Newsletter - Page 1169 of 2142 - Carolina Sportsman

Removing a flounder’s head right away makes it easier to produce beautiful, skin-on fillets from any fish.

How to fillet a flounder

Most anglers can adequately fillet a redfish or speckled trout but flounder are a little confusing. Do we cut two or four fillets, and where do we start? […]

Southern and summer flounder have both of their eyes on the left side of their body, making them “left-handed.”

Southern flounder are left handed

John Gribb

Flatfish, which lurk on the bottom and have both of their eyes on one side of their head, are widely dispersed throughout the world’s saltwater environments, but they are not all the same. […]

Anglers often sight-cast to a particular redfish that was discovered by the tip of its tail protruding through the surface of the water is it nosed around, looking for food.

Practice casting before the tailing redfish tides arrive

Jeff Burleson

Every year, anglers check tide tables to see when they can target redfish tailing on skinny flats, and opportunities are limited, with only a few days per month when the tide rises above the 5.7 threshold when the sun is out. And shots at fish during the flood can be limited, making casting ability ever-so-important. […]

Don’t block reds from moving up on tailing flats by parking on the paths they use to get there.

Don’t clog up redfish on-ramps around tailing flats

Jeff Burleson

The flood tides that affect the coastal region provide easy meals for redfish in the marsh. For anglers who have studied how reads move onto the flats, some of the best places catch a red during the tailing tides is in their staging locations in deeper water. But anglers targeting those areas can ruin their future tailing action. […]

Find deeper pools where redfish stage before entering tailing flats and try them on topwater gurglers.

Get reds on top before they move up on tailing flats

Jeff Burleson

Tailing redfish is one of the most exciting ways to stretch a line in saltwater. It is often more like hunting because anglers are looking for fish across the grassy flats and stalking ever so stealthily. If sight-fishing in shallow water isn’t enough, throwing surface flies to reds will sure get an angler’s blood flowing. […]

Planer boards allow striper fishermen to cover a wide swath of water with their baits and to get them away from the boat in shallow, clear-water situations.

Use planer boards around striper hot spots

Terry Madewell

Guides Brad Taylor and Mike Glover agree that covering a wide swath of water enhances your odds of success when fishing live bait for stripers. The way they accomplish that is with planer boards. […]

Fishermen who can follow stripers on their transition from shallower, spring patterns to deeper, summer areas, can catch limits consistently.

Follow the transition to summer stripers

Terry Madewell

By late June, hot-weather patterns typically set in on Lake Murray, but the striper fishing continues to be red hot for those adapting to deep-water patterns. […]

Marking waypoints and tracks during the day will make fishing after dark that much easier.

At night, GPS units are doubly important

Pete Rogers

A GPS unit is crucial to fishing for catfish at night on Lake Wateree. Unlike many other lakes, Wateree is very dark at night, with few shoreline lights to provide illumination. Knowing your GPS and trusting it is crucial to a successful night fishing. […]

Hollow-bodied frogs and mice are great lures for river smallmouth bass whenever grass beds are found.

Grass means bass, even in a river, and even when they’re smallmouths

Brian Cope

Surface grass isn’t usually the type of cover you’d expect to fish on a river with the kind of current the Broad River has, but some areas have plenty of it. […]

Smallmouth bass are plentiful in the section of the Broad River just downstream from the Parr Reservoir dam.

Tailrace below Parr Reservoir is hot spot along South Carolina’s Broad River

Brian Cope

One of Mike McSwain’s favorite summer haunts on the Broad River is the backside of the Parr Reservoir above the Alston canoe launch. He heads upriver and stays to the right where the river forks. It’s a few miles upriver, so he uses his trolling motor when the depth allows it, and once at the dam, he’s in business. […]