2/3 Charleston report

Had to work today, so I made sure to go in early enough to make it out of the office with time to fish the afternoon low. After last weekend, I was looking forward to the low tide being in the afternoon - hoping that the sun would warm the mud flats up a little and get the fish a bit more active. Much to the contrary, it was cold, windy, and overcast. Nevertheless, I had the boat ready and my mind had been made up about mid-week that I was going to go fishing today. So I came home around noon, changed into some long johns, hooked the trailer up to the car and hit the road. Got onto the flat about 1:30 just in time to see some dolphins heading out before it got too skinny. We quickly noticed that one dolphin had a large white thing in its mouth. Upon closer inspection we realized that it was the white belly of a redfish that was nearly 30 inches long ! The dolphins left us alone for a little bit while they shared their feast and waited for the water to come back in. It was a negative tide today, so it was just us and the redfish for a solid 2 hrs.

We found the school, which was still just as spooky as last weekend. On the first pass, I was able to hook into a fish on a spinning rod from the platform while poling the boat. It turned out to be about 27" or so and 8-9 lbs.

My friend on the bow had multiple casts with the fly rod into the group of fish, but no takes. They were stirred up pretty good between the dolphins, the boat, and the fact that we had just caught one out of the bunch. We worked a few other groups of fish before returning to the main school which had at least around 100-150 fish in it. On this pass, my other friend I was with hooked a nice fish, again on spinning rod. Turned out to be a nice 30" red that weighed 11 lbs.

Eventually the water came back in and so did the dolphins. We watched as they cruised in and began working the area again. One of them caught a whiff of the redfish scent and made a bee-line through 2 feet of water to where a bunch of fish was holding by an oyster bar. He came in at full speed, made one swirl, and then headed back out to deeper water again at full speed - with another redfish in its mouth. Quite an awesome sight to see.