COVER STORY

Catch More Fish

When it comes to fishing, some say it's better to be lucky than good.

That may be so, but being smart certainly never hurts.

More often than not, good old-fashioned know-how makes the difference between catching fish and just sitting there, frustrated, while anglers on other boats whoop, holler and high-five with every new catch.

But there's just so much to learn. Every type of fishing, every species targeted, carries its own complex set of specific considerations:

Inshore, nearshore or offshore?

Morning, noon or night?

Bait or lures?

High tide or low tide?

Braid or monofilament line?

Circle hooks or J-hooks?

The list goes on and on, but it really all boils down to one simple, infuriating question: What am I doing wrong?

Luckily for Lowcountry anglers, help is always just around the corner. Charleston's great tackle shops regularly host free seminars covering just about every type of fishing. The Charleston Angler and Haddrell's Point Tackle and Supply, in particular, usually put on at least one or two per week.

These "fish schools" often feature local fishing guides who have spent decades on the water refining their techniques. Attending one of these seminars can save anglers years of frustrating trial and error.

During the past few weeks, as spring began to set in and boat ramps began to fill up again, eager anglers looking to sharpen their game flocked to a bumper crop of seminars. Tideline did, too, and we brought back a quite a few tips for catching some of the area's most popular inshore and nearshore fish.

Seeing red

Ask any local saltwater angler, and they'll tell you: Redfish are the deal.

Easy to catch and relatively plentiful, this bronze-and-white sport fish with a black spot on the tail constitutes the bread and butter of the Lowcountry fishing scene.

Also called spot-tail bass and red drum, this hard-charging fish offers year-round inshore action. The fishery is so popular, in fact, that a variety of specialized techniques has evolved over the years. Some anglers wade through tidal grass flats with flyrod in hand, quietly stalking schools of 20- to 30-inch fish. Others surf-fish in the fall for bigger "bull" reds. Still others drop cut baits and live menhaden for trophy-caliber reds at the jetties and nearshore reefs.

But by and large, most redfish are caught using some of the simplest, cheapest and most productive techniques imaginable. Often, all one needs to do is rig a live shrimp or finger mullet under a cork and toss it near marsh grass or an old dock piling.

Professional fishing guide Shannon Pitts (charlestoninshore.net) is a big fan of keeping things simple, especially when he's taking out relatively novice anglers.

Pitts typically uses 8- to 17- pound-test class spinning outfits spooled with 20-pound braided line. And though Pitts is well-schooled in catching reds with artificial baits, he recommends beginners simply use live or cut bait, either on a "Carolina rig" on the bottom or under a float.

Carolina rigs usually consist of a small egg sinker on the main line, followed by a swivel or sturdy knot, up to 20 inches of fluorocarbon leader, then a 2- to 4-ought circle hook. These bottom rigs work best on tidal mud flats, where they're less likely to become snagged on structure.

Pitts turns to float rigs when fishing near oyster bars or other potential hang-ups. He often uses large, weighted floats such as the "Cajun Thunder," which allow for long casts. But when fishing shallow water or on calm days, Pitts uses smaller floats to avoid spooking fish.

Below the float, Pitts ties on just enough leader to suspend his bait near the bottom, so it doesn't snag, adds a splitshot weight or two and finishes with a kahle-style hook.

When targeting reds in the winter months, Pitts looks for large schools on or near tidal mud flats. The fish are thought to congregate in these shallow areas to re-energize in water warmed by the sun. They also move into the shallows to hide from bottlenose dolphin, which prey heavily on redfish in the winter.

Much of the inshore wintertime redfishing takes place on these tidal flats. Pitts recommends anglers approach these flats quietly and scan the waters ahead for signs of these schools pushing through the water.

Though artificial "jerk baits" can draw strikes from these schooling wintertime reds, Pitts thinks cut mullet and live blue crabs may be the best baits. He recommends just casting a rig out ahead of a school and waitingi- redfish will hone in on the scent.

