This year, the winner of the Daniel Island Kids Fishing Tournament was Johnathan Cheek. As the tournament champion, Johnathan won a fishing trip with me.
I met Johnathan and his Dad (John) at the boat landing. As we idled away from the ramp, Johnathan asked if we would catch a Redfish. He explained that he had never caught a big Redfish before. With that, our plan for the day was set.
The tide was falling when we arrived at our first fishing spot, a shallow but submerged oyster bar. I showed Johnathan how to hook a live shrimp on a lead head jig and where I thought the Redfish would be holding. He cast to the exact spot and hooked up immediately. It was a good Redfish (over the 23 inch slot limit) but not the big one we were looking for. So we left in quest of bigger fish. For the next hour or so, we looked at big Reds in a really shallow creek. However, we could not get them to eat. Unfortunately, we could not leave the creek until the tide began to come back in. This took about 30 minutes or so (at least there were Redfish in the creek).
Upon our exit from the shallow creek, we hit a shallow flat with a slight channel that runs adjacent to it. Thankfully, there was a school on 30-inch class Redfish hanging around in the channel. Johnathan quickly caught and released several big Redfish. It was a great way to wrap up our day.