Dr. Bryan's fishing page

Monster Blackfins on Valentine's Day

2012-02-16T11:47:00.006-05:00

Yeah I'm still in the doghouse for fishing on Valentine's Day, but wow did we smack the monster blackfin tunas. A big blackfin tuna is 20 pounds. A stud is 30 pounds. The first 2 we caught were 37 and 34 pounds, respectively. Giants. The 4 biggest ones weighed almost 130 pounds together, what a haul. We worked for them though. When we passed by fryingpan tower some 50 miles offshore at 6am, the wind was gusting to 23 knots and it was sloppy. Another 25 miles offshore at our destination it was really really nasty sea conditions. We were beginning to question or sanity and just exactly how we were going to get home given that it was a 6 foot steep whitecapping maelstrom that we were going to have to go dead into to get back. Then the wind just stopped... completely. Went to zero. And there was much rejoicing. We found the tunas and after alot of experimenting, throwing about every tuna trick we have at them.. we finally found what they wanted and it was on from there. Alot of fun and a smooth ride back to home.

February Tunas

2012-02-08T09:54:00.002-05:00

Caught a little weather window and slipped out to the gulfstream from Morehead City in search of wahoos and blackfin tunas. Found the tunas for sure, 21 of them. Couldn't buy a wahoo bite but thats ok, plenty of seared tuna steaks this week. Water temp in the gulfstream was 76 degrees.

Still biting at Badin...

2012-01-31T10:02:00.003-05:00

But it is much slower fishing now. Catching 2,3,4 each time we go as far as stripers. Many more white bass, largemouths and waccamaws. But with the warm weather heating the water back up to perfect, full moon coming up and cloudy forecast for the weekend... I predict they will go crazy again this weekend. Today is the first really nice fishable day offshore in a month. My buddies that have flexible schedules are all out there chasing wahoos. It will be like summer out there in the gulfstream today. Oh well, guess I will hear about it.

Weekend at Badin.

2012-01-11T08:09:00.004-05:00

With the striped bass biting well on Badin, I pretty much spent the weekend out there. I got there Thursday at 4:25 in time to get in on the tail end of a great bite and caught 2. Friday morning was good and I caught 11 and about 50 white bass. Friday afternoon I only got 1. Saturday was dead, we caught a bunch of largemouths and white bass in the morning but not a single striper all day. Then came Sunday. The thing with striper fishing is, sometimes they bite good on bluebird sunshine days this time of year. But they usually bite good on low overcast days. They bit good Sunday. They bit GREAT Monday. I won't post numbers for Sunday and Monday, but lets just say if you were one of those that fished Saturday and then didn't come back for Sunday... you screwed up.
Picture above is of 2 stripers, 2 waccamaw perch and a white bass that I scooped up in one netfull. It makes quite a mess when 5 or 6 rods all go off at once and you are by yourself!

Last trip to the gulfstream for 2011

2011-12-31T18:13:00.003-05:00

Brian Robbins, Schuyler Duncan and I slipped out for our last stream trip of 2011 Thursday December 29th, on a small weather window. It was a bit sloppy on the way out and then it got beautiful. It breezed up for about a half an hour right before we were getting ready to call it a day and we figured we would get our brains beat in on the way home... then the wind just stopped completely and we rode in on a slick calm ocean. The bad news is the water was green. However, this late season bull dolphin made the day. Good way to end 2011.

Badin Stripers on fire... finally!

2011-12-31T17:58:00.002-05:00

After the stripers didn't bite on Badin Lake last winter, and not much of a showing this spring... many people declared Badin to be a dead lake and announced the stripers were all dead. Which I never believed and am glad that all those others do because I have basically had the awesome striper fishing out there all to myself for the past 2 weeks. Just crushing them and it has been FUN!

Beeliner heaven... too bad season closed.

2011-11-22T14:55:00.007-05:00

When you get a weekend day in November where the wind doesn't blow... you better take advantage of it if you like to fish offshore. For the second weekend in a row the weather smiled on us and we were able to slip out there on Sunday. The first picture is at 6:15AM, 50 miles offshore as the sun was coming up. The wind was blowing 0.0 knots but it was still rough going as a 4 foot swell was right in our face. We got to our destination and found incredible bottom fish marks and marks of fish suspended in the water column as seen in the second photo. We just knew we had found the motherlode of wahoos with all that bait in the water. After 3 hours of trolling and only 1 bite (a scorching wahoo bite that pulled off... big fish) we had to see what were marking down there. We cranked up the trolling spread and dropped down on the marks... to find HUGE beeliners (vermillion snappers) , big triggerfish, full grown jolthead porgies, big silver snappers, and a few 200 pound sharks and 40 pound amberjacks too. Too bad the beeliners are out of season, but still plenty of other bottom fish for a great catch. We limited on all the above species (we didn't keep the sharks) and came home with an exceptional catch of tasty bottom fish. Wish we could have added that stud wahoo to the catch but that's ok, still a great haul for the day. The wind never blew all day and by the time we started bottom fishing it was like a lake out there... beautiful. And we found out that we won the tuna division and finished second in the wahoo division in last weekends tournament. Sweet!!

