Thread: Three timer Santee/Cooper River

With the first truly pretty weekend of the year, and me home alone, I managed to squeeze in three fishing trips and one other surprise. On Thursday I got up early and headed to the lake to cast to the trees for stripers for a while. It started a bit slow, but I finally figured where a few were hiding and managed to catch 13. I find it odd how the DNR can issue slot limits on lakes and the ones you catch will always fall just under that size. On Wateree the size limit is 18 inches, most fish that are caught are 15 to 17. On Murray the limit is 21 inches and the ones most often caught are 19 to 20. And on Santee where the size limit is 26 inches, every fish caught fell between 23 and 25 inches, no keepers, but great fun none the less. After the striper action I headed into a creek to try the crappie fishing out. I ran into Mr. Gerald Cromer while on the water and we exchanged pleasantries before parting ways. Brush fishing again was very slow, I switched to the shallow water trees and found the fish again willing to bite. I ended up with a decent limit before heading home. On Friday, I chose to do a repeat performance of the day before, only problem was that Mother Nature wanted to throw a wrench into my plans by turning the fan on high. The winds were howling when I got to the lake that morning which wiped out the striper fishing plans. I headed back into the creek to try the crappie, they weren't to eager to eat either. I beat around for a while ending up with 17 before heading home. On Saturday I met up with my buddy Tommy to head towards the coast to try a little long line trolling action around the Cooper river area. The bite started a bit slow, but we were able to find some biting fish in some shallow water and limited out on both crappie and bream/shell cracker. We ended up with nearly a box and half of 3/4 to pound size fish. The shallow fish were caught vertical jigging a pink/white/ green Rooty Tooty 309's in 2 feet of water. The fish caught trolling fell pray to black/blue/green Kalins on 1/16th heads, they were in 5 feet of water. Water temps ranged from mid 60's to 73 degrees.



Me with one of the better shallow water fish.



One of the 13 striper caught.



A pretty black fish caught from under a tree.



Some of Saturday's crappie.



Tommy bringing one in.



The Bream and Shellcracker caught trolling on Saturday.



And for the surprise, and best catch of the weekend was this beautiful 9.1 pound grand son.

Good way to spend 3 days Tim. Sounds like a mixed bag of fish and a lot of fun. And like others said, a new fishing partner in the making. I know you will enjoy teaching him to fish. I got a 2 year old Grandson that I am waiting to get on the water. My older ones still like to go, but they are teenagers and other things are on their mind.