Just Angling for December 30, 1999

by Donald Millus

We had three enjoyable fishing trips to wind up 1999, but only one produced good fishing. My old friend, Marvin, at Low Country Gun & Tackle on 544 near the Socastee Bridge, told me that all his suppliers were talking about what a poor fishing year it had been. If fishing is slow, of course, their sales are down.

I agreed, just judging by my experience. I had good crappie fishing early in the year as the Waccamaw flooded some of my favorite ponds, but spring flounder and trout fishing in Murrells Inlet was not as good as in 1998. Neither was the spring inshore run of king mackerel. Tuna runs were excellent off our whole coast, but I never got to go. Summer brought a few weeks of excellent king mackerel fishing on Three-Mile Reef, even as temperatures soared close to the century mark. There was also some very good flounder fishing.

Fall trout at Pawleys Island was rumored to be good, but, aside from a fishless trip to North Inlet via Debordieu--say "Debby Do"—I never got south of Murrells Inlet. Our rainy Hurricane Floyd put two months worth of muddy water on us and I never brought home more than three winter trout until just before Christmas. Fortunately, we had great fishing in early November forty miles offshore during our annual Coastal Carolina Invitational college fishing tournament and seminar. Nineteen kings, dolphin, grouper and some big black seabass made it a great day. And the spot run was excellent for two months.

My last trip of the year, the morning of Christmas Eve, was fishless but enjoyable. My oldest son, Chris, had flown in for the holidays and wanted to go fishing despite the cold. I had caught trout, flounder, and red drum the previous week while fishing with his cousin, so we had some hope, despite the fact that we would be fishing two days after the full moon and in the middle of a cold snap.

I knocked on his door just before 6 a.m. and was greeted by a trumpet blast to celebrate the holiday. We had hot kielbasa sandwiches for breakfast and fresh coffee for the ride to the inlet. He was wearing my Maine "Warden’s" jacket and I had donned a twenty-year old skimobile suit for the thirtyish temperatures. We were snug and warm and the sun was shining brightly as we started trolling just before high tide, the same tide that has produced fish the previous week for my nephew, Christopher, and me. I was hopeful.

Two boats were already trolling my spot of first choice and one of them promptly boated a small trout. We didn’t have a hit, although we had to get the lines in quickly to avoid drifting into a 32-foot sportfishing boat whose captain was just a few hundred yards out of the marked channel. I thought he might be planning to anchor and fish with live shrimp, but he was just a bit disoriented or taking a strange shortcut. No fish hit after the big boat came through.

As the tide turned, we decided to quit early. We breakfasted again at Hardee’s which has an excellent "Frisco Breakfast Sandwich." There were no fish to clean, not unusual for 1999. 2000 will bring us better fishing, I hope. I also hope that it is a good year for all my faithful readers and for our troubled world as well. I suspect that the disciples of Jesus were chosen from the ranks of fishermen because fishermen have to be hopeful.

Return to Just Angling