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South Carolina Packing List

Gear

We took eight-weight 9 foot rods, floating lines, and seven foot 16 pound leaders. We took redfish flies, which are generally any fly that looks even vaguely like a shrimp, crab, or small fish. If redfish are eating, they will eat anything you throw at them, including feathers, fur, polyester, and baseballs. Tan is my preferred color, unless my preferred color is chartreuse, purple, red, or pink, or if I’m feeling natural either olive or white. As long as they’re eating, redfish are a happy fish, and almost any color works.

What could be easier?

So of course we had a problem with our reels. I have used the same reels in saltwater for 30 years: Tibors. They’re beautiful things, handmade in Florida, and they come in different sizes for different fish, the 8-9 Everglades for bonefish and redfish, the 9-10 Riptide for permit and jacks, the bigger 11-12 Gulfstream for tarpon, and finally the massive Pacifica for things like sailfish and marlin, whatever those might be. Actually, I own some other 11-12 reels but I don’t own a Gulfstream, and I don’t need anything as big as a Pacifica. I own several Everglades and a couple of Riptides, but I lust after an orange Gulfstream. Not that I’d ever mention it because then Kris might feel obligated to remember that on my birthday or Christmas.

Or Father’s Day. Father’s Day is coming up.

Tibors are bombproof, easy to work on in the field, and for any given size their parts are interchangeable. They take almost no maintenance, and their design hasn’t changed significantly in the 30 years I’ve used them. Tibor engraves your name on a nameplate for the reel, and there is something so satisfying, so validating when one screws on that identifying nameplate. It’s there for everybody to see: this guy Neil Thomas ain’t fooling around. He owns a Tibor, so he must be special!

I love them. Mine have my name on them. I’m special.

Tibor makes other reels, the Signature, the Backcountry, the Billy Pate, but only the Tibor is just the Tibor. Tibors now come in fancy colors, though as I recall the originals were either gold or black. My oldest is gold, though the gold has faded and it’s pretty beat up. It’s the reel I used in South Carolina, and right now it’s in our skiff down the coast at Port O’Connor. It’s a well-made thing.

Kris doesn’t like them, and that was our problem. It’s not that they don’t work, but she says they’re heavy, and bulky, and to her they just don’t feel right. I keep trying to slip them in on her, hoping she’ll grow as fond of them as I am, because then I’d have an excuse to buy more. When we were packing for Charleston her usual eight-weight reel had a seven-weight line on it, so instead of switching the line I packed one of my Everglades. She complained the whole time we fished.

It was too heavy. It didn’t feel right on her rod. Where was her reel?

So now she has a new reel, a Hardy that she picked out at Gordy & Sons. It was a Christmas present, and by me a capitulation. It’s lightweight, probably flawless, probably made in Korea. It’s certainly very nice. It’s not a Tibor.

Hotels

Visiting the King Street shopping district in Charleston is a Garden & Gun ad incarnate. There’s jewelry and ball gowns, beachwear and books. I’m certain there are Luis Vuitton purses, and purses made at a boutique South Carolina saddlery shop, and purses made of woven sea grass. There’s crockery and cookware and antiques. I always wondered why Charleston was such a vacation magnet, and now I know. People go to Charleston to shop.

Where once slaves were auctioned, now there are bibelots, and bibelots don’t come with the same moral downside. I bought a spool of 20 lb. saltwater tippet at the Orvis store, so I did my part. My shopping was completely successful.

There are also hotels. You can spend as much as you’d like on a King Street hotel, though probably not as little. We actually stayed outside of the shopping district several miles inland, in an area of town that is gentrifying from the possibly dangerous to the marginal. I’m fond of mid-century modern motor inns, and we found a restored one in Charleston. In Savannah, just down the coast, we had stayed at a great restored motor inn, but the Starlight Motor Inn in Charleston was not as finely finished as the Thunderbird Inn in Savannah, nor was it as central. It was very good though, with small but well-appointed rooms. The room rates were immensely reasonable, and parking was free. I’d stay there again in a heartbeat.

The strange thing about the Starlight, I guess the ultramodern thing about the Starlight, was that we never saw any live employees. Check-in was by internet, which included a room code but no card or key. There was only a keypad for room entry. Room-cleaning was by request at an extra cost, which seemed fair since the room rate was so low. There was a storage unit with extra towels and coffee and whatnot in a cabinet in the stairwell under our room, and whether or not we were supposed to we helped ourselves to what we needed. There is a bar at the Starlight, but it’s open Thursday to Sunday and we were there Monday to Wednesday. I’m certain we could have roused someone if we’d needed, but there was never a need.

