You can’t blame Englis Glover for expressing his love — loud and long — for Murrells Inlet. After all, he grew up barely a long cast from its waters and, except for an interruption of several years while chasing and hitting a little white ball as a golf pro, he’s always called the little fishing village on the lower end of the Grand Strand home.
But there’s the matter of fishing, and Glover, who runs Tee to Sea Charters and is the host of Reelin’ up the Coast, a television fishing show, is ready and willing to explain why his little watery corner of the world takes second place to no other area along South Carolina’s coastline.
“The number of fish you can catch and the short distance you have to travel, that’s what makes Murrells Inlet great,” Glover said. “It’s not like you have to run 15 miles to get to a spot. The longest run in 3½ miles. It’s amazing you can catch that many fish in such tight confines.”
Then, there’s the matter of having a “closed system” — Murrells Inlet being the only area of marsh and backwaters not connected to the Intracoastal Waterway or any coastal rivers.
“And you don’t get any dirty water like you get anywhere else with a river. It’s a completely a saltwater fishery.”
So you’d think Glover would be a little hesitant to share some of his favorite spots in the Murrells Inlet area with complete strangers? Not if you know him. If Murrells Inlet’s chamber of commerce gave a most valuable player award, Glover would have to be a finalist. Here are a few places he’d highlight in a brochure aimed at attracting visiting anglers:
1 – Curlew Point
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Main Creek slithers like a snake through much of the backwater on Murrells Inlet’s northern end, and Glover has several favorite fishing holes along its length.
The first is a marsh bank, a quarter-mile or so in length, in a section of the creek that winds close to the mainland.
“This is a shell bank — there are oyster shells throughout,” Glover said. “The redfish get on it; they will school up and move down the whole bank. I think the bait gets caught in here pretty good, and the places I catch redfish, I catch them around places with a lot of bait.”
Glover likes to start on at the point on the southern end of the long marsh bank, anchor up, cast to the grass and work his way north up the bank, all the way to the far corner.
“A lot of guys will troll through here. I like to fish this place three hours before high tide, before the water touches the grass,” he said. “It’s not a bad spot on a falling tide, but it’s great on a rising tide.”
Glover relies on live bait for 90 percent of his fishing, especially his charters, and he’ll fish a live finger mullet on a Carolina rig on this one and on most of his spots.
2 – Mt. Gilead Shell Bank
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A half-mile or so north of Curlew Point lies a shell bank opposite houses on Mt. Gilead Rd., which runs from US 17 Business to the water’s edge.
“The fish will hold out here on the shell bank,” Glover said. “I’ll anchor up on the (southern) end of this bank and work my way down the bank, 50 yards at a time. The fish will hold out here on the shell bank.
“All the little cuts back (into the marsh) are great. The bait uses the entrances to come into the marsh, and it will get trapped in there.”
Glover said this spot really heats up when, well, when it’s really hot.
“It’s way more productive when the mullet get here, and that’s usually late July and August,” he said. “When the mullet move in, I know the reds school up on them.”
Glover said this bank is one of the few places where he fishes artificials over live bait.
3 – The Three Thirty-Three Hole
33 33 338N/079 01 520
Main Creek has plenty of “S” turns on its way from the inlet to its
headwaters in Garden City Beach to the north, but this one with the
interesting gps numbers is one of Glover’s favorites. He said plenty of other fishermen favor it, but he sees many of them fishing it at the wrong stage of the tide.
“Everybody works right by here, but at the wrong time,” he said.
“This is a falling-tide spot. When the water falls out of the grass and you can start to see the brown mud they put the oysters on top of, that’s when it gets good.”
Like many of Glover’s favorite spots, this one attracts a lot of bait. “When I see mullet jumping, that’s the time to fish it,” he said. “I like to fish this one on the last 2½ hours of the falling tide.
“In the summer, our dominant wind is southwest, and I like to get here and anchor up and cast around with live bait. I like to anchor about 30 yards off the bank and cast to the bank and down the bank. You need to stay as far away from the bank as you can and still reach it with a long cast, because as the water falls out of the grass, those reds are pulled back out of there.”
