Verified September 26, 2026 against SCDNR.
South Carolina is a fishing state in a way that is hard to explain to people who did not grow up here. You can catch a striped bass in a mountain reservoir in the morning, a bream out of a farm pond at lunch, and a red drum in the surf before dark, and you will have driven maybe four hours to do it. There are more than 30 major reservoirs, thousands of miles of rivers and blackwater creeks, 187 miles of coastline, and a whole lot of water in between that nobody has bothered to name.
This page is the front door. Below is what to fish for, where, and how to start if you have never held a rod.
Get a license. Anyone 16 or older needs one – and here is the part that catches people out: freshwater and saltwater are separate licenses. Fish a lake on Saturday and the surf on Sunday and you need both. Under 16, no license at all, unless you are using nongame gear like traps, trotlines, jugs or set hooks.
What it costs. A resident annual freshwater license is $10, or $5 for 14 days. Resident saltwater is $15 a year, $10 for 14 days. Nonresidents pay $35 a year or $11 for 14 days on freshwater; saltwater runs $75 annual, $35 for seven days, or $10 for a single day. Buy it online from SCDNR before you go, not from the parking lot on bad signal – and note the system goes down for maintenance early Sunday mornings.
Two things almost nobody knows. If you are a South Carolina resident receiving disability benefits, your fishing license is free – freshwater and saltwater both, valid three years. Residents 64 and older can get a senior license covering freshwater, saltwater and freshwater set hook for $9. Both need an application and proof of eligibility; the forms are on the SCDNR licensing page.
And two that surprise everyone: SCDNR requires your Social Security number to issue a license, and you have to carry the license and photo ID while you are actually fishing.
Then find a pier. Piers are the most forgiving place to learn: you do not need a boat, the water is deep enough to hold fish, somebody nearby will tell you what they are using, and there is usually a bathroom. Several of South Carolina’s public piers are wheelchair accessible with lowered rails, which we flag on individual pages.
Borrow or rent before you buy. A rod-and-reel combo that will catch anything on this page runs about forty dollars, but half the outfitters and gear shops in our directory will rent you one for the day and tell you where the fish were yesterday. Go talk to them. That is the entire point of a local shop.
The reservoirs are the backbone. Lake Marion and Lake Moultrie – together, the Santee Cooper system – are the big ones, famous for catfish that get genuinely alarming and for crappie stacked in the flooded timber. Lake Murray sits twenty minutes from Columbia and gives up striped bass, largemouth, and some of the best bream fishing in the state. Lake Hartwell, Lake Keowee and Lake Jocassee run up against the Blue Ridge in the Peaks, where the water is colder, clearer, and holds trout as well as bass.
Fish the edges. Points, humps, standing timber, bridge pilings, creek mouths. Open water in the middle of a reservoir is mostly empty and mostly a waste of a morning.
If the fishing is slow, the lakes are still worth the trip – most of the best waterfront campsites in the state sit on one of them.
Blackwater is the strangest and best fishing in South Carolina. Tannins from cypress and tupelo stain the water the color of strong tea, and in it live redbreast sunfish, bowfin, catfish and largemouth. The Edisto, the Black, the Lynches, the Little Pee Dee, the Combahee, the Salkehatchie – all of them fish well from a kayak or a canoe, and most of them have public landings nobody uses on a weekday.
The Black River near Georgetown runs past bald cypress over two thousand years old. The Lynches at Lynches River County Park has an easy landing and a canopy walk if the fish are not cooperating. Colleton State Park on the Edisto lets you camp on the bank and fish off it.
In the Upstate, the story changes: the Chattooga, the Chauga, and the tailwaters below the big dams hold trout, and SCDNR stocks several of them. That is cold water, wading boots, and a different set of flies.
From the beach you are targeting whiting, pompano, black drum, red drum and flounder, and in late summer, sharks that will make you reconsider your life. Fish two hours either side of the tide change. Fish the trough – that darker strip of water just past the first sandbar. Do not cast as far as you can; the fish are usually closer than you think.
Our full breakdown of the best surf fishing beaches in South Carolina runs from the Grand Strand to Hilton Head, and Surfside Beach is a good first stop if you want a pier and a beach in the same trip.
Inshore, in the tidal creeks that thread through the marsh along the Coast, you are after redfish, speckled trout and flounder. This is where a kayak earns its keep – see our kayaking guide for launches. Fish the flooded grass on a high spring tide and watch for tails.
Spring is the best all-round fishing of the year – crappie spawn, bass move shallow, and the redfish wake up. Summer means fish early, fish late, and get off the water in the middle of the day. Fall is the surf fisherman’s season and the best striper fishing on the lakes. Winter thins the crowds to nothing and the catfish do not care what month it is.
Every region of the state fishes differently. Cold reservoirs and trout streams in the Peaks. Big rivers, Lake Murray and the Congaree bottomlands in the Midlands. Blackwater creeks and the ACE Basin through the Heritage Corridor. Marsh, surf and inshore flats along the Coast.
Take your line home. Monofilament left on a bank kills more birds than anything else we do out here. Know your size and creel limits and check them each season rather than assuming – they live in the South Carolina fishing regulations, not in your memory of last year. If you catch a fish you are not going to eat, wet your hands before you touch it and put it back quickly.