There was a pickle ball court painted onto the parking lot, and a moveable net, but there wasn’t a pool. Kris didn’t tip me when I carried our bags to the room.

Donuts

Annie’s Hot Donuts, in Mount Pleasant, was outside of Charleston proper but on the way to the ferry for Fort Sumter. At Annie’s, donuts are made when ordered, with fat fry-dom on demand and toppings from an ice cream sundae buffet of choices. It is such a miracle, why have I never seen one of these before? Why isn’t there one in Houston? Granted, in the morning, at the best Houston Shipley’s, the glazed donuts are hot when you get them, and a hot Shipley’s glazed is donut perfection, but that’s turnover and time of day, not the business plan. Every donut at Annie’s is hot when delivered. Miraculous.

There is an online list from Eater of Charleston’s essential donuts, but it unforgivably doesn’t include Annie’s. On the morning we fished–we fished one morning and then the next afternoon–we were on the water before any of the Eater-listed donut shops opened. We tracked down where Glazed Gourmet Donuts on King Street had been, but it’s now permanently closed. Joey Bag of Donuts was out of our way, though it was certainly one of the best names ever. On the day we fished in the afternoon, we had breakfast at The Junction, which was on the list, but it wasn’t donut day at The Junction so we had to settle for biscuits. I’ll grant that they were excellent biscuits.

The Junction was interesting not just for the biscuits, but because it was in Park Circle, even further west of the King Street shopping district than our motel. Park Circle seems to be the Bohemian, as opposed to the Garden & Gun, side of town, where because of cheap rents you can find a micro-brewery, or a bike shop, or a vinyl record store. It looked fun to explore, and I recall the biscuits fondly.

Restaurants

There are as many restaurants in Charleston as there are guitar pickers in Nashville, and in addition to the redfish that I didn’t catch, we left a bunch of restaurants untested. For our two lunches we had oysters near King Street. If we had had three days for lunch, we would have had oysters three days. We didn’t eat near enough oysters.

The two places we ate lunch, 167 Oyster Bar and Amen Street Fish and Raw Bar, weren’t joints. They were upscale, focused on seafood generally, and we paired our oysters with other more substantial things. At Amen Street in addition to oysters we had the shrimp corny dogs, she crab soup, and at 167 for some reason a lobster roll. I don’t think lobster rolls are native to South Carolina, but sometimes I give over to my baser desires.

There are authentically joint-like oyster joints in Charleston, but we didn’t make it to any and its a shame. Next time.

The first night in town we ate at Rodney Scott’s, which is whole-hog South Carolina Barbecue. There was this strange disconnect when people asked where we ate and we said barbecue, because they immediately assumed we’d eaten at a newer place, the Central Texas-style Lewis Barbecue Charleston. Why, I ask you, would we go from Texas to South Carolina to eat Hill Country brisket? I’m sure it’s excellent brisket, and I’m vaguely curious if it’s any good, but the world of barbecue is large, and for us whole hog is a rare treat. Brisket is not. Even great brisket is not.

At Rodney Scott’s, who orders both the hush puppies and the cornbread? Who doesn’t?

Monday night we ate at Hannibal’s Kitchen, which is traditional Charleston Gullah Geechee and which sports authentic 1980s Black Liberation decor. it was a great place, and we both ate the crab and rice. Both Rodney Scott’s and Hannibal’s are places I’d go back to. If Hannibal’s were in my neighborhood I’d go back way too often.

Tuesday, our last dinner, we went to Fig. I’m always so proud of myself when I get a reservation at a place like Fig, because it means that I’ve planned far enough ahead to do something hard. Fig might be the best known of all of Charleston’s high-toned restaurants, and it’s not easy to nab a reservation. Did I have to make the reservation 60 days ahead? 120? On the day our oldest child was born? I can’t remember, but whenever, I did it.

I read in some review that Fig is the place locals go for special occasions: Graduations, anniversaries, Tuesday nights . . . The decor is a bit dated, but it was presumably always meant to be clubby. The menu is American modern with a South Carolinian bent. It’s pricey.