Finally a beautiful day and a good hook up ratio on wahoos

2011-11-14T12:05:00.005-05:00

Fished Saturday Nov 12 out of Ocean Isle Beach in the fall version of Martini's Hook a Hoo wahoo tournament. Left the dock at 4:30AM, 31 degree air temperature and (Finally) no wind. It warmed up nicely over the course of the day and the ocean was slick calm like a lake. We caught a 20 pound king mackerel first thing, and had a wahoo smoke down and reel but come off while we were fighting the king. 0-1. But that was the last wahoo we missed as we got 3 more wahoo bites and landed all 3. Pictued above is a 32 pounder and a 46 pounder. The 46 pounder has us in second place in the wahoo division for now... most of the boats have fished so maybe we will eek out a little paycheck. We are also in first place in the tuna division with a 17.8 pound blackfin. We caught a third wahoo of about 25 pounds hi speed trolling at 20 knots. Pretty cool when a fish that swims 50 mph hits a lure trolling the other way at 20 mph. Lots of racket! The first 2 pictures above were taken by another buddy of ours fishing out there. The first picture we just stopped after hooking the wahoo hi-speed trolling. In the second picture was taken just prior to the hook-up, with us cruising on plane at 20kts. The 3rd picture is some of our rods on standby. Squid chains, trolling plugs, vertical jigs on electric reels, spinning rods rigged with various plugs. But mainly I put that picture in to show how pretty the ocean was. Like a lake!

A mess of dolphin (mahi)

2011-10-24T11:13:00.003-04:00

Well, the wahoos are proving to be as elusive for us as the calm days at sea are. Saturday out of Harkers Island we ran out to the Big Rock area on Schuyler Duncan's 29 Cat boat. A 12ish knot NW wind turned into a 20 knot NE wind by noon and it got NASTY. Before that, we had 4 likely wahoo bites, including the one above where Graham is pictured battling a nice wahoo. It spit the hook about 20 feet from the boat. Unreal. We did manage 11 dolphin before we slipped inshore to do some bottom fishing. 1 grouper and a several nice vermillion snappers were caught before the winds picked up another notch. Also a bunch of huge seabass we had to throw back because he season closed on Monday (people that don't fish make the rules). And one reef donkey (amberjack). And a million spiny dogfish sharks. After a 7 footer broke over the motors into the cockpit... we had all had enough and ran back to shore. Another nice catch of tasty fish, flavored with a twinge of disappointment from what could have been. I'm ready to fish on a pretty day sometime instead of a sloppy one!

Harkers Island

2011-10-19T09:19:00.002-04:00

The plan was to do some flounder gigging then pound on the wahoos offshore. The wind had different plans for us. We did get out gigging the first evening even though the wind was whipping. We gigged the leeward side of several banks and got these 5 nice flounder. The smallest one is 17 inches, the big ones were NICE! Then the wind just howled. Sunday we beat our way out to the gulf stream to find a racing current (baaaad) and the forecasted 10 knot winds turned into 20 knots (real baaad) We caught a few dolphin, lost a monster wahoo and a few other wahoo, then went inshore to get out of the nasty seas and current. Bottom fishing was alot better for us, we got a limit of gag groupers and big sea bass, and a nice bunch of big trigger fish. It was a little too rough to take pictures out there and a little too tired once I got in. All in all, we made the best of another windy weekend.

Tarpon time

2011-10-04T09:57:00.002-04:00

With the NE wind not letting up, the annual October trip to the jungle cabin worked out perfectly. The tarpon bite was not as red-hot as it is sometimes... but the first afternoon we landed 2 out of 5 tarpon, the second day was slow as we went 1 for 3, then the last morning we put 7 in the air and successfully corralled 3 of them. 6 tarpon to the boat out of 15 bites... not too shabby!

Flounder gigging

2011-09-26T08:49:00.003-04:00

The wahoo are putting on one of the best bites in recent memory... and I can't get to them. Its pretty weather offshore during the week, then it blows a gale all weekend. Very frustrating.
This has happened past 2 weeks and forecast is for another NE gale this coming weekend. Brian Robbins and I did salvage some salt water fun this past weekend. Along with another buddy, we gigged 38 flounders in 2 nights. Not quite a limit but alot of flounder filets! Here is a picture from day 1, all of them really nice sized fish.

