Shrimp baiting season

South Carolina’s 2025 shrimp baiting season opens on Sept. 12, This activity is just as popular along the coast as dove season is throughout the state.

What better way to celebrate the coming of fall and all that comes with it than frying up some shrimp you caught yourself?

It’s possible to catch shrimp in a cast net year-round, and many folks do, but the regulations are different. And for plenty of folks, there’s just something special about baiting up a hole, then casting over that hole as the shrimp come to feast.

How’s it work?

Shrimp baiting consists of three main parts: bait, poles, and a cast net. A shrimp baiting license allows for 10 poles, each spaced about 10 yards apart. The poles allow you to keep track of where your bait is.

The bait usually consists of fish meal and clay, either in a commercially-available product like Bait Binder or a homemade concoction. The bait is typically formed into a patty or ball.

The cast net must meet SCDNR requirements as far as mesh size goes, but when it comes to circumference, some folks opt to toss a 4-foot net, which all but guarantees a smaller, but full opening, while others use 12-foot nets, and even bigger, for those more skilled at throwing them.

It usually takes a team of two people, with one operating the outboard motor. The other one tosses bait balls or bait patties along the base of the poles. And after the bait has done its job, one person operates the outboard while the other one makes casts with the net.

As shrimp come into the boat and are put into a cooler, more bait can be tossed out, then the process is repeated until the cooler is full or the folks are ready to call it quits.

Which tide?

Some folks like to do this on the incoming tide, but others prefer the outgoing tide. Both have their merits, and it usually comes down to personal preference.

Positioning the poles can be important, but regulations do restrict you from placing poles in certain areas.

While driving the boat may seem like the easy part compared to continuously casting and retrieving the net, I can tell you from first hand experience that operating the boat has its downfalls.

Constantly adjusting for the tides and wind, shifting abruptly from forward to reverse while striving to put the cast netter into the perfect position can be stressful, mainly because you can easily toss the netter into the water, or to a hard landing on the deck of the boat, with the slightest of wrong moves. It can be as mentally taxing as throwing the net is physically taxing.

Overall it’s a fun process, and one that involves a level of teamwork that has its own rewards at the end of a long day.

It’s also not unheard of for someone to do this alone, usually with only one or a few poles. It takes longer and involves much more from that one person, but I’ve even spoken to folks that do it from a kayak with some level of success.

Shrimp baiting is a fairly unique way of catching shrimp, and it’s one I think everyone would enjoy if they’ll just give it a shot.

We only have so many opening days, but if we take advantage of every season available to us, we gain more opening days, more seasons, and more experiences in the outdoors.