After all that build-up though for some reason the waitstaff couldn’t get my orders right. My drink was wrong and had to go back to the bar. My entree was wrong and had to go back to the kitchen. I am apparently getting crankier with old age, because it bugged me, when usually I would have written it off to the sorts of normal human foibles at which I excel. Then I realized the staff was just dazzled by Kris’s beauty and couldn’t pay attention to me, so it was ok. After all, who wouldn’t be so dazzled?

Just as a reminder, that’s the orange Tibor Gulfstream. With blue backing.

Fig also had oysters, and we ate some.

Fort Sumter

We’ve been to a lot of Civil War battlefields, Shiloh, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Bull Run, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and Central High School in Little Rock. Fort Sumter may have been for me the most emotionally charged of all of them. Perched out in Charleston Harbor, in the midst of all that historic Southern outrage, it held the deepest reservoir of failed possibilities. Bombarding Fort Sumter was the path we chose, and we’re still paying.

We timed our visit right because Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest was published in 2024, and it is a great introduction to both the antebellum mindset and the particulars of Fort Sumter. It is also a timely book and pilgrimage to ponder the current state of affairs in these late days. It would have been a shame to miss either the book or the pilgrimage.

Playlist

Dizzie Gillespie was born and raised in Cheraw, South Carolina, then moved to Philadelphia when he was 18, and then moved on to New York. He also once stabbed Cab Calloway in the leg.

Moving to Philadelphia was a right of passage for South Carolina African Americans, who repatriated their popular music to South Carolina as Beach Music. Stay (Just a Little Bit Longer), Under the Boardwalk, Sixty Minute Man, My Girl, Such a Night . . . Motown was Detroit, Stax was Memphis, but Beach Music had its own sound and its own audience, and the audience was at least partially White and in South Carolina, busily Shagging.

Not that. That wasn’t invented until later. The Shag is the state dance of South Carolina.

Gillespie didn’t play Beach Music, but after the stabbing he was fired by Cab Calloway. It apparently wasn’t much as stabbings go, and he tried to apologize, but Calloway held a grudge, as bossmen will.

Gottlieb, William P., Portrait of Dizzy Gillespie, New York, NY, 1947, public domain.

Gillespie went on to become the first great trumpet player of BeBop, and influenced a generation of trumpeters that included Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, and Clifford Brown. Gillespie wasn’t the only great jazz musician from South Carolina. Hank Garland, the great jazz/country/rock and roll guitarist, was from Cowpens. Freddie Green, the greater jazz guitarist, was from Charleston. The great country blues guitarist, Reverend Gary Davis, was from Laurens.

Popular bands from South Carolina tend to have an edgy new-wave feel. The Country band, Shovels and Rope, is from Charleston, Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses is from Irmo, and Iron and Wine is from Chapin.

There’s enough diversity among good musicians from South Carolina to make for a fine playlist. Even The Marshall Tucker Band is perfectly ok in small doses. Did you know that there was never anybody in the band named Marshall Tucker? He was a blind piano tuner from Spartanburg.

Freddie Green, circa 1938, Library of Congress.

John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas was born on Parris Island, though he grew up in Virginia. I figured it was a close enough connection to include his Monday, Monday and Words of Love.

When Dizzie Gillespie appeared before his World War II draft board, he said, and I quote, “in the United States whose foot has been in my ass?”, and questioned whether they really wanted to give him a gun. He was classified 4-F. It’s good to know one’s limits. The funny thing is that notwithstanding the shooting threat and the stabbing, Gillespie is generally considered to have been not only a great jazz trumpeter (maybe along with Louis Armstrong the very best), but also a good-natured guy.

Guitar

I’m writing this so long after we went to South Carolina that I can’t remember if I took a guitar, or, if I did, whether I played it. Too late now to figure it out.

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Happy New 2025!

We’re on the last leg, though I’m pretty sure that fish don’t have legs. Six states to go, and our plan is to finish the last six this year. New Jersey, Massachusetts, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana . . . We completed the South last year with Georgia and South Carolina, and the Southwest with Utah and Arizona. We’re saving Wyoming and Montana for last.

Nothing is planned, except a trip to Montana in September and then a few days at the Old Faithful Inn fishing in Yellowstone. I keep thinking I need to plan, but in January–on January 6 no less–it’s hard to have much faith in the future. What a black day.