In the springtime, these big schools of reds start to break up and move off the tidal flats. Anglers can still find them in the shallows, but the wind and rain of spring muddy the water and make it difficult to spot the schools.

As the weather and water warm, reds start to fan out and hunt for returning schools of small menhaden and mullet. This transitional period can lead to some challenging fishing, Pitts says.

"Spring is tough," Pitts says. "If you find a guide who says he hasn't been skunked in the spring, he's lying. It happens."

Your best bet in the spring, Pitts says, may be to fish around structures such as old docks, especially those next to a creek mouth. Redfish will stage near the pilings and ambush any prey swept out of the creek by a falling tide.

Cut bait will work in the spring, but anglers should be ready to cast-net for small menhaden and finger mullet once the water starts warming, Pitts says. Store-bought mud minnows are also a great bait.

By mid-May, the summertime redfish pattern starts to settle down, and anglers should be able to consistently find and catch fish. With plenty of warm water and bait moving around, reds can be found throughout inshore waterways. Pitts advises anglers to look for good concentrations of fish at the mouths of feeder creeks and around oyster barsi- "the more oyster bars, the better"i- and make sure to present baits as close structure as possible.

"Probably 70 percent of my summer fishing is live bait under a float at the grass edges," he says.

Pitts views live "finger" mullet (those about the size of your finger) as the best all-around summertime bait, but he'll also use live and cut menhaden. He's also a big fan of live blue crabs.

Pitts will work the flats in the summer, but he prefers to do so in the early morning and late afternoon, when the water is a bit cooler.

Hungry reds will cruise through these flats throughout the summer, chasing bait fish, shrimp, fiddler crabs and other crustaceans.

"It's easy for them to fed on the flats because the bait doesn't have a water column to escape into," he explains.

Pitts' game plan for fall redfishing is simple: anywhere, anytime and with virtually anything.

From late summer all the way into October, he says, redfish feed aggressively and can be found in tidal flats, flooded marsh grass, river channels, feeder creeks and along the beaches.

Virtually any bait will work during the intense fall season: shrimp, mullet, menhaden, mud minnows and blue crabs.

In fact, when enjoying the great fall redfish bite, novice anglers should try throwing gold spoons, jerk baits and top-water plugs. Hungry fall reds will hit just about anything, Pitts says.

"This is the time for you to learn a lot and fish artificials."

Tricking trout

Like redfish, speckled seatrout are suckers for finger mullet, mud minnows and shrimp. But it's the trout's willingness to strike artificial lures that keeps them near and dear to the hearts of experienced saltwater fishermen.

Most trout anglers use light- to medium-action spinning setups, and many do most of their fishing with simple lead-head jigs matched with soft-plastic grubs. Simply bouncing this artificial bait off the bottom near oyster beds, creek mouths and grass lines will often trigger a trout bite. But as with any type of fishing, a few pointers and advanced techniques can drastically improve an angler's success rate.

Ralph Phillips, a longtime trout angler and former charter captain, says the best way to catch morei- and biggeri- trout is to stick with lures and learn how and when to use a variety of styles.

"Fish don't count if you catch them on bait," he says. "I'm sorry. You got to trick 'em."

Phillips uses only light tackle spinning or baitcasting setups, often with just 8-pound-test line and no leaders. His go-to lure is a quarter-ounce red jig head paired with a blue, straight-tailed shad grub from Bass Assassin. This small lure, he says, mimics a glass minnow, and despite its relatively small size, will draw strikes from trophy-caliber trout.

"Even elephants eat peanuts," he says.

Phillips keeps an enormous assortment of lures in his tackle bag, which helps him "match the hatch." Phillips always pays attention to what's moving around in the water: If he sees birds feeding on glass minnows, he'll fish a small soft-plastic grub.

If he sees schools of mullet or menhaden, he may use bigger grubs or tie on a top-water plug like a a Rapala Skitter Walk. If shrimp are flipping on the surface, he'll turn to a Rebel Pop-R, a small top-water popping plug.

