Fishing for Backwoods Bull Reds

I am convinced the hardest to reach places have the biggest fish. In the case of South Carolina Red Drum, that theory holds true.

Growing up I spent a lot of time in class daydreaming about going on trips all over the world to chase trophy fish. I would sit and drown out whatever lecture was going on and carefully plan out the details of each journey and store them away in the back of my mind. I wrote about this list previously, calling it my fishing bucket list. However, there was one entry left off of that list, one that I might have spent more time thinking about than all the other trips combined. Catching big bull redfish in the marsh.

The closest fishery for red drum is four hours south of where I grew up, located in the lower Chesapeake bay, and there are very difficult to reach. Needless to say my little pond rig wouldn’t cut it. With the odds stacked in my favor I pushed the thought from the forefront of my mind. This dream laid dormant for many years until it was reignited when I received a call from a close friend asking me to fly down to South Carolina in a month to fish for big red fish off the beach. I was skeptical. It was a very demanding trip in terms of leave from work, money, and time away from other commitments. Not to mention historically I have had next to no luck when it comes to surf fishing.

The entirety of my surf fishing experience consisted of a few times off the beach in Ocean City, Maryland and once in North Carolina. Both instances resulted in a couple dog fish and a whole lot of sitting in the sand checking empty lines. Not really my preferred style of fishing. I know there are great surf fishing opportunities around the country, I am just no good at it. My pessimism began talking me out of the opportunity. I figured the best possible scenario is that I fly down there, spend three days changing baits and maybe I would get lucky and catch one little redfish. I had little to no faith in this trip. That was until the pictures from my buddies previous year down south started flooding my inbox.

A steady stream of pictures flooded my inbox, each with a bigger redfish than the last many around or above forty inches. Each picture taken with a backdrop of a stretch of beach that appeared as though it had remained untouched for decades. I had no idea that was even possible, my naïve brain could not wrap my head around the possibility of landing that many trophy fish from shore in such a short period of time. Not long after picking my jaw up off the floor, I booked my flight to South Carolina. A few pictures was all it took to bring me from complete disinterest to going all in on the journey.

A few weeks later I was on a flight to South Carolina chasing fall redfish. My buddy picked me and my girlfriend up from the airport, whom I dragged along with me. We swung by the rental house to hook up the boat and we were off the ramp within an hour of our plane touching down.

In high school a lot of my focus on picking fishing and hunting spots revolved around proximity. Basically, I would look for the closest and easiest spots to access. As I have matured, proximity still plays a major role, but now I am looking for the remote and isolated spots that most people can’t or don’t care to get to. I have assumed the mindset that it is in those remote untouched areas that the biggest deer, biggest fish, biggest everything live. Not long after the boat left the trailer to go red fishing I realized this would undoubtedly scratch this new itch for remote terrain. It was a 30 minute jon boat ride, snaking through muddy creeks no deeper than six inches, lined with marsh grass so thick you couldn’t see three rows in and well over head high. We were in the nastiest corn maze anyone could ever think up. It brought on a somewhat eerie and claustrophobic feeling, but at the same time satisfying to know how few people likely had ever made this trip through the thick and nasty. Most people just flat out couldn’t make it in here even if they had the desire, you needed just the right draft depth and to stay on plane the whole way through the grass, or else the transom would dig into the mud on the shallow creek bottom, even where people sat in the boat was important to keep us off bottom. Even then we could only make it to the beach on the high tide, and in order to leave we had to wait for the next rising tide.

What brought all of us down to this remote South Carolina beach in the first place was a family friend of our fathers. He had fished the area extensively over the years, perfecting his craft. Helping him do this was his father, a state wildlife biologist who helped recover the redfish population many years ago. Here he was now reaping the fruits of his labor. The two of them play two very interesting roles in making the impossible possible. The first brings a desolated species back from nearing the point of no return. The second finds the pockets of those fish, perfecting his way of catching them in the hardest to reach places.