4 – Tip of North Jetty
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Hands down, Glover said the tip of the north jetty is “the most consistent redfish spot in Murrells Inlet.”
Don’t expect to catch dinner out there, however. “Don’t expect to catch keepers out here. All of those fish will be over the slot. It will be catch-and-release fishing, but it will be well worth it,” he said.
Glover likes to set up right off the tip of the jetty. Fish can get right on the tip or on either side of the jetty’s end.
“This is the kind of place you fish for 30 minuets; you give it a shot,” he said. “If they’re here, you won’t have to wait long. I like to catch it on a falling tide.
“Sometimes they’re on the corners, inside or outside, sometimes they’re right on the end. There’s a lot of rubbish on the bottom, so you’ll have black sea bass and toadfish bothering you, but the reds use it.”
Glover said on a falling tide, the jetty rocks extend 15 to 20 feet out horizontally from the waterline. He wants to cast live bait on a Carolina rig about 20 feet off the rocks, positioning his bait on the sandy bottom at the edge of the rocks.
“The only problem is, it can be so ‘busy’ out here, it’s tough to get on it,” he said, alluding to the fishing pressure the spot receives in calm conditions.
5 – Oaks Creek
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Oaks Creek is one of the best creeks in Murrells Inlet to catch speckled trout; Glover said you can catch them in the center of the creek at high tide. However, this spot — a bank with several small ditches draining the marsh behind Drunken Jack Island — is a great spot to catch reds on their way into the grass as the water rises.
“I catch reds between the little (drain) entrances on a rising tide,” he said. “As soon as the water gets in the grass, I leave.
“I like to fish the first three hours of the rising tide. As the water pushes in, they move into the grass. They post up out in the creek and wait, then they go into the grass when the water pushes in there.
“I like to anchor up on the outside and throw artificials. You can pull up right on the edge and cast, but I like to anchor up on the outside and put out six lines with live mullet — something will happen.”
6 – Charlie’s Hole
33 32 279N/079 02 352
“Charlie’s Cut” is a wide ditch that cuts from the big water near the mouth of Main Creek and runs into one of Woodland Creek’s “S” curves, ending in a “T” intersection on the east end of Weston Flat, the area’s biggest marsh flat.
“Charlie’s Hole” is a deep hole at the “T” intersection that, Glover said, holds a lot of redfish and a lot of fishermen.
“This is the community hole of all community holes,” he said. “If you can get a spot back there at low tide, it’s great. Redfish love that hole, and everybody fishes it.”
Heading from the eastern edge of the cut toward the mainland, the bottom quickly drops from six or seven feet deep all the way to 16 feet deep, and it stays deep almost right to the marsh bank.
“It’s not a bad trout hole, but it’s a good redfish hole, good at low tide, but it can get crowded,” Glover said. “I think the reds pull back out of the grass on the flat and into the hole. I like to fish there that last hour of the falling tide and as it starts rising. Don’t leave early.”
7 – The Spot Hole
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When the spot run begins in the late summer and early fall, this place can be amazing, Glover said.
“You can catch spot up in the creeks, but for the most part, when the spot come in through the inlet, they come right through here,” he said, pointing to a spot in the channel of Main Creek, across the creek from the mouth of Charlie’s Cut.
“When they’re really in here, you can walk across it from boat to boat and never get your feet wet.”
The boats are there for a reason, however.
“I threw my cast net in here one time just for fun, and I could hardly lift it off the bottom,” he said.
Basically, you anchor up close to the channel, put out your bottom rigs and wait.
“For 30 minutes, you catch-catch-catch fish, then you might wait an hour, then they come through again, and it’s catch-catch-catch again. The spot come through this place in waves,” he said.
Capt. Englis Glover of Tee to Sea Charters can be contacted
at 843-655-5459 or www.teatoseefishing.com.
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