Small blessings from a bad storm: Helene cleanup leads to family fishing

Hurricane Helene made a mess of the southeastern United States.

 

Given the distance from the cone of probability and the Lowcountry, I did not expect a lot of impact around my house. I was wrong.

 

Early Friday morning, there were tropical storm force winds. Broken branches were everywhere, and Beresford Creek had inundated my yard.

 

I was surprised by the intensity of the storm, this far away from its actual passage, and said a quick prayer for those closer to Helene’s wake.

 

On Saturday morning, Elliott dropped by to help clean up my yard. Palm fronds littered the ground.

 

As we picked them up, I thought at least I don’t have to cut them down. Small blessings from a bad storm.

 

After a few hours of yard work, there was a large pile of debris near the road and things looked a lot better.

 

Elliott asked, “What now?” Before he could finish the question, Brody took off for the dock. I responded, “Guess we are going fishing.”

 

Elliott and I picked up our favorite fishing rods and walked out to the dock. The dock was a mess. We decided to work on the dock later. The tide was coming in fast, and we wanted to get on the fish before it got to high.

 

About then, I realized that Helene had blown my tackle box off the dock. For some reason, Elliott and I found this to be funny.

 

After we quit laughing, we decided to go fishing with the lures currently tied on our rods (because that is all we had).

 

The fish were biting. In the first few minutes, Elliott completed an inshore slam. Then broke off  his only lure. I laughed and said, “Most unfortunate.” Then kept on fishing.

 

While Elliott frantically searched the boat for another lure, I completed my inshore slam.

 

With our inshore slams complete, Elliott asked “What now?” Since he did not have a lure, I figured he wanted me to quit fishing. Brody began barking. Elliott interpreted this as the signal to go eat lunch. That sounded good to me.

 

Contact Captain Greg Peralta at captgregp@gmail.com or call (843) 224-0099.