Despite cold weather snap, trout are still alive and biting

Ever since the winter storm, I have not caught a single trout.

 

Even Brody, the amazing fish-finding and stock-trading dog, has been unable to find one. A definite cause for concern.

 

With reports of a cold-water die-off near the Isle of Palms, my hope for the local trout population was fading fast.

 

On Saturday, my son Elliott, Brody, and I set out to try and catch a trout. Several back-to-back warm days raised the surface water temperature to 57 degrees. A far cry from the 39-degree water temperature just a week before.

 

As we idled away from the dock, I told Elliott, “If we don’t catch trout today, the cold water killed them.”

 

He replied, “Then we better catch some trout.”

 

After a short run to a creek off the Wando River, Elliott deployed the trolling motor, and our search for trout began.

 

Our plan was for Elliott to cast a Z-Man Finesse TRD lure to the shallow bank and work it into deeper water. My job was to vertically jig a Finesse TRD in the deeper water directly beneath the skiff.

 

After a couple of casts, Elliott caught a redfish. He quickly released the fish and muttered, “Wrong species.”

 

Then he caught another and another. Typically, this would be great, but we were looking for a trout.

 

A few minutes later, I spotted a small school of fish on the depth sounder. I dropped my Finesse TRD directly on top of the fish. A tiny trout decided to eat it. We quickly and carefully released it.

 

Further up the creek, we caught and released several more trout. Satisfied that the trout were still alive, we circled back to target the school of redfish we found earlier.

 

The trout we found were small, but we could not have been happier.

 

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

 

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, a photo caption in last week’s edition misidentified a redfish as a seatrout.