Wahoo/Drum weekend.

2011-09-13T11:34:00.002-04:00

Nothing like fall fishing in NC. First part of the weekend in Oriental catching a total of 14 drum, second part of the (long) weekend yielding 8 nice wahoos. Day 2 offshore, the boys had to stay at the dock until 9AM due to thunderstorms, and then got run back in early by more thunderstorms. But in the brief fishing time they did manage a 42 pound wahoo out of 4 screaming wahoo bites, and also lost a real nice gaffer dolphin. So a total of 18 wahoo bites in 2 days, with well over 250 pounds of wahoo in the cooler! Meanwhile the white marlin are going crazy up off Oregon Inlet... just can't be everywhere at once.

Wahoos are biting!

2011-09-12T09:05:00.002-04:00

Big drum are too.
I couldn't go this weekend but my fishing buddies Brian, Kennan and Allen got 11 big drum Friday evening, then moved the boat to Harkers Island Saturday and went offshore on Sunday, going 7 for 14 on wahoos. They are out there again right now, I hope they smack them again!

50

2011-09-06T08:24:00.002-04:00

Here's the deal. If you want to catch really big red drum, the Neuse River and western Pamlico Sound in early September is a great place to do it.
If you want to catch a pile of them... fish on both sides of a hurricane. We fished 4 hours right before Hurricane Irene last weekend and went 14 for 18. Ran back down on Thursday and in 8 hours of fishing thurs night and Friday, we released 50 (thats right... FIFTY) out of who knows how many bites. Great fishing, lots of fun. It's good to see so many drum in the river making babies. The fishing will be great in the river for another 10 days or so, then the drum will be spawned out and will head out of the various inlets (Oregon, Hatteras, Ocrkacoke, Drum) and take up residence on their nearshore haunts. But for now, they are all balled up in the Neuse River!

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-30T08:11:00.003-04:00

Ran down to Oriental Thursday evening and fished from 8 until about 3AM. The drum were snapping and we caught 14 out of 18 bites. We caught some real big ones but that was before we figured out how to get the flash to come on... Pulled the boat and moved it about 20 miles inland. That was a good call as Oriental got almost 10 feet of flood surge from the hurricane. Here is a link to some pictures of the flooding. http://towndock.net/news/irene-canoeing-the-streets-of-oriental

Sailfish and Wahoo Ocean Isle Beach with video

2011-08-24T09:23:00.006-04:00

We ran out of OIB last Saturday on Todd Tansky's Regulator, after hearing pretty believable stories of a wahoo bite going on at the Blackjack Hole. We got there at 8:15AM and had no bites until the 11AM. Then the wahoos turned on. That is often the case with wahoos. We seem to either get them early, or at 11AM. Right on cue, the first rod went off at 11, missed him. 30 seconds later, the second rod went off, got him, nice wahoo. Reeled up the planer rod and the bait had been sliced in half by a wahoo. Put everything back out and 2 more bites quickly but he wahoos came unglued. Then the planer rod gets nailed but no hook up. Very frustrating. But 5 wahoo bites this time of the year in 2 hours is not bad, just wish our hookup rate was better! About to go bottom fishing at 1PM when the short rigger, rigged with fluoro for sailfish, gets tapped. Looks like a billfish bite. Drop back, hook-up and a nice sailfish starts dancing across the blue water. We successfully caught and released him, then went and loaded up on bottom fish. Good day on the water! Check out the video :)

Triggerfish save the day, finally we get to fish in N.C.

2011-08-04T08:27:00.002-04:00

Finally got offshore here in N. Carolina. We went out with a livewell full of pinfish, and all our bottom fishing gear. We were hoping to find the groupers wadded up, and while we did catch 4 scamp groupers, we didn't hit the motherlode. We had to move around and try a bunch of different spots, we did get a limit of nice seabass and silver snappers. Finally at our last stop of the day, we found the BIG triggerfish, and a bunch of them. We were catching them 2 at a time, trashcan lid sized ones. The one pictured about fills up a big igloo cooler. We ended up with 30 of them, and rode home with a couple hundred pounds of tasty fish in the icebox. Good day!

Montana Trout

2011-08-01T08:51:00.004-04:00

After 6 weeks of hot humid temps and steady unfishable 15-20 knot winds, Ben and Rick Blase and I made a weekend trip to the Bighorn River in Montana. One of the premier trout streams in the country, and stupid cheap. Cabin on the river for $55/nite. Drift boat with someone to drop your boat off at the put-in, ferry your vehicle to the take out, take your boat out and clean it up... $100 day (split 3 ways). And 80 degree sunshine with no humidity. Awesome.