I keep thinking that I should calculate things like how many miles we traveled, how many nights we spent, how much money we spent, and how many species of fish we’ve caught. Maybe I will, but not today. Today maybe I’ll think more about Wyoming. Wyoming is a good place to fish.

We won’t be the first people to catch a fish on the fly in each state, but we have earned some great stories, and we’ve met some great people. Someone said to me recently that when we finished we could start again.

God no.

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Redfish and Seatrout, October 21-22, 2024, Some South Carolina Tidal Area (44)

I’m almost maybe sure that in South Carolina we were fishing in the vicinity of the Kiawah River, or maybe not. I know we met our guide, John Irvin, at a public boat launch on Folly Island, and that both the Kiawah and the Stono Rivers are near Folly Island. At least I think it was Folly Island.

Coastal South Carolina is a confusing mess of rivers and streams and islands and creeks, and ins and outs and ups and downs. Look it up on Google Earth. Locate Charleston and then study the surrounding coast. It’s like the spread out pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that almost but don’t quite fit together. It’s a jumble, a hodge-podge, a physical kerfuffle . . . What I’m used to in Texas is a reasonably coherent system of big bays and barrier islands. From what I can tell coherence isn’t how South Carolina works.

In South Carolina, even if you stand in the same spot, everything changes over the course of the day. There are tides in South Carolina, tides that demand consideration, tides that changed how we fished. Today, where we keep our skiff in Port O’Connor, the tide will range from a low at 2 pm of -.03 feet, to a high of one foot at midnight. It’s a tide of about 15 inches. That’s a smallish tide, even for Port O’Connor, but add a foot and the tide would be judged large. The moon tonight is a waxing sliver so there’s less lunar pull, and late-fall tides on the Texas Coast are usually low anyway. Sometimes we might get a big tide, two feet or more, but even the small tides move bait, and the moving bait triggers fish to feed. Still, the tides are generally so small they don’t really mandate how we fish.

South Carolina is different. Today at Fort Sumter the high tide at around 10 am will be well over five feet, and the low tide at 4 pm will be just a bit over sea level. That’s a five foot tide. When we fished in South Carolina the tide was taller than me, almost seven feet. Between the morning and the afternoon the tide moved enough so that if I’d only picked a low spot and stood still then sooner or later I would have drowned. At low tide we saw mountains of oyster beds. At high tide the oysters were gone and we could fish in the grass. We could fish where six hours before there was only dry–ok soggy–land.

That South Carolina tide was surprisingly magnificent. It’s not magnificent like the Rocky Mountains or the redwood forests or the Gulf Stream waters, but every day twice a day it is the most splendid thing. I was surprised by it, sure . . . I’m used to itsy bitsy tides and this ain’t no itsy bitsy, but I was also awed by it. The South Carolina tidal flats are better than mere surprise. They are magnificent.

John told us that at low tide South Carolina folk would often harvest a bushel of oysters for home consumption. At home I see oyster beds often enough. Over the years I have lost a good dozen flies to oyster beds. I suspect our skiff’s fiberglass is scarred with oyster scrapes. I suppose that if I wanted I could harvest my own bushel where I usually fish in Espiritu Santo Bay, but in South Carolina harvesting oysters appears to be a way of life. While I might be queasy about eating an oyster I randomly harvested from a Texas bay, for Lowcountry South Carolinians it’s an expectation.

But this is about fly fishing, not oystering. I have a theory about redfish, and my theory mostly involves me not catching them. If I appear, they do not, and South Carolina held true. We fished for redfish with John for two days, and Kris caught a very nice red. I think she caught it sight-casting but I’m not completely sure. I got one hit blind-casting where John told me to cast, which hit I diligently missed. John saved the trip by taking me to an oyster reef where there were small speckled trout, spotted sea trout, and I caught a couple of those blind-casting.

I think I’m required by South Carolina law to mention that speckled trout are not trout, but I don’t think anyone would ever confuse the two. If you squint real hard, spotted sea trout resemble trout in a way that a redfish or flounder or even a black bass do not, and it’s easy to see where they got their popular name. They look troutish. I don’t think though that anyone ever thought they lived in rivers and gobbled mayflies.

Speckled trout aren’t really much fun on a fly rod, but they are the great favorites of Texas gear anglers. They’re voracious, run in packs, are excellent on the table, and are reasonably easy to find in legal sizes. And a trophy winter speck is many a Texas gear angler’s life goal.

