A thin layer of sand-like dust covered everything, even though it rains a lot on barrier islands and the wind blows without fatigue. The scent of pluff mud drifted on the breeze — slightly fishy, powerfully earthy. The infinite, olive-green spartina grass lined the creeks throughout the marsh. The water’s color is subject to change with the environment, tide, sun, and sky, from green to blue to hues of pink, red, and violet.
My father gave me just enough money for the right supplies. It wasn’t grocery money my dad gave me, but tackle. I am living on South Carolina’s Dewees Island for the summer until my sophomore year of college begins in August — a full three months from now. My hair is jungle-thick from the salt air, just like the island’s vegetation. My hands are dry and rough from being constantly wetted and dried. I am tan.
I am a fisherman. In training.
Dewees is a barrier island off the coast, just north of Charleston. The entire island is under a conservational easement to limit development. There are 67 houses on the island, although you wouldn’t think there were more than 30 because they are nestled in the trees like docile giants, squatting low to not be seen.
The alligators do not squat, however, nor hide in any matter. Nor do the deer, raccoons, rabbits, mosquitos, or deer flies. None of them are afraid to be at your front door first thing in the morning.
I used the money to buy a minnow trap, hooks, sinkers, a cork, and a handful of lures — all the things I remembered being in my dad’s tackle box. I fished with him on most of my previous trips to Dewees: going where he went, fishing where he fished, casting where he said cast. When you’re on your own, you remember where you hooked up and what bait you used. You don’t remember what you never had to think about. Being on your own is a little more complicated.
On Saturday, I put the minnow trap in front of a water lock where we always put it. It always produces — simple as that. Later that day I floated one of the captured minnows in a creek that dead ends at the big water lock, just like I remembered Dad used to do. No dice. I strung up a plastic lure on a jig head and bounced it across the shallow bottom at the head of the impoundment, just off the main road. I didn’t get a bump, tug, hit, bop, pull, bite, or strike. Not a one.
Years ago we could sit there, in front of God and everybody, catching flounder and red drum by the bucket. We can’t do that anymore; too many alligators, too many tourists.
Midday, at another popular fishing hole called “Six Pipes,” I could see the speckled sea trout waiting for minnows to spill out of the pipes. Six pipes — hence the name — run under the road, connecting one side of the creek to the other, with fish and water flowing through. Again, not a plastic lure nor minnow on a cork yielded any kind of lunch or dinner.
The blue crabs, attracted to anything dead and meaty, have never not been at the crabbing dock, so I had some for supper Sunday night. After finishing, on an outgoing tide, I again floated a minnow in front of a creek by the ferry dock. Dad and I had dangled our feet in the water there at night while tearing up the trout and drum. Again, no dice.
At sunrise the next day, a little perturbed at my inability to perform with the rod and reel, I walked up a remote creek to the honey hole my father had showed me, expectations high. I could see big drum swim past me, ripping the top of the water with flicks of their tails and leaving wakes like tiny dinosaurs. Walls of pluff mud and spartina stood on either bank. I was shirtless, shoeless, and breathing heavy. I had mud all over my legs; I even put some on my shoulders to keep from burning.
Another cork-rig failed; another refused plastic. That just fueled my fire. I could see fish coming up to the top, and just when I figured out what to do next, my phone buzzed for me to come to work.
The next evening, I tried fishing where I’d never been before but knew my dad had. I walked from Big Bend Dock to Lone Cedar, about 200 yards away. People journey great distances to wade knee-deep in spartina and sight fish for big drum, especially when the sights are as beautiful as the pink and blue sky that evening. I simply had to take a stroll. That was my normal for the summer.
I had gotten on a few small spottail bass close to Big Bend but couldn’t coax a bite. It wasn’t until I reached Lone Cedar that I had any more fish tease me. A bull spottail had his head in the mud and his mahogany-colored tail above the water like a signaling flag. I made the perfect cast: four feet past and four feet in front.
It only spooked him. He shot straight for the larger creek, his wake showing like that of a passing ghost ship. Head hung low, I returned home with nothing to show for my efforts.
It was still early in the summer, but I went to see if my grades had been posted online yet. I had just finished my freshman year as an English major at a small liberal arts college in the mountains of North Georgia. I had quickly learned that education was more than a series of hurdles I had to jump to not fall behind my peers. In college, education became an environment instead of a task. I started going to seminars and school events where the information and skills I learned in class had an application, whether it was fodder for conversation or actual problem solving.
One online community let me continue the extracurricular side of college on the island. This particular one centered around educational videos, allowing me to continue learning over the summer without being seated in an actual classroom. I could be “in school” anywhere — even on Dewees Island. I could study in the evenings and spend the days tackling my bigger problem: being an ineffectual fisherman.
I had tried everything I knew and still been beaten. Dewees had whooped me with a stick and sent me to the nurse’s office. Desperate, I called my dad to ask what I was doing so differently than on our joint trips.
He simply said, “You only know how to fish in the fall.”
He was right, and I knew it. I had only ever been truly successful when fishing in the fall. The time of year was different and so were the fish.
So what had I not done? Surely I had tried everything. What was it I was overlooking? What had I not tried? I started to think of my fishing methods like the quadratic equations in my required math classes, substituting one variable — tide, time, place, lure technique — for another. I saddled up my E-Z Go with all my tackle and headed to Six Pipes for the night.
I had only fished the pool in the day, so the first and easiest variable to change was time. The tide was high and outgoing, so the trout would be sitting in front of the pipes waiting for food. They couldn’t be fooled in the day by a topwater lure because it was blatantly fake, but at night the hard plastic was just another struggling fish splashing on the surface.
Three casts in and I had one trout ashore.
Being an English major, I was never overly enthused about my required math courses. I always thought, “I will never, ever have to use this in real life.” But in quadratic equations you have to manipulate a given amount of information to reach a certain outcome, and isn’t that what every successful angler or hunter has to do? Manipulate the environment and the technique used to get a desired outcome?
I still can’t solve a quadratic equation, but I did learn how to manipulate sets of information. On Dewees, I learned it doesn’t matter what the set of information is, either.
Cover Image: Thinkstock
In this compilation of tales you will read about two kinds of places, the ones you have been to before and love to remember, and the places you have only dreamed of going, and would love to visit. Whether you prefer to fish rivers, estuaries, or beaches, this book will take you to all kinds of water, where you’ll experience catching every kind of fish. Shop Now.