The 11-mile lagoon

Owners, guests, renters. Electric or paddle. Catch-and-release. Keep nothing.

If someone points you toward Broad Creek, that’s a different water. Broad Creek is the tidal cut through the island. What people who stay in Palmetto Dunes mean is the lagoon: an 11-mile saltwater system that winds through neighborhoods, three golf courses, and maritime forest. It is not a natural estuary. It is not the ocean beach. It is private POA water, a 1960s man-made canal owned by the Palmetto Dunes Property Owners Association, for owners, their guests, and renters. You do not wander in from Highway 278 with a trailer.

Come in through the resort and you’ll see why it looks like a nature preserve. In the late 1960s the Palmetto Dunes beach was failing, waterlogged at low tide, nearly gone at high tide. Danish coastal engineer Per Bruun’s answer was radical. Dredge roughly two million cubic yards of sand, dig an 11-mile lagoon, and pile that spoil into dunes. The beach rose. Tidal gates still flush the system. What you’re paddling is also a piece of coastal engineering.

Approved uses are boating, kayaking, canoeing, fishing, and crabbing. Craft are electric or paddle only. No gas outboards. No swimming. No paddleboards. Catch-and-release is required by the POA. Fishing from bridges and golf-course turf is not allowed. Keep nothing.

If you don’t have a house on the bank, book it. Hilton Head Outfitters, at the Palmetto Dunes roundabout, 80 Queens Folly Road Directions, rents kayaks and gear and runs lagoon fishing. Palmetto Lagoon Charters, Capt. Trent Malphrus, is the lagoon specialist. Book through Outfitters or the Palmetto Dunes desk.

The lagoon is private. It is still SCDNR water for licensing. Age 16 and up needs a South Carolina saltwater recreational fishing license even here: $15 resident annual, $75 nonresident annual, from the official pricing tables in August 2026. Annual licenses run one year from purchase. On a hired charter the vessel exemption may apply while you are under hire. Confirm with the captain. Shore or kayak on your own, you need your own license.

Statewide red drum rules tightened on July 1, 2026. That matters for Broad Creek and the rest of the island. It does not change the lagoon overlay. Catch-and-release is mandatory here regardless of the new bag. Red drum is the story fish. Slot and oversized both show up. A 58-pounder from 1987 is a local HOA claim, not the state record. Trout, flounder, black drum, the occasional tarpon. High salinity means fish do not reproduce well here. The lagoon is restocked.

Alligators live here. So do turtles and more than forty bird species. Keep your distance. Do not feed wildlife. This is the rare Hilton Head outing that is not the beach: a slow loop under live oaks, a golf hole on one bank and a red drum under the next tree. Then you put the fish back.