So, here it comes, the first Tropical disturbance of the year. Yesterday, Joe Caughman and I decided we’d better take a shot at some tailers before ole’ Andrea crashed the party and propped her stanky feet up in the marsh. I jumped in the truck with him around 5:20 and we headed south, glancing nervously at our phones and trying to load NOAA radar amidst the shady cell service on Maybank Highway.
We both figured we had about a two hour window before the proverbial shit hit the fan. We trimmed up on one of our favorite flats just before 6:30. The spartina was neon green against the foreboding glare of Andrea’s outer bands on the horizon. It was beautiful actually, the awesome fury of mother earth out in the distance thrumming like an angry band warming up for a performance. It was quickly evident we weren’t the only ones trying to make hay in the last waning rays of sun. The Reds were out in force. A few botched casts amid the gusts from the East and then the first drops of Andrea were among us. Glancing out to the northeast I could see a few docks in a creek that seemed a little lonely for a Wednesday evening, their owners probably still plowing away at some law office on King Street. Looked like a great place to wait it out. We picked one in particular because it seemed to trail out into the woods rather than some over stuffed Kiawah style representation of a 6,000 sq ft “cottage,” some million dollar shack that makes their wealthy owners feel like characters in a Nicholas Sparks book, beautiful but disingenuous somehow.
So Joe and I tied up to this strangers dock, grabbed a few cold bricks from the cooler and hid under the tin roof. The rounded tears of the storm slowly circulating to the east, giving little breaks in the rain. After a while I became restless and started searching with my eyes for any movement amid the flooded grass along the sides of the dock running out into the “wherever” the woods went to. If you’ve ever wondered whether Reds will tail in the rain then I am here to answer your question. They do. Small black spikes began to pierce the tufts of spartina moving back and forth in that ever familiar incoherent pattern of a grubbing redfish. I ran out into the rain and grabbed a rod, the first one I came up with in the pouring mess, an 8 weight with a small black fly tied by our buddy Andrew McCloud. Joe watched me with amusement. “What the hell do you think you’re looking at,” his eyes seemed to say. 
I made my way down the dock, stripping line and pulling it out of the cracks in the weathered wood. One long cast, one long cast I had no business trying, some 70-75 feet out into the marsh towards a blue tipped tail in the foreground of an approaching Tropical Storm named Andrea. One lucky haul, one small strip, and Andrew’s fly did it’s magic. A few choice expletives from Joe as he ran into the rain after me, my line clearing in awkward jerks and snags from the cypress planks. It was ludicrous and beautiful. We snuck one in. Not to be denied by mother nature. Joe was off the dock and in the water, bare foot and trying to block the charging run into the pilings. I hopped down and we both landed a very average size Red that might as well have been 20 pounds. These are the ones you remember I told him. Beautiful. Caught somewhere between “lets give it 10 more minutes” and “never should have been there to begin with.”
Cheers to the owner of that ole’ rickety dock and wherever it goes to, and thank you for giving us a little, to quote Dylan, “shelter from the storm.”
LC Journal – Doug Roland
