Fishing Memories

May 16, 2021, 10:49 PM

Episode 3. This time it was a trip to the Big Edisto. We put in at Embree, the location of a huge steam powered sawmill. This mill operated for a number of years when the Edisto swamps were logged for their huge Cypress and Popular trees. Daddy told me that his Daddy brought him to this site when he was a boy. He said he marveled at the giant operation, this would have been in the late twenties or early thirties.

We sild the boat in early that morning just after daylight. The so called landing was not on the river, you had to work yourself out to the river through the swamp a short way. When we reached the river Daddy said it looks good. What this meant is that the water is at a good level. For those of you that don't understand river fishing if the water is rising to fast or falling to fast the fish don't bite. Our method of fishing the Edisto was what we called throw lining. This was no more than a ten to twelve foot cane pole with a fifteen pound test line, a medium cork. a bream hook and a BB shot. This was a killer rig with a cricket pitched back into eddies and dark pockets. We fished through the morning and picked up about twenty or so Bream and Redbreast. After we ate our lunch we caught about another dozen pan fish. By this time it was around three in the afternoon and Daddy said let's head back toward the landing, we'll cast on the way back for some Jackfish. I pulled out my Zebco 33 and tied on a Pearl Spoon Bob. This was the best river lure we ever had. The lure consisted of a spinner blade made from a iridescent sea shell, a treble hook with red and white feathers tied to the hook. We zig zagged back and forth across the river fishing the eddies and had picked up several Jacks and one fair sized trout. We called bass where I grew up Trout. We came to a bend where a large tree had fallen into the river and Daddy sculled us around the top and pulled up on the down river side, he held on and told me to work the area good. I started and worked left to right toward the tree trunk. Finally I cast to the bank near the base of the tree trunk and the water boiled where the Bob landed but it missed the hook. Daddy said throw back there quick. I did as instructed and dropped it almost where the last cast had landed. The lure traveled about three feet and something hit it. I set the hook and it made a run taking line with the drag screaming. I felt the fish enough to know it was huge, it made a run for the top and I could not turn the fish, when the fish reached the top it tangled my line in the top and the fish broke the line. This all happened so fast there was nothing either one of us could have done to change the out come. I was terribly disappointed about losing the fish. Losing the fish was bad enough, but that was the last Pearl Spoon Bob we had and they were no longer available. Until the day Daddy died we always wondered what kind of fish we hooked and lamented about the loss of the Bob. I recently saw one on eBay for sixty five dollars.

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My Granddaddy called them trout too. I haven't heard that in a long, long time. I remember reading an article by Pat Robertson in the State newspaper, probably in the early 80's, where he discussed that terminology. If I recall correctly, he said it was unique to the SC lowcountry.

We fished the Edisto, Combahee, Ashepoo and Salkehatchie the exact same way, except the Salk and the South Edisto, which we fished more than the big Edisto, were often too tight to use a cane pole. You had to use a short rod with a Zebco 33, even when cricket fishing for bream and redbreast. Used a lot of spinners for jackfish. Granddaddy loved a jackfish more than anything else, even a redbreast. Every now and then you'd get a big mudfish on them and it would be chaos. That might be what broke you off that day.

Fishing Memories

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