Inshore:
It’s that time of year again where you do not want to be caught sleeping in on your day off! The early morning hours have been producing an awesome topwater bite for trout and reds throwing Super Spook jr’s and Rebel Pop-R’s. I recently fished with Michael Johnson from the store here and we experienced what many customers have been relaying to us, and that is the shallow water bite has been awesome for the first few hours of daylight and after that I would recommend fishing structure type areas in a little bit deeper water where the fish can find cooler water temps. Aside from topwater, Cajun Thunder floats with a live minnow, finger mullet, or shrimp about 3.5ft under the float have been absolutely deadly for us on the trout. Target your early morning trout around shell rakes and creek mouths in 3-4ft of water, and once the sun gets up in the sky a good bit, shift over to rock piles and edges in depths around 5-8ft of water. Don’t wanna mess with livebaits? Look no further than a Trout Trick soft plastic! These baits rigged on a 1/8oz “gumball” style jighead have been as consistent of an artificial as we carry right. I also love a Mirro-Lure 17mr. Sheepshead have still been showing consistent numbers using fiddler crabs around dock and bridge pilings, and the large Bull Redfish have absolutely been on fire around areas of the Jetties, Grillage, and our inlets using large menhaden and cut mullet. Tarpon have begun to show themselves in solid numbers up and down our coast in the past couple weeks, with us hearing numerous catch reports around the Jetties, North Edisto inlet, and Bulls Bay. The bigger the mullet, the better for a silver king! Need some “run and gun” style action? The tideline outside the jetties on a falling tide has been producing great numbers of spanish mackerel using #00 clarkspoons and casting jigs. Find the birds working an area and you have found the spanish!
Offshore:
While July typically means that our billfishing is turning wide and that our meatfishing has slowed some, I just spoke with Joseph off the Game Day and he reported back that he caught a mess of nice dolphin yesterday as well as a blue marlin and a sailfish. Better dolphin numbers still seem to be in shallow, in that 120-130 ft range. As you can guess the sailfish bite has turned on in force, with best reports coming back in from 250-500ft of water. Bottom fishing continues to produce quality black sea bass in 50-100ft of water using jigs and cut baits, and we still are hearing some great grouper reports from 75-125ft of water using butterfly jigs and live pinfish over good live bottom areas. Best of luck to all of our customers fishing in the MegaDock billfish tournament that is in full swing right now!
Scott Hammond
Manager – Haddrell’s Point
843-573-3474