The river was really high due to the long cold winter and incredible snowfall in the western mountains this year. Rick and Ben have fished this river many times and know what they are doing... me not so much. It took me a few hours to get used to the techniques needed to catch fish in this heavy flow of water. We all caught a ton of nice rainbow and brown trout, and had a blast. Nothing like going north and west in the middle of a hot summer, I highly advise it.

Taking a break.

2011-07-05T08:53:00.000-04:00

Between windy weekends and other things go do... looks like a little extended break in the action for me.
Will be back at it soon...

Groupers, Seabass, Flounders.... Great Fishing.

2011-06-06T15:42:00.005-04:00

Fished Memorial Day Monday with Daniel and Amber Simmons, Tim Gallimore and Courtney Waddell. We caught a limit of really nice Scamp and Gag groupers, a bunch of triggerfish, and 6 mahi. Great fishing! Went back this weekend and gigged a limit of flounders Thursday night with Brian Robbins. Then Saturday we went offshore and caught 350 pounds of seabass, a dozen groupers and 4 American Red Snappers between 10-15 pounds. Snapper season is closed indefinitely so we had to release these fine tasting critters back to the deep. It was very hot and sunny out there both days, the 90 degree heat is here.

May 20 and 21st Offshore

2011-05-23T14:02:00.003-04:00

Ocean was slick calm this weekend and I fished Friday and Saturday out of Ocean Isle Beach. We caught some nice dolphin on Friday and then Saturday we caught a bunch more dolphin then went tuna jigging. Several of the dolphins in the 20 pound range. The tunas...wrong flavor tunas again, can't find them blackfins. Fun weekend. I will post more pics if my buddies send me some!

Went looking for tuna

2011-05-16T08:50:00.006-04:00

Blackfin tuna are among the tastiest critters in the ocean, and fun to catch. Some days it seems they are the easiest fish to catch in the sea.. and then just when you think you have them figured out... you have a season like we are having this year. It seems like, lately, we are always there the day after we should have been. Once again we ran to our blackfin spot on Friday, and found the tunas balled up thick. There had been a report of the blackfins biting like crazy a couple days ago. We knew we were going to crush them this time. As we dropped our jigs 150 feet down into the middle of the tuna, it didn't take long before we were all hooked up. Unfortunately, they were mostly all false albacore tunas again today for us. We gave it a good effort but after a ton of albacores and only 1 blackfin, we gave in. We did pick up 2 nice dolphin on the troll while looking for the tunas. So at 1PM or so we set off bottom fishing, and found the BIG vermillion snappers as well as some trigger fish and grunts. Got a limit of snappers which are going on the grill tonite. Not our best day, but a nice mess of fish. We got thunderstormed on several times so I didn't get the camera out much.

Above are a few pictures of our set-up. The first one shows the planer rod in action as well as a couple other trolling rods. We didn't set up the outriggers for this trip as it was forecast to be 7 feet swells (that didn't happen) and its a pain to set them up and run them if its real rough. The second picture show the kite in action... skipping a naked ballyhoo across the top drives tunas crazy. Not today though. The last one shows a topwater popper rod ready and some electric reels loaded up with vertical jigs. We go out loaded for bear!

3 more feet.

2011-05-09T09:09:00.003-04:00

One thing for sure, when the leader pops on an 80-100 pound wahoo that is still green and mean and right beside the boat, the atmosphere on the boat goes from euphoria to utter disbelief in a
heartbeat. Oh well, atleast we got to see a monster wahoo up close and in person. It struck the
pink wahoo bomb on a 24 ounce trolling weight at about 1 pm. We got it to within about 15 feet from the boat. The gaff is 6 feet long and Brian Robbins is 6 1/2 feet tall... so that wahoo needed to come just another couple feet and he would have felt the steel. As it was, it took back off like a greyhound bus and we couldn't get the drag backed off in time. KA-POW!!! What a horrible way to lose the fish of a lifetime. Thankfully, we hooked the decent wahoo pictured above about 2 minutes later and succesfully got him to the boat to take a little bit of the sting out of it. 2 other drag screaming wahoo bites that morning had resulted in a cut-off and a pulled hook. So once again the wahoos got the upper hand... but not all of them. We also had a nice bite of dolphins, boating 8 of them. We could have stayed with the dolphin in the deeper water and kept picking at them, but we had found the wahoos on a shallower shelf and had visual evidence of atleast one monster in the area, so we spent most of our time 'hoo hunting. Also had a white marlin come tearing into the spread, looked at the left shortrigger bait and the right squid chain... but evidently our offerings weren't up to his standards and he left without a nibble. Would have loved to get a bite out of him!! Very action packed day, and a little bittersweet, but that's what you go out there for.

