Shrimpin' Aint Easy: Fall Shrimp Baiting in the Charleston Lowcountry.

A LO W CO U N T R Y J O U R N A L F E AT U R E / / F LO O D T I D E CO.

shrimp shrimpin’ in’ aint aint easy easy shinin’ a light on another unique lowcountry fall classic

I’ve spent my whole life in coastal South Carolina, from Hilton Head Island to Charleston. Throwing large nets for deep hole shrimp has always been a pastime, but somehow I’d never gone the baiting route for those tasty little sea bugs. With a set of marker poles, 25-dollar tags from SCDNR, and fish meal to use as bait, I set out with some friends to see what I’d been missin’...

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As luck would have it, one of my friends from college was coming back to visit family in Charleston and asked if I wanted to tag along with him and a couple other Citadel buddies to be another set of arms to throw the net.

I’d missed the memo that shrimp baiting normally happens at night, but after doing some convincing (leveraging the idea of all the tasty morsels there’d be for tacos, shrimp n grits, and more) I was able to get the all-clear from the lady and off I went to meet up with my buds for a night of cold beverages, net casting, and, hopefully, plenty of sea bugs.

We set off from Remley’s Point boat ramp at around 6:00 p.m. to find a nice edge that would be the right depth for shrimp to settle along but wasn’t so deep that our cast net would be ineffective or drift off-target.

As the sun set, Austin began prepping the bait (a mixture of fish meal and clay formed into flattened balls) while Justin and Derek started maneuvering the

boat and placing the poles. We were lucky enough to borrow a well-loved set of poles from a buddy who hadn’t gone shrimp baiting in a couple years. We added a bit more reflective tape, the license tags and then got down to stakin’ out our line.

How it works is pretty simple: stick your ten marker poles in the mud along an imagined 100-yard (hopefully straight-ish) line, chuck the bait balls which sink, slowly disperse and attract the shrimp, then cast and retrieve the net along your line until you’ve got what you want to eat or your limit (48 quarts of whole shrimp per boat!) is reached.

Once we’d finished setting everything up, we decided to just drift for a bit, let the sun go down, and put back a handful of chicken sandwiches we brought along for the ride. As the sun finally started to dip below the skyline, we began tossing the net.

If you’ve never tossed a cast net, it can get tiring pretty quickly, throwing and retrieving it over and over and over. With four

guys on the boat, we took turns switching between throwing the net, running the boat, and scooping up the shrimp as they fell onto the deck.

Our first few casts netted pretty abysmal results; a few small shrimp, some leaves, and a few shells. We laughed it off and kept scraping up a few each throw, all the while feeling hopeful -- or wishful, depending on who you asked -- that our handfuls of shrimp would turn into netfuls.

After about our second or third pass on the line, when the dark was settled in and the stars were out, we tossed our net out to about the fourth pole in our line and, bam, there was the haul we’d been looking for!

After this, it seemed like every cast we were coming up with a full net (except one, when a dolphin joined our line). At this point, we started throwing the smaller guys back and focusing on the bigg’ns.

Eventually, a good ‘ol SCDNR officer idled up to our skiff for a quick chat and inspection. After a check of our cooler (about 2/3 of the way full now), net, and tags, he left us to finish up our evening. We made a few more casts in the darkness and decided it was time to head back and get to de-heading our haul.

We cruised back in the darkness, enjoying the cool Charleston air, with the city and Ravenel Bridge lights guiding our way. Pulling up to the Hobcaw Dock in the Wando River by the port terminal at around 11:30 pm, we dragged our cooler full of skrimp up to the fish cleaning station. An hour’s-worth of cold beverages later, we split our catch into equal shares, our hands peppered with horn pricks from the briny little kings we’d harvested.

I woke up the next morning a bit sore in the shoulder, groggy from lack of sleep and a few too many blue bottles. I made coffee, got dressed, and meandered over to the Publix Supermarket down the street with big food plans for the weekend. While we had a seri-

ous haul of shrimp, once it was quartered up, I decided it would be a crime of sorts to freeze any of these super fresh hand-harvested bugs. That meant shrimp tacos for everyone followed up by a heapin’ helpin’ of shrimp-n-grits for Sunday breakfast.

For the shrimp-n-grits I grabbed local Geechie Boy stoneground grits, thick-cut sharp cheddar cheese, plenty of scallions, two yellow onions, and of course thick cut bacon.

For the tacos, I kept it simple with small street style corn tortillas, cabbage, jalapeños, shallots, plenty of lime wedges, and shredded Mexican blend cheese.

(I’d normally opt for fresh crumbled cotija, but decided to forego overflowing the fridge with dairy this time around.)

I’m not a huge fried food guy, so when it comes to fish and shrimp, my go-to is blackening in a cast iron skillet. If you’re gonna blacken fish or shrimp, there’s only one seasoning to use: Chef Paul’s Blackened Redfish Magic.

I’m confident there’s about a thousand great shrimp recipies online, so I’m not diggin’ into that futher here. The most important part of these meals is that there’s something special about catchin’ fresh food with your friends, preppin’ and cooking your own catch, and then sharing it with yet more friends. To me, it just tastes all that much better; you just cant beat a good night with friends and the delicious meals to follow.

Baiting for shrimp is a unique and enjoyable Lowcountry experience that I hope you’ll get out and enjoy next year—truly part of Good Clean Livin’ on the Carolina coast.

Want to see a more tutorial-like rundown on shrimp baitin’ or see an overview of the regulations? Here’s a couple links: https://www.dnr.sc.gov/regs/shrimp/shrimpregs.html https://www.sccoastalresources.com/home/2016/9/20/a-step-by-step-guide-to-shrimp-baiting

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