Fishing with The Charleston Angler Crew

Paul & Dave from The Charleston Angler

 Wind and rain dominated the fishing scene this week. However, when I did manage to get out, the Trout and Redfish were biting. Earlier in the week, while at The Charleston Angler, my brother Dave, Paul Speranza and I were wondering how the bite was in the upper Wando. None of us had ventured up that way since the snow storm. Rather than continue to wonder, we decided to go find out. On Saturday, we launched into the last of the falling tide. A thick fog made navigating up river an interesting endeavor. Thankfully, my new skiff is equipped with a Garmin 54CV GPS/depth finder. The Garmin allowed us to make the trip in near zero visibility.

Upon arrival up river, we began casting Z-Man TRD Ned Rigs and TubeZ lures around docks and drop offs. The water temperature was 54 degrees (which is close to normal for this time of year) but the fishing was slow. We tried shallow and deep-water locations but we could not locate a large concentration of feeding fish. A few Trout is all we could manage in the first hour or two of fishing. Rather than continue scouting, we decided to head back down river and catch some fish. The fog had lifted by then so the run back down river was a quick one.

We stopped at a submerged oyster bar outside of Horlebeck Creek. On the first cast to the bar, I hooked an over-slot Redfish. Paul and Dave followed suit. At last, we had located a school of hungry fish. After releasing several Reds, we switched our attention to Trout in deeper water. It took a bit of looking, but we found a few schools holding along depth transitions in 10 to 15 feet of water. They were hungry too!

On the ride back to the boat landing, we laughed about wearing T-shirts and flip flops to fish in February. A far cry from fishing in the snow a few weeks ago. Hopefully, the warming trend holds and fishing continues to improve. Especially in the upper Wando.