During the fall, the speckled trout bite shifts into high gear, and every fish is happy to find a feisty shrimp back-peddling as fast as possible. Basically, everything eats shrimp. During the fall, redfish, black drum and speckled trout eat shrimp every chance they can get, and shrimp are undeniably the best live bait, especially during the fall trout frenzy.
Finding live shrimp in the Little River area can be as simple as visiting a local bait shop, but often, demand will obliterate stocks. Thankfully, plenty of live shrimp are still around in November, and anglers need to know where and how to catch these tasty crustaceans.
First of all, don’t go out looking on the high end of the tide. Shrimp forage on mud flats and will seek cover in the protection of the marsh grass. Low tide is the time to go, when mud flats are dry and the remaining pools offer a deep-water refuge for shrimp until the tide rolls back in.
David Cutler of Lowcountry Fishing Charters catches thousands of live shrimp in the fall, mostly from confined areas.
“We catch them concentrated in deep holes mostly,” Cutler said. “It’s better on the lower end of the tide when the water is not in the grass.”
Just about every creek in the area will have deep water near its mouth or deep holes where they collect the water from other creeks. These places offer perfect places for shrimp to congregate on low water.
In November, the water temperatures are continually falling, and shrimp are not very cold-tolerant. As temperatures fall, shrimp will slide into deeper, temperature-stable areas with low current. The hundreds of boat docks along the ICW in the Little River area are routinely dredged and feature deep holes in the boat-storage slips. These are excellent places to throw a cast net.
Always choose a cast net with a radius between 6 and 10 feet to get a good coverage on the first cast to a spot, because the shrimp will scatter after the first few casts.
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