Recently Terri and I, along with our friends John and Kim, booked a trip to Charleston, South Carolina. The trip was to include three days of fly fishing for redfish for John and me, three days of shopping and touring for Kim and Terri and a day of touring and fine dining for the four of us. It was a great plan on paper. However, I had forgotten one important item and a minor one.
The really important item I had forgotten was the weather in the areas where you cast a fly to redfish. Redfish inhabit the coastal areas all along the Gulf of Mexico, then up the east coast to who knows where.
For all the trips I have taken to chase redfish, I almost always lose a day of fishing due to the weather. The disrupting weather can be anything from winds that will blow you off a casting deck to rainstorms that will last 24 hours to cold that will go through everything you brought to stay warm.
The weather in Charleston turned our three days of fly fishing into two days. I know, and just forgot, when booking a redfish trip, reserve an extra day to account for the lost weather day. The first day of our trip was windy and cold. However, we saw lots of redfish, and caught one. Day two was warmer and the wind was a light breeze. We were into fish within thirty minutes of launching the boat. The fishing was great for about three hours; then, the weather turned windy and cold. The third day was a “don’t get on the water day.” Had we booked a fourth day our three days of fishing would have happened.
As I haven’t been fly fishing on saltwater for the better part of a year. I forgot to do something else that will help make a trip successful. Before heading to Charleston, I forgot to strip the lines off the spools of my saltwater reels. After stripping the lines off the spools, I needed to pull them through a chamois cloth. Doing that will help remove the loop memory in the line that has been tightly wrapped around the spool on your reel.
By removing the loop memory, your 50-foot cast will actually travel 50 feet, not the 35-foot loop memory creates. To help make the loop memory less of an issue, you can do several things at the end of a trip. First, rinse the saltwater off your line. After rinsing the line, coil it in large loops to dry. Once the line is dry, reel it loosely through a chamois cloth onto the spool. This will help your next cast.
The one item I didn’t forget when traveling with someone who isn’t fly fishing is to go to a destination that has many things to do. John and I did a really good job in picking Charleston. Since our designated day to spend with our wives turned into two days, extra activities were needed.
Charleston provided great restaurants, wonderful walking, horse-drawn buggy tours and a really great hat shop that had three of us sporting new headgear. John and I also found a five-star cigar shop with a lounge that had really comfortable leather chairs.
I plan to keep this column taped to my saltwater reels. Hopefully, I’ll read it and not make the same mistakes I did on this trip. If you believe that will actually happen, you haven’t been on a fly fishing trip with me.
