Be prepared and have a pitch rod rigged before you go out

I have been waiting weeks to say “it’s time.”

For a while, the water temperature was rising almost a degree every two or three days, but then, for whatever reason, it hit a plateau in the mid-60s and just stayed there. When people would ask me to show them the ropes about fishing in the Lowcountry, I told them to wait a few days until the water reached the right temperature.

I can only guess that they thought I was feeding them a line, because those “few days” turned into weeks. Finally, though, this relatively warm stretch kicked things in gear, and I am ready to rock and roll.

This past weekend, a good friend of mine, Dan Cornell, blew into town from Atlanta for the weekend with his 10-year-old son, and since we fish a lot together, we decided to clean the dust off his boat and give it a spin after a long winter tied to the dock.

With no grand plan in mind, we eased around the south end of Hilton Head to take a look at the ocean. Other than a few swells, the water was glassy. With nothing more than some frozen mullet and a couple of spinning rods, I suggested we go out to the Tire Reef to see if anything was happening.

I barely had the words out of my mouth when Dan had the throttles pegged as if he were taking his pregnant wife to the hospital after her water broke. I swear it only took a few minutes to get there. However, it took my back two days to recover from being airborne a few times.

Upon arriving, I took the controls and started looking around the various barges, army tanks and other items on the bottom. The water was a beautiful clean green, and at any moment I expected a cobia to pop up to check us out. After about ten minutes, I decided to make some drifts so Dan’s son could feel a tug on one of our rods.

Using strips of mullet, an egg sinker and short piece of leader, it didn’t take long before I hooked into some ever-present black sea bass and handed the rod to his son. As he was reeling away, I kept my eyes on a flock of seagulls and terns that were wheeling around squawking, acting as if something was about to happen on the surface.

No sooner had that thought gone through my head than the surface erupted. Spanish mackerel and big bluefish were slashing through pods of glass minnows, but there was a problem — I wasn’t ready.

Preparation can make all the difference between an average day of fishing and a spectacular day of fishing. Luckily, I had a rigged Sidewinder spoon ready to go in my tackle box, and after tying it on one of the rods, we began catching some above-average sized blues and Spanish mackerel on every cast.

I can’t tell you how important it is to have a “pitch rod” rigged and ready every time you head out. That pitch rod has made my day more times than I can count.

Especially since it seems everyone around here is crazed by cobia, a pitch rod is a must.

Have you ever noticed when you pull back the throttles to fish one of our reefs, up pops a cobia almost immediately? This is a perfect example of when a pitch rod can have you hooked up within moments of stopping.

I always have a spinning rod ready with a two-foot fluorocarbon leader and hook sized for the bait ready to go should this happen, and believe me — it happens a lot. I have a the bait already hooked, sitting in either the live well or bucket of salt water ready to “pitch” the moment I see fish. If you wait until you see a fish come up to the boat to rig, it’s probably too late.

The same goes for mahi-mahi, mackerel, wahoo, tripletail or inshore, especially redfish. For almost every one of these fish, I use nothing but a leader and hook so the bait swims as naturally as possible. Best of all, you get to watch one of these critters chase the bait down and, for me, there is no finer way to catch a fish than that.

I never was a Boy Scout simply because there weren’t any Boy Scout troops around here when I was growing up, but I do know their motto: “Be prepared.” So be a good scout and be prepared. A pitch rod will pay off in spades.

This story was originally published April 30, 2016 at 4:05 PM with the headline "Be prepared and have a pitch rod rigged before you go out."