My wife and I took a week of vacation at the beach this past week. My family has owned a house on Pawleys since 1994 so I've spent a lot of time there growing up and have seen it grow and change. It's one of my favorite places.
Monday was my birthday and Tiffany is 8 months pregnant with our first child so this was vacation/birthday/last trip without a kid all rolled into one.
We had a great time, I was able to fish every morning and most evenings. Historically I've found the sandbars at the north end of the island, the groins every block south of the pier, and the inlet on the south end to all be productive spots. A falling high tide seems best for the fly fisherman.
There were quite a few rainy days and some windy ones as well but overall nice weather for a vacation.
Gear was a CGR 7/8wt, a Fenwick Aetos 8wt (graphite) and a Echo Ion XL 10wt (also graphite) which I just bought. I managed a fish on the CGR and the Fenwick and broke the 3rd section in half on the Echo while pulling line through the guides before even making one cast with it. Did that on my birthday, I was pretty upset. Don't know if it's something I did, maybe the loop to loop of line to leader got hung in a guide weird, but I don't know. I called Echo and they 3 day shipped me a new section. I never got to fish it since we had to suddenly come home 2 days early but their customer service was great.
I managed two flounder, one on the Fenwick the other with the CGR. A sink tip V line with a white clouser was the ticket this past week for flounder. Trick was cast as far as I could near structure or across the inlet, count down to 6 or 8, then slow retrieves back. I also had something chomp through a 16lb tippet on a shrimp fly about 915pm one evening, maybe a bluefish? He felt heavy for the second he was on.
The flounder on the CGR is particularly special since I was gifted a fly tying kit and caught that fish on a clouser I tied. First fish on my own fly.
All in all while it wasn't a record breaking trip as far as fish we had a great time, I didn't get skunked, and even if I did it is still better than work!!
Thanks for reading.
Posted: 24 Jun 2017, 16:09 • 