Harker's Island Inshore/Offshore

2011-05-04T11:12:00.005-04:00

What was supposed to be a light and variable weekend turned into a pretty breezy ENE wind. A little sloppy. Too sloppy to run to the gulfstream on Saturday so we stayed inshore and sightfished for cobias. We saw 9 cobias and hooked one. It got away. But 2 monster black drum did not get away. Citation 62 lb'er for me and 51 pound for Phil. Sunday we beat our way out to the Big Rock and found a slow pick of pelagics. We landed 5 out of our 6 bites, including 2 decent wahoos and 3 decent dolphins. Around noon we left to try to cash in on the first day of grouper season, but our bottom offerings only yielded black sea bass... the tasties fish in the ocean but season closed until June 1st for some ludicrous reason that only the fish cops know. Note the expert job on the lip hook of the wahoo.... now that is lucky!!!

1st Losers again!

2011-05-03T14:49:00.002-04:00

Haha, we got beat in the dolphin calcutta by 2.2 ounces. First boat out of the money in the wahoo again too. Sweet. Went offshore out of Morehead City this weekend. Pretty good dolphin and wahoo action, pics to follow when my buddies send them too me.

Martinis Hook A Hoo wahoo tournament 2011

2011-04-27T08:35:00.002-04:00

We probably had the winning fish on.... again. Big big wahoo exploded on the left long and smoked a 50W reel. It was still smoking when the mainline broke. Who knows what happended.
Anyway, the fleet all ran northeast towards the Steeples. We had heard several poor reports from that area over the past couple days, and even though the satellite shot looked better there than our honey holes to the south... we ran south. Good call! While the rest of the boats that fished Monday caught only one small wahoo combined, we had 7 solid bites including the huge fish that we lost. We landed 3 of them, with the biggest one weighing in at 26 pounds. Not a very big wahoo, but with the scarcity of wahoo bites going on right now we are in second place with only 13 more boats to fish. We also hold first place in the dolphin division with a 12.5 pounder. Not many dolphins around yet. We will probably get blown out of the water next weekend as the weather looks good for the final 2 days of the tournament, but at least we are on the board for now. Final tally for the day: 3 wahoos out of 7 bites, 2 dolphins, 12 amberjacks, 1 barracuda and 1 houndfish. We only needed a false albacore to complete the trashcan slam (Amberjack, Barracuda, Houndfish, False Albacore). Maybe next time.

Fun day in the gulfstream off Ocean Isle Beach

2011-04-18T13:57:00.002-04:00

Finally some warm gulfstream water has rolled in to the continental shelf, and last Thursday the weather cooperated too. We were going thru the shallow narrows of Shallote Inlet at 4:30AM Thurs morning, and were 60 miles offshore when the sun came up. The first fish that struck was a fat 27.2 lb blackfin tuna which puts us squarely in the lead in the tuna division of the local "Rodeo". A couple more nice blackfin tunas hit the ice and multiple wahoo bites left us wondering if we would ever land another wahoo, as we were 0-4 at one point. We stopped trolling and jigged up another blackfin tuna as well as some big amberjacks. In between drifts, I put a 6 oz wahoo bomb down for the 1/4 mile run back to the beginning of the drift. The first drop resulted in a hard strike and a few minutes later we had boated our first wahoo of the year, sweet! Forgot to get pictures of it, and of the dolphin we caught. Good day all in all, tuna, wahoo and dolphin in the box. Wahoo tournament this coming weekend, hoping that when the big one bites this time he stay hooked up.

Rough Seas and Huge Wahoos are a tough combination

2011-04-12T21:22:00.002-04:00

Brian Robbins, Daniel Simmons and I rode with Todd Tansky on his new Regulator for its maiden voyage last Saturday. The weather was supposed to improve throughout the day but instead the front stalled on us and it got really really snotty out there. We lost a wahoo right off the bat, then caught this decent blackfin tuna. Then the wind started howling out of the North-East. We set a trolling course headed back toward home to cut the distance from 70 miles to 62 or so, then we were gonna bug out of there before it became dangerous. About a mile before we were going to leave, a monster wahoo smoked about 250 yards off one of the big reels. But, as seems to be a continuing theme with those trophy wahoos... we can hook them but we can't seem to catch them. This one pulled the hook on the second run. I guess our excuse this time is it was almost too rought to stand up. Oh well, seared tuna for dinner and another disappointing close encounter with a monster 'hoo. We will get the big one sometime. Next weekend would be nice... that's the Martinis Hook-a-Hoo Wahoo tournament!