Phillips also tries to mimic the way these prey items are behaving. If the water's cold, he'll work his lures slowly. If it's warm and finger mullet are darting around and shrimp are flipping quickly across the water surface, he'll work his lures more aggressively.

Whatever lures he decides to use, Phillips generally prefers to concentrate his efforts around ambush points, places along rivers and creeks where docks, oyster beds or marsh grass points jut out into current. Trout tend to stage just out of the current, he says, and dart out to attack prey being swept by.

"A great spot to fish is an eddy. Baits slow down and it makes them an easy target."

Indeed, current is a big factor when trout fishing. Phillips prefers to fish the few hours before and after a low tide, and says anglers should want some flow, but not so much that the waterways become muddy.

The key to fishing artificials in and around current, Phillip says, is to always cast upstream and work the lure back toward the strike zone. Bait fish naturally move with the current, and a trout lure should, too.

"Ride the tide," he says, and you'll catch more fish.

Catching the cobia run

Cobia may be the best kind of fish. They taste great, they fight hard and they get bigi- 60 pounds or more. Best of all, they're curious about boats, always hungry and keep a predictable schedule.

If you want to know when they come to town, just keep tabs on Lowcountry charter captains like John Irwin (flyrightcharters.com). When he heads south to Beaufort, you know it's time for some seriously good fishing.

Every spring and early summer, untold numbers of cobia migrate north along the East Coast. Schools of these brown brutes swim into the Broad River and St. Helena Sound, apparently to spawn, making the waterways around Beaufort a world-class fishing destination from mid-April into June.

Irwin meets up with the cobia in the Broad River for a short but intense season. On a good day, he and his clients may catch more than a dozen trophy-caliber fish in the 30- to 50-pound range (nearly all are released).

Irwin will use big spinning setups and flyrods to sight-cast to cobia at the surface, or anchor up and soak baits at one of a number of well-known cobia hot spots near the Broad River bridge. He'll typically anchor around these rips and sandbars during moving tides, then move around and sight-fish at slack tide.

Baits of choice are live menhaden or threadfin herring, though live eels and even store-bought, frozen squid will work. Irwin catches menhaden with a cast net and jigs up the threadfins with sabiki rigs. Anglers can usually find these threadfin in the same areas that they plan to fish for cobia, he says. (Some chum may help concentrate the herring near your boat.)

When anchored, Irwin uses mostly conventional rod-and-reel setups, with 20-pound monofilament mainline, a sliding weight, 3 to 4 feet of 30-pound fluorocarbon leader and a 5-ought Diachi circle hook.

He fishes four or five rods - two baits on the bottom, two suspended in the middle

of the water column and one kept at the surface with a large float or balloon. He also keeps a large spinning setup handy to pitch baits to cobia that swim up to investigate his boat.

"I've seen them chewing on my propi- they're not the smartest fish in the world," he says. "We've definitely got a few nice fish off the back of the boat."

To help lure the cobia in close, Irwin usually dangles one bag of fresh chum off the back of his boat and uses a mushroom anchor to deploy another bag at the river bottom.

Sight-fishing works best on calm days, when cobia at the surface can be spotted up to 50 yards away. When not fly-fishing, Irwin targets these surface-cruising fish with big spinning outfits lined with 30-pound braid, followed by 30-pound fluorocarbon leader. He uses J-hooks when pitching live baits for cobia.

A large white bucktail jig is a great sight-casting lure for cobia, Irwin says. The trick is to keep the bucktail moving quickly near the surface of the water, where the cobia can see it.

After the spring run in the waterways around Beaufort, Irwin comes home to Charleston to concentrate on putting clients on quality redfish. But he still keeps an eye out for cobia.

Anglers occasionally run into cobia in Charleston's inshore waterways, and nearshore fishermen have long targeted massive cobia at nearshore wrecks and reefs such as 4KI and Lowcountry Anglers, not to mention in and around the shipping channel.

Irwin says some people have reported seeing dozens of cobia around the shipping channel buoys in early summer, and he recounts a trip to the buoys that resulted in 14 cobia caught before 10 a.m.

