Where seemingly navigable, open water existed just a short time ago, black mounds of oyster beds, mud, and spartina grass now sit high and dry. It is amazing to fish the flood tide, then return to the same area on the low tide. The marsh is unrecognizable to a visitor. I kept thinking, did I really fish near this same spot a short time ago? I can't imagine trying to navigate those flats even on the flood tide given all the jagged oyster beds lurking just below surface. According to my guide
Chris Wilson, plenty of shiny new flats boats end up with scars from those beds.
But what most stood out was the "sound" of low tide. Sound in this case doesn't refer to wind or waves but the living sounds of the marsh. The living chorus included exposed oyster beds squirting water (a sound reminiscent of squirting water through your front teeth), shrimp making popping sounds as they exploded above the surface in shallow pools constricted by the tide, hundreds of fiddler crabs making clicking noises as they scurry for their now exposed tunnels, big mullet jumping and splashing for no apparent reason at all, and big redfish and ladyfish crashing edge of the grass gulping down finger mullet and popping shrimp. It was a living, raw gumbo that literally made me hungry.
While life spreads out in the marsh on the flood tide, it gets confined and ultra-competative at low tide with big fish and all their prey forced into small pools, thus the explosion of shrimp and finger mullet as bigger fish pic them off. Although the fish are seemingly more confined, they aren't necessarily easier to catch. There is so much bait available that fish don't need to eat a strange looking bundle of feathers.
Sound isn't a sense I often associate with fly fishing - eyes and brain do most of the work. But during low tide, the sounds of the marsh tell a detailed story all their own.
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| oyster bed at low tide |
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| exposed oyster beds at dusk near Charleston |
lovely
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