Last month, a project better than four years in the making was completed, and now the really fun part begins. It was an idea that came up the week I started working for South Carolina Sportsman, riding from the airport to the home office for computer training in the passenger’s seat of my boss’s pickup.
When he mentioned that the company wanted me to write a book, my heard skipped a beat — sort of like it did when that big gobbler popped out in front of me in full strut last spring.
I had often wondered through 30 years in the newspaper business whether I’d ever write a book. I wasn’t exactly sure I had anything to say that anybody would want to read, but a real opportunity never presented itself until I joined the magazine.
My boss supplied the subject, and I decided without blinking an eye that it was right down my alley. And what a coincidence: I met him one Friday night about 15 years ago when I picked him up at the airport for an outdoor writers’ meeting. Two days later, I caught the first redfish of my life. I have caught an awful lot of them since that cool November weekend.
It is a book about redfish — catching them in South Carolina to be specific. I had all kinds of great-sounding, catchy ideas for titles that family members kept shooting down. In the end, the best title wound up being the simplest and most descriptive: “Reds: South Carolina’s top 9 redfish destinations and exactly how to fish them year-round.”
Doing research for the book has carried me to just about every drop of water along the entire coastline, several times over, and I’ve shared telephone calls and flats boats with some of the best fishermen and guides around. I have worn out countless notepads, pens and one laptop computer, not to mention printer ink cartridges.
The book’s main goal is to give fishermen a place to start when they visit an unfamiliar spot on the coast to target reds. If you’re going to Hilton Head for the first time, how does that area fish? Which creeks are best? Is the water stained? How do the tides run? Which rivers are productive? What’s the prevailing wind? Stuff like that.
The book has a chapter on rigs, tackle and baits for reds, as well as one on redfish biology, and it has nine more chapters, each about a different segment of the coast, with advice and details from some of the experts from that area on how and where you can get more redfish to inhale your baits. I’m 100-percent confident you’ll catch more of our state’s favorite saltwater fish after reading this book.
One result of my research: I love fishing for reds more than ever — and I really liked them before. I’ve had my string stretched more times than I can count while out on the water learning how to get from this landing to that creek and why the current generated by the prevailing wind and the tide cancel each other out at this or that inlet. It has been an eye-opener for me, and I hope it will be for sportsmen in the same position I was five years ago: trying to learn everything I could.
The book is on the way back from the printer as I write. It will be available by the time you read this. Hopefully, you’ll be able to find it in your local bookstore or sporting goods store before long. For now, you can order it by calling 1-800-548-4355 or visiting SouthCarolinaSportsman.com.
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