"The cage buoys are an awesome place to look for cobia."

Amberjack

Amberjack get a bad wrap.

Derided by many fishermen as "reef donkeys" and "trash fish," AJs seem stuck with a reputation as the big, mean junkyard dogs of the Lowcountry's nearshore fishery.

It's a fact that huge schools of these brutes circle the artificial reefs, wrecks and buoys from just a few miles offshore all the way to the Ledge. AJs topping 25 pounds are common, and these voracious fish will hit anything from a trolled ballyhoo to live bait to deepwater jigs.

They're so easy to catch, in fact, that many anglers look down their noses at these hard-fighting fish.

Capt. Chuck Griffin (charlestonsportfish ing.com) thinks such anglers may be missing the boat. AJs, Griffin says, offer some of the Lowcountry's most exciting saltwater fly-fishing opportunities.

"They're a great game fish, and they will certainly give you a great fight on a flyrod," Griffin says, adding that 20- to 40-minute fights are standard when messing around with big AJs.

Griffin recommends anglers fly-fishing for AJs or other big saltwater species use a 10-weight flyrod, at a minimum, or perhaps a 12-weight. They should use large saltwater reels spooled with plenty of 20- to 30-pound test backing, he says, with a 40- to 50-pound shock tippet and 20-pound tippet.

To find schools of big AJs, Griffin usually heads to artificial reefs and wrecks such as Y73, Edisto and the Anchor Wreck. "A lot of good live bottom spots in 90 feet have them, too," he says.

Once at a likely spot, Griffin tries to induce an AJ feeding frenzy. The best method is to simply bring along a livewell filled with menhaden, and throw fish out over the reef a few at a time.

If there's a school of amberjack around, they'll usually rush to the surface and attack the doomed menhaden. "They get in a big ole frenzy," Griffin says with a laugh.

It's also possible to lift a school of AJs up from the depths, either by catching one fish and keeping him hooked near the surface, or by using a hookless jig or lure to entice all the fish upward. Even using a gaff to splash the water can keep a school of amberjack interested.

"Ninety percent of the battle," Griffin says, "is getting the school fired up at the boat."

Once the AJs are in a frenzy at the surface, hooking up is easy. Anglers can even pick the specific fish they want to cast to. This becomes particularly important if anglers have already battled a 30-plus pound AJ to the boat; they may want to target a slightly smaller fish the next time around.

Messing around with AJs is fun, he says, but tiring. "Usually after about two hours, you're ready to go do something else."

Griffin says big "popping bug" flies work great but admits that practically any type of fly will work, once the fish are feeding aggressively.

"As long as (the fly) makes a lot of commotion," he says. "Honestly, they're not that picky."

Griffin says catching massive AJs on the fly should encourage anglers to think of large flyfishing setups as a new "weapon of opportunity." The flyfishing experience anglers gain with AJs can prepare them for battling other open-water species such as cobia, dolphin and even billfish. It can all start with amberjack fishing, he says.

"It's pretty simple, which is nice. It's just a great way to introduce somebody to saltwater fly fishing."

Kingfish

The sound. That's the best part of hooking a 30-plus-pound king mackerel.

Picture it: You've been out at a nearshore reef, slow-trolling for hours and hours, bumping the motor in and out of gear with four or five lines trailing off the back of the boat. You've dutifully changed out your baits, putting fresh live menhaden on the wire rigs every 20 minutes or so. But it's been slow fishing.

When it finally does happen, it happens fast. The silence shatters as a reel starts screaming. Water on the spool spins off in a smoky mist as a torpedo-like monster at the end of the line sprints 100 yards or more.

That's what gets a king fisherman's heart racing.

Capt. Robert Olsen (knotatworkfishing.com ), a full-time fishing guide and competitive king mackerel angler, knows what that's like. Olsen's been live-baiting for big kings since the technique first came into vogue in the mid-1990s, and won national recognition during his days of highly competitive king mackerel fishing.

