There’s nothing weak about a 4-pound weakfish. And that’s what some Charleston fishermen have been learning over the past two weeks as the fish commonly known as “gray trout” have been patrolling nearshore reefs.
“We should have them for another week or more before the water gets too cold and they leave,” said Capt. Chuck Griffin of Aqua Adventures Fishing Charters (843-884-6696 or 843-860-1664). “They’ve been good around all the nearshore wrecks: the Charleston Nearshore, the Edisto Nearshore and the new McClellanville reef.”
Those artificial reefs, all between 20 and 40 feet deep, have been a home-away-from-home, so to speak, for weakfish, which are more commonly caught well to the north of most South Carolina. At home more in cooler waters than their cousins, speckled trout, grays are often found in deeper water – but close by the places where specks frequent. In the late fall, they typically migrate out of inlets and bays and into the ocean.
That’s where captains like Griffin are finding them, hanging around structure, looking for an easy meal. The meals he’s been feeding them have incluced mud minnows, speck rigs and soft-plastic curlytail grubs.
“We’ve had good luck fishing mud minnows on the bottom, and using quarter-ounce speck rigs – single heads, not doubles,” Griffin said. “You can use a jig head with a minnow or with a curlytail. Various colors have been working, but the brighter ones – yellows and whites – have been the best.”
A lot of the fishing has been akin to vertical jigging. Griffin advises at least a quarter-ounce jighead, up to as much as a half-ounce, depending on how hard the current is running. Getting your bait or lure to the bottom and keeping it close by is a key.
“You need to work it very slowly off the bottom. We’re making a cast, letting it sink all the way to the bottom, then just slowly bouncing it back.”
Griffin said weakfish have been mixed sizes, anywhere from one to four pounds.
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