Just Angling for July 1, 1999
By Donald Millus
Growing Shrimp Insist on Exercise
The day was devoted to flounder fishing. I had stopped at Mr. Perry's bait shop to see if he had any mud minnows more than three inches long, baits that I could gently impale on a 1/0 Mustad flounder hook and not watch the bait struggle, like Atlas lifting the world, with its burden. The penalty for not getting up early enough to trap my own bait is to take what the market offers, three dollars a dozen for mud minnows the size of my pinkie.
Needless to say, I did not leave a tip, but I did say "thank you" as did the baitman.
My old Johnson 25, now eleven years old, roared to life on the second bully pull at the starter rope. I eased away from the floating dock, having first charitably admonished a ski boater to be careful. (As most of you know, a wife fell off her husband's skiboat recently and was promptly run over, fatally, by his brother.)
Past the seawall at Belin Methodist Church I dropped my anchor. Why? I wanted to see of there were any good-sized finger mullet in the area. Now throwing your good cast net in these creeks is dangerous: nothing tears up a brand-new Betts cast net worse than oyster clusters. But life is full of risks and I threw in the already hot sun.
There was a tell-tale swirl near where my net entered the water. I wasn't surprised to see a one-pound mullet flashing silver in the net. Nor was I surprised to see some finger mullet of barely four inches also in the net. But I was pleasantly surprised to see a few fat shrimp trapped in my net.
Just before the full-moons of June and July is my favorite time to shrimp in the creeks. Some of you may know that South Carolina's shrimp are so valued by its sportsmen that the legislature has put a $500 fee on a license for Georgians to cast for shrimp over bait. (This has nothing to do with the "Bubba" ads of the so-called video poker industry in the last gubernatorial election. You remember the gentleman with a Georgia Bulldog cap and an accent thick as leftover pinto beans urging South Carolinians not to get their own lottery.) Let me add quickly that we are not prejudiced against the peanut state: the heavy cost of a shrimpbaiting license applies to all foreigners, even Tarheels.
Throwing a cast net involves shaking it out, winding the line carefully in loops in one hand, grasping the net in one's teeth, reaching around to grasp the edge, and flinging the lead-weighted net with a circular motion and good shoulder turn. It is not easy work, no matter how rewarding. I netted some four-dozen shrimp in about fifteen minutes, just enough to stuff the flounder I planned to catch later after using some of the shrimp as live bait. More on my flounder trip next week. after we celebrate our Declaration of Independence, I trust safely.