Olsen remains a slow-trolling specialist for good reason. "When you're live baiting and slow trolling, you have a chance to catch anything in the ocean," he says. King mackerel, dolphin, sailfish and even marlin will all crash a frisky live bait. Olsen once landed a 80-pound wahoo on a live-bait rig.

Olsen says king mackerel start showing up off Charleston in late April, when the water temperature hits 66 degrees. Throughout the summer and early fall, anglers should be able to find plenty of king action from live bottom areas just a few miles off the beach out to popular trolling areas in 90 or 120 feet of water.

"There are tons of kings at every artificial reef," Olsen says. ": the Garden and Commanche are on fire in the summertime."

Olsen says anglers usually can expect to catch more kings offshore, but they will be smaller, mostly in the 15- to 20-pound range. The larger kings in the 30-, 40- or perhaps even 50-pound range usually seem to be caught closer to shore, in water from 40 to 70 feet deep.

No matter where he's looking for kings, Olsen uses much the same tackle and techniques.

He employs conventional rod-and-reel set-ups spooled with 12- to 20-pound-test monofilament main line. Like the vast majority of kingfish anglers, Olsen uses multiple-hook wire rigs, and he'll usually tie on a few feet of fluorocarbon leader ahead of the wire rigs, so a large fish's tail won't cut the line.

Olsen says store-bought king mackerel rigs work fine, but he makes his own. For many years, he used single-strand wire, but he recently switched to seven-strand wire and has lost far fewer fish. Olsen recommends anglers always use a live-bait J-style hook as a "nose hook" for the bait, so it swims more naturally.

Since most live-bait rigs include one or more treble hooks, Olsen sets his drags very light, only 1 to 3 pounds. A heavier drag setting could rip the small treble hooks right out of a fish.

Olsen typically fishes four rods when slow-trolling. He'll position one bait at the surface a few feet behind the boat and another surface bait about 30 yards behind the boat. On a calm day, he may set this back bait as far as 70 yards behind the boat.

Olsen uses a pair of downriggers to position his other two baits down in the water column, one 5 to 10 feet off the bottom and the other at mid-depth.

Olsen typically shies away from adding colored "skirts" to his king rigs, but he may put one as surface bait in his spread.

With his baits properly in position, Olsen typically trolls about 1 mph, at most.

When a fish hits, Olsen quickly raises all the downriggers, then clears all the rest of the lines as his angler starts reeling. Because drag settings are so light, kingfish anglers don't usually "fight" a fish to the boat. They simply reel in line and keep good tension on the rod as the captain drives the boat toward the fish.

The biggest key to finding success in the world of king mackerel fishing, Olsen says, is to master the art of finding and catching good live baits.

Menhaden are the go-to bait. Anglers usually can throw a cast net over schools of these oily bait fish around Fort Sumter and along the front beach of Morris Island. Diving pelicans often point the way to the fish.

But "pogies," as menhaden are often called, aren't the only bait anglers should try.

"King mackerel, they'll hit anything that swims," Olsen says.

Many anglers use sabiki rigs to jig up cigar minnows, threadfin herring and other small fish from around nearshore reefs and buoys. Bluefish and bluerunners also make fantastic live baits for trophy king mackerel.

Olsen also recommends anglers keep a lighter rod and reel handy for pitching spoons into schools of Spanish mackerel. If you can catch a Spanish and quickly put it back out on a wire king rig, you're in good position to catch a trophy fish.

"A live Spanish mackerel on a downrigger may be THE best bait in the world," for big kings, Olsen says.

Want to learn more?

Fishing seminars offer anglers a great opportunity to learn from the pros and and improve their success rates. A number of local tackle shops and marine retailers offer such seminars, and updated schedules can be found online at a number of sites, including:

• www.bartonandburwell.com

• www.charlestonfishing.com

• www.haddrellspoint.com

• www.postandcourier.com

• www.tidelinemagazine.com

• www.thecharlestonangler.com

Contact Tideline Senior Editor Matt Winter at 843-937-5568 or matt@tidelinemagazine.com.

Copyright © 1995 - 2009 Evening Post Publishing Co..