout around they just aren’t prolific yet, but right now even the trout holes (and everywhere else) is filled with small redfish. Some of them are 15 inches or just over, and then another fourth or fifth of the reds they are catching are 23-30 inches. It does appear that fishing pressure is making a difference with so few fish in the slot except for young-of-the-year fish that have just gotten there. Finger mullet, shrimp, cut mullet, mud minnows and more will all work.
The mullet schools are running the beaches right now, and Spanish mackerel are right there eating them. Instead of the smaller Spanish that were so common earlier they are now catching big 4-pounders free-lining mullet around the schools. You can also catch them throwing spoons or topwater lures when they are thick and fired up, and bluefish are in with them. There are also a few bull drum in the surf and at the jetties but they haven’t quite arrived in numbers yet.
