Goin’ fishin’ on a rainy day? No problem!

Recently, the tides have been unusually high. Between the new moon and historical rainfall numbers, my backyard has been consistently inundated by Beresford Creek.

 

Big tides make for big challenges when fishing for trout, and on Saturday, big challenges were an understatement.

 

Challenge number one: It was raining cats and dogs. No offense, Brody. 

 

Challenge number two: No fish-finding and stock-trading dog. When Brody saw that he had to wade through about a foot of water just to get to the dock, he ran back to the house.

 

Challenge number three: Water clarity was simply awful. High tides and rainwater runoff reduced visibility to just a few inches. Trout can’t eat what they can’t see.

 

Before launching the skiff, I asked Elliott, my son, the question that I had been asking myself. Do we really want to fish in this? He laughed and replied, “Not really, but let’s go anyway.” So, we launched the skiff, and our trout fishing ordeal began.

 

On the ride up the Wando River, we stopped at dozens of spots and never made a cast. The water clarity was just not clear enough for trout to see the lure.

 

However, the further upriver we went, the clearer the water became. Especially the water that was draining out of small cuts in the marsh. Elliott and I began casting lures into the cuts and slowly working them out with the current. To our surprise we began catching trout and ladyfish.

 

Elliott was using a bright chartreuse Z-Man Finesse TRD on a 1/6-ounce NedlockZ jig. I was casting a white Z-Man StreakZ 3.75 on a 1/8-ounce Trout Eye finesse jig. We selected our lures because they were more visible in the off-colored water.

 

For the next hour or so, we picked at the trout. The small cuts in the marsh did not hold high concentrations of fish. Elliott and I called it a day.

 

On the ride back to the dock, Elliott noticed some seagulls hovering over a small creek that was draining into the river. We stopped to observe what was happening. Shrimp were being pushed to the surface, and the seagulls were picking them off.

 

We cast our lures into the small creek, and we both hooked up. Elliott with a trout. Me with a ladyfish. The bite was on! After hours of looking, we had finally found a high concentration of feeding fish.

 

Big tides make for big challenges. But you can’t catch fish on the couch. No offense, Brody.