Big Rock Saturday

2011-03-30T10:44:00.003-04:00

What could have been.... We raced out to the Big Rock on Schuyler's cat boat, ahead of an approaching low pressure system that was due to hit sometime in the afternoon. Always an uneasy feeling. We had lines in at 7AM. Not long after, something massive rocked the planer rod and broke the main line. Ouch, probably a great big wahoo. We caught a couple Amberjacks on the troll, yuck. Nothing biting our skipping ballyhoos, but pretty bait marks everywhere, so I put a few feathers out. It was about a 6:1 ratio of false albacore tunas (not tasty) to blackfin tunas (very tasty), but worth it. Then we *almost* had our day made at about 11am. With the boat barely moving forward while gaffing a blackfin tuna; a really nice 50 pound or so yellowfin tuna exploded on our flat line bait. But didn't get the hook in his jaw. Ouch! A few seconds later another fish exploded on the left short rigger bait, and sliced clean through the leader. Big wahoo. Double Ouch! Certain that we had found the honey hole, we made circles for an hour and a half... no bites. Then it was time to get out of there before the storm hit. Ate tuna last night, but was real close to EVERYONE having tuna and wahoo. Can't shake the feeling that we really blew it on this trip. Oh well, maybe next time. Should have taken some pics but I was too lazy.

Had to go get them sailfish

2011-03-28T08:53:00.004-04:00

Well, after 6 weeks of trying to fish here in N. Carolina we finally gave up and burned some frequent flyer miles. A quick weekend trip to Costa Rica to get out of the wind and get out on the water. This day of fishing yielded the first sailfish bite 4 seconds after we started. Literally as soon as the first bait hit the water. We fished sailfish for about 3 hours and landed 9 big Pacific Sails of the 16 we had a shot at. Brian Robbins was 6 for 8 on hook-ups, while I went 3 for 4. Pretty good for a dentist and a concrete guy. Daniel Simmons hooked up a blue marlin, but it jumped off. Bummer, looked to be about 250-300 pounds, woulda been fun. Above is a pic of Daniel's wife Amber muscling a big Pacific Sail aboard for a photo. After 3 hours, we picked up and ran offshore looking for yellowfin tunas. We found them and boated a nice 50 pounder, which turned into sashimi on the boat and 2 further excellent meals for the group! Great weekend and it cost less than driving to Myrtle Beach, getting a hotel room and buying gas for our own boat. Gotta love it.

WINDY!!

2011-03-09T15:50:00.002-05:00

As lucky as we got last year late winter and spring, with almost every weekend being fishable... we are paying for it now. We have only been able to get out a couple times since early November, and even then it was quite rough. The forecast once again is for rough seas this weekend. So, we are taking a little weather-mandated break from it, and hopefully we will get some bluefin tuna trips in up at Hatteras before we start chasing wahoos out of Ocean Isle Beach. All that is right around the corner, weather permitting.

Galapagos Slideshow

2011-02-15T10:18:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6qigJXgtJY

Here is a rough draft of a slideshow from the trip.
Much more comprehensive one to follow when I get
everyones's pictures!

Striped Marlin Paradise

2011-02-09T14:11:00.002-05:00

Here are a few striped marlin pics from the many we did battle with on our trip to the Galapagos. Great fun! Getting all the pics together and will post a full report when I get them.

Just back from the Galapagos Islands...

2011-02-08T12:07:00.003-05:00

And as promised here is a turtle pic!
Great fishing, great scenery in a truly unique place.
Full report and pictures later this week.

Oregon Inlet stripers

2011-01-28T09:49:00.002-05:00

Striper fish is on fire out of Oregon Inlet (Nag's Head area) After 8 years of very slim pickings, the stripers have finally showed back up in huge schools, right along the beach. Great fun, and this is all we used to do in the winter back about 10 years ago. Really great fishing!

I'm headed to the airport... going somewhere new!!!!!

All's quiet on the Eastern Front.

2011-01-03T16:22:00.003-05:00

Or at least here on the East Coast of N. Carolina.
Wheeeee, the wind has been a-blowing and it has been COLD!!! No fishing at all at Badin this November and December. Or at least no catching. The stripers didn't do it for the first time since I started fishing for them out there. What a bummer. Good duck hunting for us after the Christmas snowstorm down at the coast. If you enjoy being out on a marsh in 24 degree weather with 30 mile an hour winds you would have loved it.
We did manage to slip offshore from Ocean Isle Beach on Thursday Dec. 30 to try for those huge winter wahoos. But it wasn't to be for us. There were a few caught here and there around us but all we managed were 3 houndfish. I should have taken a picture. They look like like a silver and blue missile with a long pointed snout full of sharp teeth. And they jump all over the place. As far as trash fish go... they are pretty neat. But nary a wahoo. Oh well, you got to be in it to win it, and we tried. Something big coming up soon, I will have a good report I am sure!