But the specks I caught were no one’s life goal. They were pretty, and certainly they satisfied my personal goal of a South Carolina fish, but I felt like I’d left something on the table. I wanted a South Carolina redfish. On the other extreme, I had been ecstatic only a few months before with my tiny North Dakota bluegill. It’s all relative, and with my South Carolina speck I’d left things undone.

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South Carolina, Part Two

Now that I’ve offended all of South Carolina in Part One, it seems worthwhile to mention some other stuff. There’s always some magazine or travel email declaring that Charleston is the very best U.S. vacation destination, even better than Fargo, North Dakota. I’m certain there are many good things to say about South Carolina, and I do like the food. There are lots of fish.

Population and lGeography

In 2023, there were an estimated 5.374 million South Carolinians, making South Carolina 23rd of the U.S. States by population. In the 1830 census, there were 581,185 South Carolinians, with 265,784 free and 315,401 slaves, more slaves than free. Of the free residents, 7,921 were reported as free colored. Female slaves outnumbered male slaves by about 4,500, and white males outnumbered white females by about 3,000.

There has never been a decennial census when South Carolina did not report some growth, but there were never any huge gains. From 1860 to 1870, during the Civil War, growth was a minuscule .03%. It’s estimated that as many as 20,000 South Carolinians died in the War, so that certainly slowed down the numbers. Between 1920 and 1930, growth was only 3.3%. That would have been the height of the Great Migration and the early beginning of the Great Depression in the agricultural South, so South Carolina is probably lucky to come out with a net gain.

From 1910 to 1930, South Carolina’s Black population dropped from about 55% of the total population to about 30%. During the Great Migration, Philadelphia was a particularly popular destination for South Carolina Blacks, and Philadelphia rhythm and blues would re-migrate to South Carolina juke boxes in the 1960s as Beach Music.

In the most recent census, more than half of South Carolinians live in six metropolitan census areas, the largest being Greenville-Anderson-Greer with 928,195. Nearby Spartanburg accounts for another 355,241. Greenville and Spartanburg are in Upstate. Columbia, the state capitol, located in the Piedmont, has 829,470, and Charleston in the Lowcountry has 799,636. While the combined statistical metropolitan areas are pretty large, there are no individual cities with populations larger than 150,000. Columbia has 133,803, Charleston has 132,609.

In the 2020 census, 60.3% of South Carolinians were Anglo, 25% Black alone, and 5.8% were two or more races. Hispanics were 6.9% of the population.

The state’s three regions, the Lowcountry coastal plain, the Piedmont beginning at the fall line, and Upstate (which includes South Carolina’s slice of the Blue Ridge Mountains), are together mildly uncomfortable when they sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, each boasting pride of place, and each fiercely protecting its perceived prerogatives. I have heard that the state geographically balances things like highway and education funding so that no area feels slighted. It’s the smallest Southern state, 40th in size among the U.S. states with 32,020 square miles. It’s a miracle that so much discord can be be contained by such a small package.

Politics

South Carolina is Republican. In the 2024 election, Donald Trump carried 58.2% of its 2,548,140 votes. In 2020 Trump carried 55.11% of 2,513,329 voters.

Lindsay Graham and Tim Scott, both Republican, are South Carolina’s U.S. senators. There are seven congressional delegates, and only Jim Clyburn, in South Carolina’s most gerrymandered Congressional District, is a Democrat. Presumably the gerrymandering minimalizes the statewide effect of traditionally Democratic voters. Every elected state official is Republican, and in the General Assembly the senate is 30 Republicans to 15 Democrats. The house is 88 Republicans to 36 Democrats.

It’s a mighty red state. The one Congressional District that voted Democratic for President in 2024 was also Jim Clyburn’s Congressional District.

2024 Presidential Election Results by South Carolina Congressional District, Wikipedia.

Pat Conroy

There was never a more geocentric author than Pat Conroy (1945-2016), and in the 70s and 80s he was all the rage. The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, Lords of Discipline, South of Broad . . . He even wrote a good, readable South Carolina cookbook. I used two of his recipes, the oyster bake and the Frogmore stew, for my daughter’s birthday this year. There are, I suspect, similar recipes throughout the Gulf Coast, but Conroy makes them seem peculiarly South Carolinian.

