It's shrimp season!

Shrimp season is in full swing and there are plenty of the tasty crustaceans to go around. On Monday evening, Daniel Island shrimp guru (Julian Levin) and I went shrimping in the harbor with poles and bait. The tide was half out and falling when we set-up our poles in five feet of water. Initially, there were only a few shrimp per cast but as darkness fell our catch rate improved significantly. It took about 90 minutes to catch a limit (48 quarts) of shrimp. Later in the week, my brother (David) and niece (Amee) went deep hole shrimping (in daylight). They rode around the harbor looking for deep holes. When a likely spot was located, they adjusted the depth sounder to zoom in on the bottom. Once adjusted, they were able to tell if shrimp were holding in that particular hole. The trick to deep-hole shrimping is calculating set and drift in order to get the net to fall in the right place. Thankfully, Amee is a teacher and does high-level math exceedingly well. So they caught a limit in about an hour. Given the abundance of shrimp and cooler water temperatures, Redfish and Trout are feeding aggressively. Not surprisingly, the most productive lure this week was a Houdini MinnowZ (which is shrimp colored). Both Redfish and Trout were pretty shallow this week. So their feeding activity was pretty easy to see. Just look for lots of shrimp jumping followed by a big splash. Casting a MinnowZ immediately to the splash almost always resulted in a strike. October is one of the best months to enjoy our Lowcountry waters. The weather is comfortable and the bounty is plenty. Don’t miss it. Call your friends and family, then go shrimping and fishing.