Something wrong at Badin Lake

2010-12-20T08:26:00.004-05:00

One thing we can always bank on is that when the weather turns nasty in December, we can have a blast catching nice striped bass on Badin Lake. It has been that way for 30 years. Until this year. Something has changed the winter striper fishing dramatically, whether it be that there was a big fish kill, or the water got too cold too fast or the fact that a new baitfish; blueback herring, has been introduced into the lake... somthing. But the stripers seemingly have flat out vanished, nobody has caught a thing. The weather at the coast has been awful (perfect for striper fishing here... usually), but really nothing going on anywhere. We did slip down to Harkers Island the weekend before last but the weather was too bad to get offshore. We caught about 40 nice puppy drum fishing the rock jetty. I don't know... hopefully next year will be a different story on Badin.

Back to reality

2010-12-05T10:04:00.004-05:00

We have been chomping at the bit to get back out and try for those monster wahoos again since we smacked them 2 weeks ago. But the wind has simply howled every day since then. With another huge front headed this way on Saturday, we decided to brave it Friday with a questionable weather forecast and a questionable water temperature shot. We were hoping for the best... we didn't get it! We beat our way out to the Blackjack Hole in building wind and seas and found blended 70.7 degree water and no life whatsoever. So... after an hour or so of fruitless trolling, we decided to take the big plunge and follow the temperature shot and run another 12 miles further away from the house to the Steeples. Now some 77 miles offshore in a nasty, building 5-6 foot chop... the wind started to "freshen". Ugly. We started marking tunas and our spirits lifted a bit. Wahoos eat tunas. And I like too also... so things were looking up. Then, thankfully, a lone wahoo decided to bite. My buddy Victor Jones had braved the elements looking for his first wahoo... and he got it. Unbelievably, the wahoo chewed thru the leader right as Daniel lifted it into the boat. Unlucky fish, lucky us. We did hit a school of false albacore tunas for some non-edible excitement. But the fishing was really tough. With the winds not letting up and 70-something miles of cold wet misery awaiting us... we decided not to push our luck any further and headed in early to give us a little safety net if anything went wrong. All in all, one wahoo is INFINITELY better than being skunked, and we are all going to greatly enjoy seared wahoo steaks tonite from our one very very hard earned fish! Photos never show how rough the ocean is, but that first picture shows a nice 6 footer curling in back of Victor, and the next 2 show the waves breaking on the bow with spray rolling into the boat. Multiply that by a couple thousand times and thats what our day was like.

Wahoo Saturday with a sailfish to boot!!!!

2010-11-23T10:34:00.006-05:00

We had the kind of day Saturday that you dream about. I had been watching the weather and the sea surface temperatures all week and both were looking to be as close to perfect as you could ever want. We rolled out of Shallote Inlet at about 5AM Saturday morning and were 50 miles offshore when the sun came up. 65 miles offshore we pulled the throttles back and starting putting baits out. It wasn't 5 minutes later when 3 reels started screaming. 1 wahoo got away but a 58 pounder and his slightly smaller buddy didn't and were on ice about 15 minutes later. Great start!!!!!! The next fish that came into the spread was a sailfish and I hooked him clean but he spit the hook. Not long after that another sail hooked himself on the long rigger bait and Tripp Cobb had him boatside after a series of acrobatic leaps in about 10 minutes. Several pictures were snapped and he was released. Lots of fun but we still only had 2 wahoos and it was 9:30 now.

Thats when it all went down.

I can't remember the sequence, but by 11AM we had a quadruple header wahoo bite, a quintuple header wahoo and, for the first time ever on our boat, a flush.... all 8 reels screaming at once. Big big wahoos too. The problem with the 8-bagger was that there were so many other wahoos in that pack that the ones not hooked attacked the lures now sliding up the mainline and we only got 1 in. But who cares, it was awesome. Not long after the 8-header we went 3 for 5, with Brian Robbins catching a monster 67 pounder. Sunny skies, slick calm seas, amazing wahoo action. With our limit of 8 huge wahoos iced down by noon, and a billfish release to boot, we headed back in with the best day of wild wahoo action anyone could ever want!

We got our wahoos!

2010-11-22T08:18:00.002-05:00

Full report later after I recover, but suffice it to say it was the greatest day of wahoo fishing I have ever seen. Quadruple heapers, quintuple headers and whatever you call 8 wahoos-on-at-once-headers. Monsters too, we had a 66, a 58 and a 51 pounder in our limit of 8 wahoos, all of which were ove 35 pounds. Broke off a ton of huge ones, and went 1-2 on sailfish. Amazing.