Readers of a certain age (and I’m certainly one), were introduced to South Carolina through Conroy, and all-in-all it’s a pretty good introduction. Conroy’s families are often as not full up with disfunction, but even his villains have their moments, and correspondingly his heroes have their villainy. It may be a complicated world, but end of the day his books are readable and his place, coastal South Carolina, is likable.

A number of Pat Conroy’s books have made pretty good movies, though not the cookbook. No one’s ever made a movie of the cookbook, and that’s a shame. It might be short on plot, but it would be long on character development, mostly mine.

Food

There are things people eat in the South (including Texas as part of the South) that weren’t traditionally eaten elsewhere: barbecue, grits, okra, greens, cornbread, pecan pie, biscuits . . . From Southern region to Southern region the particular versions of those things vary. In my parents’ house, for instance, we usually ate turnip greens, not collards or mustard greens. Central Texas barbecue is mostly beef, while other Southern barbecue (including East Texas) is mostly pork. Recipes in Shreveport probably have more in common with Dallas than New Orleans.

Southern Blacks apparently put sugar in their cornbread, Southern Whites did not. Northerners, who learned about cornbread from African-American Great Migration cooks, use sugar.

Questions of race and food and the sources of Southern cooking are fascinating, but as a general matter everyone loves iced tea, maybe sweet or maybe unsweet, fried chicken, and cornbread, maybe sweet or maybe unsweet. Traditionally Blacks and Whites, poor and rich, ate more or less the same stuff, though I would never put sugar in the cornbread. I have tasted it though, and as a child I put sugar in everything else, including rice and grits and iced tea.

Notwithstanding the South’s generalized food traditions, there are some places in the South that are Meccas for food creativity. New Orleans of course, Central Texas for barbecue, and the South Carolina Low Country. For Central Texans it’s all those German and Czech butcher shops, while for New Orleans it’s all that all dat. For the Low Country I suspect it’s a combination of wealth, copious inshore seafood, the preservation of African culture by the Gullah Geechee, and rice.

Other than Louisiana, the ultimate Southern seafood extravaganzas, the Frogmore stew and the oyster bake, hail from South Carolina. South Carolina lays claim to being the source for shrimp and grits and vinegar-based barbecue sauce for its whole-hog barbecues. South Carolinians don’t just eat black-eyed peas, they throw in rice snd whatnot and turn them into hoppin’ john.

I already owned a copy of The Pat Conroy Cookbook, but before we went I dug it out and read parts. I also bought Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, and used it some. The Gullah Geechee recipe for okra gumbo is not so different from my mother’s. It’s tomato and okra based, but of course the author adds shrimp. South Carolinians put shrimp in everything I reckon, including no doubt the cornbread and the iced tea.

In Charleston, at the Fort Sumter gift shop, we bought a copy of Charleston Receipts, the 1950 cookbook of the Charleston Junior League. Whatever negative things one might say about Charleston, The Junior League, or South Carolina, Charleston Receipts is a masterpiece. There are 22 recipes for shrimp alone, including Shrimp for Breakfast and six different shrimp pies. 

"Fry bacon until crisp.  Save to use later.  Add bacon grease to water in which you cook rice . . . add shrimp . . . "

Hampton Plantation Shrimp Pilau, Charleston Receipts, 1950, 38th printing, p. 75. As if these people don’t already have a jar of bacon grease handy.

Fish

We’ve had a good redfish fall in Texas at Port O’Connor, with lots of fish, so we were primed for redfish, and would go to Charleston to fish some more for them. There are other South Carolina fish to fish for, Native brook trout in the Upstate, redeye and largemouth bass, even a striped bass spawning migration, but right now I’m mostly thinking about redfish and saltwater.

When we were last at the skiff in Port O’Connor, I brought home the boat box of redfish flies I’d stowed nine years ago. They were pretty sadly rusted, as though I’d soaked them in tears for all the fish I haven’t caught. I had to throw most of the flies away, and since then I’ve been tying redfish flies to replenish the box and to take to South Carolina. I’ve been using materials and receipts from Sightcast Fishing, which specializes in Texas Gulf Coast flies. They do well-designed variations of classic Texas saltwater flies, their materials are creative, and their flies are pretty. Of course if you can find them, redfish will usually eat almost anything you throw at them, but still . . . it’s nice to know that what I throw looks good to me, even if the fish ignores it.