I Miss The Swamp And Still Love It

[Redbow]

The Great Pee Dee Swamp down in South Carolina. It used to be my favorite place to hunt, fish, and just hike around in. The Great Pee Dee River ran through the swamp I spent many hours with kin and friends alike fishing that big stream of water. We caught many Catfish, Bream, Mudfish, Bass and Crappie out of the Great Pee Dee while enjoying watching the wildlife and seeing the spanish moss clinging and swaying in the breeze in the big cypress and black gum trees along the river bank.

A friend of mine had a couple of good coon dogs and he and another guy we worked with spent many hours coon hunting in the Great Pee Dee Swamp in years past. There used to be lots of gum ponds in the swamp and sometimes the dogs treed the coon on the other side of those ponds so we had no choice but to cross them to get to where the dogs were. Most of the gum ponds were pretty wide and waist deep or more in places so we had to be careful crossing them, it was winter time and the water was cold. We also duck hunted those gum ponds wood ducks loved them and fish were also abundant in them at times. We dug many of what we called blue swamp worms for bait out of that swamp any fresh water fish would bite them and they were tough and stayed on the hook better than red wigglers. Also in that old swamp were some of the biggest briar beds I have ever laid eyes on. How any animal could get through them I just don't know. They could and did but no man would follow them in there it was impossible to do so.

Then in the early seventies South Carolina was hit with a pretty serious drought. Many of the gum ponds dried up and we lost our duck hunting ponds and the fishing there as well. We didn't get wet any more while coon hunting in the great swamp but we hated the gum ponds were gone. Sometimes we got a little turned around while coon hunting in there but a railroad trestle crossed the Great Pee Dee River about two miles distant from where we hunted and we knew we could always depend on the sound of the trains as they crossed that trestle for finding our way out of the swamp. The drought was good for the loggers but we hated to see many acres of the big cypress trees and black gum cut down in the swamp. Many of them were pretty old growth trees that the loggers highly prized.

Its been many years since I walked, hunted and fished in that old swamp and I will probably never set foot in there again, not in this life. But I have fond memories of it that I hold on to and will never forget the wonderful times that I had there while hunting and fishing in one of South Carolina's most beautiful, remote and dangerous areas but well worth the time spent there during the years of yesterday. For my friends and I anyway, I guess we just appreciated and enjoyed what nature provided for us there. It was awesome and I thank the good Lord for it.

I am sure some of the guys and gals on this board have favorite places to visit, hunt and fish in down in Georgia and other states as well.

 

[Artfuldodger]

Wow, that river really spreads out a lot into swamps and river bottoms. Really wide and way beyond the channel. It starts spreading out below Cheraw a little. Really spreads out northeast of I-95 and continues that way to the city of Pee Dee.
Then spreads out even more below the city of Pee Dee and stays that way to the coast.
That's a heck of a larger watershed. The only time I've ever crossed it was on I-95 and the highway from Florence to Conway on the way to the beach.

 

[Artfuldodger]

Brim fishing still looks to be good in May.

 

[Redbow]

Wow, that river really spreads out a lot into swamps and river bottoms. Really wide and way beyond the channel. It starts spreading out below Cheraw a little. Really spreads out northeast of I-95 and continues that way to the city of Pee Dee.
Then spreads out even more below the city of Pee Dee and stays that way to the coast.
That's a heck of a larger watershed. The only time I've ever crossed it was on I-95 and the highway from Florence to Conway on the way to the beach.

Yeah it is quite a large watershed indeed. We used to put the boat in at Pee Dee and run upstream to Black Creek and fish in the mouth of that creek, it was black water.
I-95 is just beyond the creek we used to sit and fish on the river and watch the traffic on the northbound lane of the interstate. So many good times there I have had and when the river was down a big sand bar to camp on. The traffic on the highway would lull you to sleep..

 

[Redbow]

Man, that's a nice mess of Bream I love eating those fish. When April comes I can catch a mess of those in the White Oak River here.

 

[Redbow]

We used to go to Georgetown SC also to fresh and saltwater fish. Up Winyah Bay after putting our boat in at the ball park landing was the mouth of the Great Pee Dee River and also the Waccamaw. We fished both rivers at times but the Waccamaw was our favorite down there. We caught lots of big blue catfish that were wonderful for eating out of that brackish water. Then we would head for the Georgetown jetties at the mouth of Winyah Bay and catch Sheepshead. So much fun that I still sorely miss.

I corrected the Winyah Bad that I posted. But that Bay was long and very dangerous at times with the rip currents that could jump up with tidal changes. There was lots of water running thru that bay with the outgoing tide. Many people have lost their lives in those waters around Georgetown SC, the most dangerous inlet on the SC coast.

 

[lbzdually]

We were in a club in Twiggs county that had the Ocmulgee as our western boundary. The planes flew right over us when coming or leaving Robins AFB. I loved being in that swamp and hog hunting or deer hunting, but mainly hogs. To me there is nothing that gets your blood flowing than sitting in the pitch dark and you heard the hogs coming. The land owner sold the land to a company that puts in solar panels to sell the power to cities like Macon and Warner Robins. So many good times in that place and so many more we could have had if not for the owners selling it out from under the club manager, who had a group friends that were going to buy it and keep it a hunting club and letting older members stay. We had been in it since I was 16, so right at 20 years.

 

[Nicodemus]

I spend most of my time in swamps. Growing up it was the lower Oconee River swamp. These days it`s the Flint and Chattahoochee River swamps, and the Kinchafoonee Creek swamp.

 

[Redbow]

We were in a club in Twiggs county that had the Ocmulgee as our western boundary. The planes flew right over us when coming or leaving Robins AFB. I loved being in that swamp and hog hunting or deer hunting, but mainly hogs. To me there is nothing that gets your blood flowing than sitting in the pitch dark and you heard the hogs coming. The land owner sold the land to a company that puts in solar panels to sell the power to cities like Macon and Warner Robins. So many good times in that place and so many more we could have had if not for the owners selling it out from under the club manager, who had a group friends that were going to buy it and keep it a hunting club and letting older members stay. We had been in it since I was 16, so right at 20 years.

Same thing happened to our club on the Marion County side of the Great Pee Dee River down in SC. Jake's Hill Hunting Club it was called great Deer hunting but I mostly Rabbit hunted there after Deer season. A good friend of mine was the manager of the hunting club. One day he came to work and told me that the land we hunted had been sold to a group of business men and lawyers and after all the years we had hunted it now it was closed to hunting and other human activities. It was a hard blow to all of us who hunted that club and we had no idea it was going to be sold to anyone.

But that's the way of life in this world, you win some and lose some. None of us that hunted it had the money to buy the club land anyway. It was a beautiful unspoiled area but it flooded bad when the river was high when big rains came. I still don't know what the group that bought the land wanted with it. It isn't any good for housing but it was wonderful for wildlife and hunters. I think Weyerhaeser owned the land before it was sold, they planted lots of trees in there over the years.