Just Angling for July29, ‘04

By Donald Millus

Not “Too Late, Too Late” For Flounder

“Eight keeper flounder” was the report from my neighbors, Lloyd and Joyce Burroughs, early last week. But it was so late in a hot summer. Why? The answer came to me that evening as I was walking my fishing companion, Alice. Setting over Lakewood Avenue was an orange sliver of a new moon. Fish feed well on this phase of the moon.

The next morning one of my alert American Lit students, Herbert Alford brought me a reliable intelligence report: some of his friends had limited out on flounder near the Murrells Inlet jetties. I was up at four Friday morning, enjoying a bowl of Cheerios with one of the succulent peaches of the class of ’04 before heading to the Inlet. Regrettably, all Alice got was a short walk and a pair of gourmet dog biscuits, for it was too hot for a little black dog in an open boat in mid-summer.

Three-dozen fat live mullet and a score of live shrimp were quickly in the live bait well thanks to my mended cast net. (I had torn it on an oyster bed.) With the sun low in the east, I fished the mouth of the Inlet, skipped the south side of the south jetty, and fished both sides of “the weir,” the low rocks jutting out from Garden City Point. Nary a bite there, nor in Charley Cut back to Weston Flats. Perhaps I was late for the flounder run, “Too late, Too late” as Queen Elizabeth said to her courtiers who didn’t get their cloaks down over a puddle that lay in Her Majesty’s path in the film Shakespeare in Love.

Having packed a double lunch, water, and a big bottle of still pretty fizzy Coke, I was loath to quit. Maybe I had not fished in the right area? Back at Garden City Point a young man was catching flounder near the red nun buoy. He invited me to anchor, honored by the presence of a writer desperate for fish for dinner. They were there and when I ran out of live bait, the flounder enthusiastically hit 4-inch green-with-sparkles “Gotcha Trout Killer” tails fished on Mann’s red led head jigs.

On my way home, I dropped off three fat flounder for Jim and Jewel Godfrey. He volunteered to throw the net and raise and lower the anchor for our Saturday trip. We kept 17 flounder to over 16 inches, again on mullet, shrimp, and “Gotcha” tails.

We were each outfished, however, by young Ross Causey, fishing with family members in an adjacent boat.

One of the problems of fishing that area is the wakes thrown up by boats slowing to half-speed as they pass the anchored boats. The really big boats slow to idle speed as do many sportfishermen and even a dive boat running by wide open throws up little wake.

(One expensive yacht keeping to the left side of the channel complained about our choice of fishing spots when we tried to warn its captain that he was heading for a sandbar. To his grouchy response, Godfrey suggested he “go back up North where the water is deeper.” Fortunately, he did not run aground. I would hate to help pull a million-dollar boat off a sandbar with my 14-footer with my 15-horse motor! The late great Captain Hoss Johnson would tell the skipper of a grounded boat that if it was still there on his way back in he would even get in the water to get him off a bar, but first he had to take his passengers fishing.)

I dropped Godfrey off with his share of the catch and was rewarded with a gracious plenty of okra, tomatoes, and green peppers from his garden. I had hoped he would also offer to fillet my fish, too, so I could sip a cold one while watching the Yankees and Red Sox, but raising and lowering our anchor a dozen times after throwing a net for live bait had worn him out. Needless to say, I also slept well that night.