How to Fish With Fiddler Crabs in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
The South Carolina shoreline teems with small aquatic animals, such as fiddler crabs and shrimp, in warm months, and the sport fish that love to eat them. Tossing your line hooked with live bait into the fray is the best strategy for catching in-shore saltwater fish off of Myrtle Beach. Tiny fiddler crabs, an inch wide, are also plentiful to use as bait. (See Reference 1)
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Instructions
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Gather Crabs
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Find fiddler crabs by walking along saltwater beaches, lagoons or swamps, and turning over rocks. Put on heavy duty gloves to avoid the crabs' strong, sharp pincers. (See Reference 2)
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You can also sneak up on a single fiddler crab and grab it with your fingers or with a bait net. Stand between the burrow and the shoreline to keep it from escaping back into the burrow. (See Reference 3)
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Gently insert a small, appropriate-sized hook into the far corner of the carapace, through the bottom until it pierces the top of the shell.
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Use fresh fiddler crabs, or any kind of live bait, such as shrimp or sand fleas. The bait will be more lively and more likely to attract fish. (See Reference 4)
Fish
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Attract redfish, also known as red drum fish, by baiting your hook with a fiddler crab, shrimp, sand flea or mullet piece and casting just inside the breakers. Redfish are especially partial to fiddler crabs, and are one of several fish common to the South Carolina coast, and Myrtle Beach.
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Cast for redfish, also, near piers and docks, where there a lot of smaller marine life and vegetation congregates. Bait the crab on a sliding-sinker bottom rig around sunset, or at the start of a falling tide, for best results.
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Fish for bluefish, who are attracted to free-swimming bait. Thread a wire leader above the bait, to prevent the bluefish's sharp teeth from cutting through, and use a medium or medium-to-heavy spinning rod for best results.
Fish for Myrtle Beach Favorites
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Fish for Pompano with small fiddler crabs, sand fleas and shrimp with small hooks, as the fish have small mouths. They prefer water temperatures in the 80s, and teem around Myrtle Beach piers in the sumer and fall.
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Fish for Pompano with two or three dropper loops, and let the bait tease the bottom of the water for a few minutes before reeling it up, slowly. You're most likely to snag a Pompano in the morning and evening, before the incoming tide.
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Fish for Sheepshead with a bottom or float rig, baited with crabs, shrimp, mussels, clams or cut bait. Set the hook firmly.
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Tips & Warnings
You can dig up a fiddler crab burrow with a shovel to catch the crabs, but digging could disturb an environmentally sensitive area. The crabs also don't always burrow straight down.
References
- Photo Credit crabs image by Amjad Shihab from Fotolia.com