Normally, I tend to shy away from trips that involve people finding the fish and doing most of the work for me. I find most of the enjoyment in planning, preparing, taking note of finite details, and learning along the way. However, in this case, it was a welcomed change of pace to watch people who have mastered a style of fishing so foreign to me in action. It started with over a half dozen eight foot surf rods tied with fresh knocker rigs and cut mullet. These were evenly spaced down the beach at twenty yards apart, with each bait casted as far into the surf as possible. Getting these baits out required a technique that involves following the outgoing wave into the water, and putting your entire body into casting the heavy pyramid sinkers towards the horizon, all while making sure not to create a tangled mess with adjacent rigs. The basics of surf fishing, but like I said I was terrible at surf fishing. There was a steep learning curve involved, but I was quickly up to speed with the others who had arrived days before me.

Everyone else had spent the last few days in the same spot landing fish even bigger than the ones in the pictures sent to draw me down here, my hopes began skyrocketing. . After a short debriefing on the trophy fish from yesterday and the day before, I was eager and ready to take off down the beach after the first rod to bend over. Since it was our first day there, everyone was nice enough to offer us the first fish of the morning, and we didn’t have to wait long. Five minutes after the last line was set the rod directly in front of me doubled over and I shot off the dune, pulled the rod out of the holder, and started cranking.

Should I have let my girlfriend whom I drug all the way to South Carolina on a five am flight get the first fish? Yes. Definitely not my most gentlemanly moment. Fortunately she forgave me, and my selfishness was greatly and immediately rewarded. I reeled down into the circle hook, setting it in place, and watched as the tip of the eight foot surf pole reached towards the ocean in response to my successful hook set. The drag began screaming off the 6000 size spinning reel, I was hooked into my first redfish.

What makes this one of the most popular saltwater game fish in the United States was already apparent to me as soon as I leaned into the bending rod. They are readily available to the average angler, they can be caught all the way from the Texas gulf shore and as far North as Southern New Jersey, and they put up an amazing fight. This fish took off on several drag peeling runs, fighting hard all the way to the waters edge. it was amazing how easily they could peel drag off heavy spinning reels. As I finally drug the fish through the white wash the final piece that truly makes these fish special was revealed. These fish are flat out gorgeous. Even a fish in this thirty plus inch size class sported flawless textbook redfish features. The amber back, snow white belly, and the signature black dot on its tail.

I was holding a lifelong dream of mine in my hands, a box on my bucket list had been checked, and from here things only got better. A fury of shouting and chasing bent over rods along the entire spread ensued. Within a few hours of setting up, all eight of us reeled in a handful of big fish apiece. It wasn’t until a slight lull in the action, caused by the slack tide, that I had a second to reflect about how fortunate I was to have such a great opportunity. I found myself scrolling through the pictures of the fish I had just caught, grinning wider with each photo. I knew I would be revisiting these for years to come.

My reflection was interrupted by a bent over rod right in front of my girlfriend. When she pulled the rod out of the holder I was convinced it was another sandbar shark. We had caught a few mixed in that morning, and this was pulling drag just like them. After close to ten minutes fighting the fish we finally saw color in the surf and realized it wasn’t a big sandbar shark, but the biggest redfish of the day. She had her revenge for me cutting her in line earlier, and it came in the shape of a well over forty inch bull red. Fortunately for me, the trophy helped her quickly forget about my misstep, at least for a little while.

Eight hours later, we were finally ready to wrap it up and catch the high tide home. I had lost count of how many fish we caught after the first dozen, not including the couple sharks and stingrays to keep us on our toes. There weren’t any keepers being that the slot was between 15 and 23 inches, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I don’t spend much time on the over end of the slot, so there are no shortage of worse problems to have. Especially since I caught a fish I had been drooling over my whole life, and while I hadn’t always envisioned it happening this way, it is hard to imagine a better trip.

To put it lightly, fishing can be frustrating, there are no shortage of outings that start off with lofty goals only to end in nothing but a tangled mess and defeat. It isn’t very often that a trip goes as perfectly as this one and ends in the fish of a lifetime. So make sure to be especially grateful when you happen to be there on a day that will be remembered for years to come.