Your pride? Or your fish?
In the late sixties, Sandy and Fonda Stuhr caught these hulking channel bass off the beach at Cedar Island, on the mouth of the South Santee River. Cedar Island is a big, beautiful and lonely expanse of sand, not another beachcomber or angler in sight.
Fish in these times were kept and eaten. If they were especially large, you took whatever meat you wanted for you and yours, then gave the rest to a neighbor or friend. The two hauled in on this day had scales like half-dollars that had to be removed with a hoe. It was a good day to be a friend of the Stuhr's, as you were about to luck into a big meal and an even bigger laugh.
After about three hours of fishing in the hot sun, they decided to go for swim. In these days, skinny-dipping was far from an accepted practice, but in this private setting, who would ever know? They peeled off their suits at the top of beach and plunged into the river for a long swim.
It was a great fishing beach. As they would soon learn, it was also a swell spot for a picnic, which is exactly what ten folks had in mind when they took a water taxi to Cedar Island that very day. They laid out their spread on a checkered tablecloth-sandwiches, a pitcher of lemonade, potato salad, red cherry Jell-O…everything one might want in a picnic, save for the stark naked couple that came streaking through the middle of it without warning.
"There was simply no other way," said Fonda. "They set up directly in front of where we had stashed our clothes. We just had to take a breath and go."
By all accounts, the redfish served that evening was memorably delicious.
-Sandy and Fonda Stuhr
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