Itinerary
A day built entirely around fishing
Read the tide first, buy bait second, pick your water third. In that order, every time.
There are four fisheries within a few minutes of each other here and they do not all fish well at the same time, which is the whole reason to plan. A South Carolina saltwater licence is required from shore or boat, and current size and creel limits live with SCDNR rather than on this page, because a number printed here would eventually go stale and cost somebody a citation.
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Before dawn
Buy bait, and ask a question
Live shrimp and mud minnows cover almost every inshore situation here. Buy them the morning you fish, and ask the counter what came in over the last two days. That is better intelligence than any forecast.
Bait and tackle -
First light
The creek on moving water
Find where a small feeder creek drains onto an oyster bar and fish the last two hours of the fall. Everything hiding up in the grass gets flushed past you. Live shrimp under a popping cork covers most of it.
How to fish the creek -
Slack water
Stop fishing, eat something
Slack tide is when you have breakfast, not when you fish. This is not a defeat.
Breakfast and brunch -
Incoming tide
The surf
Walk the beach at low water first and find the trough behind the first bar. Come back and fish it as the water pushes in. Whiting, pompano and drum work that channel close in.
How to fish the surf -
If you want the bar
A charter out of the inlet
Nearshore and offshore is charter water for most visitors. Spanish and king mackerel, bottom fishing over the ledges, and a genuine long shot at tarpon in high summer.
Offshore charters -
Evening
Cook it, or let someone else
If you kept legal fish, a rental kitchen and a hot pan is the best meal of the week. If you did not, nobody at the seafood counter needs to know.
Seafood