The big one
By Ali Akhyari
It was all fun and games for the redfish...until I got on the water.
The agreement had been to meet at the public boat docks on Folly Beach at 9am. The gray and grizzled sky coupled with a chilly breeze made the warm comforter of my bed especially heavy and difficult to toss away at 8:15. I considered contacting Captain Geoff Bennett, who was probably already at the dock, and calling in sick like you might do at a job you hate. This was supposed to be fishing, not work, after all, and I was already dreading it. However, I recalled that I had really wanted to get out on the water with Captain Bennett when I wasn’t half asleep, so I slowly rolled out of bed, put on some autumn clothes and hopped in the car.
I was about 10 minutes late when I crossed the Folly River Bridge and pulled into the boat docks. Captain Bennett was shuffling around his 16 foot Hewes Bayfisher and when I walked down to greet him, I was a bit surprised. Captain Bennett is relatively young – 33 actually – with red hair. I guess I expected a peg-leg or an eye patch and a beard, at least. Maybe a parrot. And the boat wasn’t large, but among the many things I learned that day, it was the perfect size for inland marsh fishing.
It never occurred to me to separate fishing charters from the open ocean. However, Captain Bennett informed me that his charters are considered “inland”, meaning that we stay on the backside of the barrier islands, cruising the rivers and flats.
We began fishing around the high tide mark which would allow us to stalk red drum on one of his favorite flats near Kiawah. We crossed the Stono River and worked our way onto a very shallow area only a few feet deep. It was there that I learned the small, flat bottom boat we were using was perfect for the hunt. It allowed us to meander through the grass and get to places that larger boats simply cannot go, which gave us an edge. The red drum, he explained, like to round up shrimp, crabs, and small fish on the flats which are usually only accessible during high tide.
The air was cool and a hardy breeze chopped up the unprotected water between Folly Beach and Kiawah. However, things were much more peaceful and the sun was even threatening to make an appearance when we arrived at our fishing spot. Captain Bennett hooked me up with a jerk shad lure (not named for its rude social skills, but instead for the jerking motion you should use when fishing with it) and showed me how to mimic the movement of a small fish. Unfortunately, my schedule forced us to leave a little earlier than Captain Bennett would have liked, so he warned me that the fishing might be a little slow at the beginning.
He was pushing us through the grass on the flats like a gondola conductor as I cast the lure and retrieved it according to his instruction. I was trying to differentiate the feel of the lure hitting a patch of grass from a “bite”. Every time the line pulled on the grass, my heart skipped a beat and then jumped to disappointment when I realized it wasn’t a bite. However, I would quickly learn the difference.
On my third cast, we were facing the flat and I tossed the lure at a 10 o’clock angle. It landed amidst blades of grass and I began to retrieve the jerk shad as per the Captain’s instructions, but I was still working out the kinks when something hit it hard. We were both surprised at how quickly the action began. I hooked it and the fight was on. The fish took off for the shelter of thicker grass as I tried to pull it in. Its strength was amazing and the dark spot on its tail, which became visible in the shallow water, confirmed my opponent was a red drum. Several times it pulled line out of the reel as it tried to escape and I tried to bring it in. The battle seemed to last for several minutes.
Captain Bennett later admitted that he knew it was a relatively large fish when he saw it, but kept his excitement to himself in order to minimize my disappointment in the event the red drum got free or snapped the line. However, with his coaching tips in the back of my mind, I was eventually able to exhaust the fish and bring it beside the boat. Captain Bennett pulled the fish from the water while I tried to keep the huge grin on my face under control. It was a 10.5 pound red drum that I caught on the third cast on my first time out with the Captain.
Bennett’s knowledge of fishing is remarkable, and I admired his skill as he placed the red drum back in the water and gently held it, waiting for the fish to catch its breath and take off. It was obvious that he is living his passion.
We talked about all sorts of things over the next couple of hours. Captain Bennett has been fishing since he was a kid, casting his first hooks as a fly fisherman in the north. He began to make his way south before settling in the Charleston area with his wife, and began the process of mastering the local waterways.
I caught one more red drum during the trip. It was a smaller three and a half pounder. I also missed the opportunity to catch a couple more as I jerked the lure out of the water in my freshman excitement, watching two other fish chase the lure into the shallows.
As we made our way back to the Folly Beach boat docks, I put my hat back on despite the fact that it was damp. It was chilly, but I did not notice. In fact, I couldn’t have been happier that I crawled out of my warm bed that morning. I am hooked.
Captain Geoff Bennett operates Charleston Charter Fishing and can be found through his website: www.charlestoncharterfishing.com. If you want to learn how to fish the marsh with an expert, you already know what you’re doing, or you just want catch something, be sure to contact him.
[...] out a recent article written about Charleston Charter Fishing by Ali Akhyari, editor of the Folly [...]