7/26/07
Rough seas make for a tough day of fishing
By Terry Madewell

Terry Madewell Photo

Brian Madewell, the author’s son, gets all geared up for a day of deep sea fishing.

I had forgotten how much aggravation, but yet fun, fishing on a big deep sea fishing boat can be.

With family visiting for a few days, including my son Brian from Tennessee and daughter Julie, we decided to go fishing for a half-day while at the beach. We had only limited time because of all the other family activities, so we opted for a party boat/head boat type of fishing trip. These are the boats where a bunch of people are herded onto a big boat and taken to the fishing spots not far offshore.

Since it is only a half-day trip, the boats simply don’t have time to travel very far. The all-day boats, on the other hand, do get out into deeper water where there are more and larger fish. But a half-day is all we could spare on this trip.

My first option was to try to get an inshore trip for flounder, redfish or speckled trout, but we just didn’t have enough advance notice to get a trip lined up. So the party boat was about all we had access to. And we booked our trip a day early and the boat was already almost full by that time.

So bright and early one morning last week, Brian and I left the rest of the group to enjoy the beach and pool while we went fishing.

As our luck would have it, the wind had been howling for about three days with steady winds of over 20 miles per hour. The weather was fine for enjoying the beach, the breeze help offset the heat. But it did create quite a bit of turbulence on the boat ride. In fact, even when the Captain stopped the boat, it caused problems just standing in place to catch some fish.

We knew not to expect sensational fishing during this time of the year. Most of the larger fish would be further offshore where the all-day boats or regular charter boats go. We knew we’d be fishing for smallish fish, but hopefully in decent numbers. As it turned out, we were able to get a lot of bites, mostly blackfish (aka black sea bass).

However, with the recent change in size limits on these great tasting fish to 12 inches, the fish we caught kept coming up short in terms of size and we had to toss them back.

Even though the boat never got far enough out to lose sight of the towering motels along the Grand Strand, we were in some fish. The biggest problem was the rocking and rolling wave and current. I hadn’t fished on this type of boat in a long time, but when I was younger and didn’t live near the coast, some buddies and I would come and fish these boats, and many times made excellent catches.

For us and everyone else that day, the rough sea made it all but impossible to keep the bait on the bottom, which is a requirement when bottom fishing, as you can easily understand.

We’d drop the lines with the heavy sinker and by the time the bait hit the bottom, the current was pulling the bait one way and the wind was blowing the boat the other. We’d be able to stay in contact with the bottom for just a few seconds. Then, if you wanted to catch any fish, you had to reel it back in quickly and repeat the process.

Most anglers chose to just leave the bait out, but it was at such a great angle the bait was not on the bottom. Thus, there were simply no bites for those anglers and a large number of these folks did not even catch a fish. It was really that tough of a day, even though there were fish under the boat.

Brian and I quickly figured out that the best shot was to reel it in quickly, and drop it back down. Then we’d “walk” the bait along the bottom and usually we’d get a bite or two. We had the two-hook rig so we did even catch some doubles, but not many times.

By the second stop of the day, we had plenty of elbowroom; the rough seas had over half the boat not able to fish, even though we were not far offshore.

The longer we fished, the more we got the hang of how to fish on this particular day. It wasn’t easy for anyone and not many fishermen were willing to do the continuously reeling in and repositioning of the bait that was required to get the bites. The captain of the boat did have us on fish and every time we made decent contact with the bottom, we got bites and usually caught fish. But for most fishermen that day, it wasn’t worth the trouble.

So the day didn’t turn out as great as I had hoped, but we did have a few fish for supper and they were delicious.

Next time I’ll be looking for a much calmer day when I go out.