Epic wahoo bite N. Myrtle Beach offshore

2010-11-16T11:40:00.002-05:00

Every time Jeff Martini calls me to go fishing and I am too busy... this is what happens. The good news is that the wahoos have officially arrived, and big ones at that. The weather looks spectacular for this weekend and we are going to be out there some 70 miles offshore. So hopefully I will have my own pictures of some smoker wahoos come Monday. We will see....

Wind

2010-11-10T08:22:00.003-05:00

Well, after being able to get offshore practically every weekend we wanted to all year, the wind has now howled going on 3 straight weeks. The good news is the gulf stream has finally got a great temperature break off of Ocean Isle Beach and the wahoos should be thick, and the yellowfin tunas have arrived off of Oregon Inlet... now we just need a break in the weather. It's going to be another blow out this weekend but we will be ready for the following weekend, probably going wahoo fishing. Fingers crossed for light winds!

Big Weekend at Harkers Island

2010-10-26T16:06:00.003-04:00

I was going to photo-document the whole trip, but both batteries for my Cannon SLR were dead... so I just snapped a couple with my cell phone. Oh well. But there were plenty of photo opportunities to be had! Brian Robbins, Jeff Hoffman and I met our buddies Trey Massengill, his dad and Harkers Island legend Ray, and Schuyler Duncan for a weekend of trying to catch as many different species as we could. Fall in Harkers Island is a special deal, more different fishing opportunities present themselves than you can imagine. Day one it was blowing half a gale but we beat our way across the shoals in the 30 foot Cat boat at about 1PM when the wind dropped a bit. The idea was to live bait king mackerel fish. Our bait wasn't exactly in great shape and we couldn't buy a bite, but we were marking good marks on the bottom. We switched gears and soon had a limit of nice gag groupers in the boat, and one scamp, all on spinning rods. All this activity got the kings fired up and we put our last decent bait out and it got slashed to bits by a king. With the sun fading and the seas still up, we wanted to get across the shoals before dark so in we went. Before we got to the shoals, we had to stop to check out an awesome sight. Hundreds of gulls were diving on the glass minnows that were getting annihilated by hundreds of false albacore tunas. That is a common sight. What wasnt common was the 50-100 dusky sharks shoulder to shoulder with their fins out of the water in the middle of it all eating the minnows, albacores and the unlucky gull or 2 that got too close. We got to see a wayward seagull meet its end in the jaws of a shark. I took a second to pitch a stingsilver into the frenzy and catch a nice albacore on the spinning rod. Wild stuff. Day 2 we ran offshore to the Big Rock and had a 35 pound wahoo on ice in the first 5 minutes. It was followed by a pair of nice Atlantic Bonitos, and then some throw-back stuff: more false albacores and a big barracuda. We then hooked but lost a monster wahoo, and boated a 20 lb king mackerel. Very happy to have a nice wahoo in the box but not thrilled with the overall action taking place, we changed plans and went bottom fishing. That afternoon yielded 3 more gag groupers, 30 vermillion snappers, 25 sea bass, 20 trigger fish, 5 grunts and a variety of junk like yellow bass, ring tails, 2 moray eels and a bunch of dogfish sharks. We ran in, cleaned fish and had seared tuna with soy and wasabi, and fried triggerfish filets. Yummy. Next it was put the gigging boats in and head out for a night of flounder gigging. 2 boats managed 24 nice flounders. After several well-earned hours of sleep we took the Jones Brothers bateau to the rock jetty and found the puppy drum from 17 to 27 inches happy to bite on about every cast of a well-placed gulp shrimp. We landed 30, kept the nicest 3, also caught some sea bass and a big fat ugly toad fish. We stopped to throw jigs at the diving birds on the way in a landed a dozen bluefish. We knew where to go to get some speckled trout but we were just too tired.
So: the count for the weekend was a dozen gag groupers, a scamp grouper, 35 lb wahoo, 2 atlantic bonitos, 30 vermillion snappers, 25 bass, 20 triggers, 5 grunts, 24 flounder, 3 puppy drum (and 27 released) a 20 lb king mackerel, a dozen bluefish, a bunch of false albacores, sharks, ringtails and yellow bass, a barracuda, 2 moray eels and last but not least... a toad fish! Pictured is Trey with one of the gag groupers and the wahoo.

Scamp groupers save the day (again)

2010-10-19T21:26:00.004-04:00

We got out Sunday out of Ocean Isle Beach and went looking for wahoos and tunas. 85 miles later we had worked 2 beautiful weedlines and hit several of our favorite ledges and rockpiles and only had an 8 pound mahi and a 3 pound atlantic bonito to show for it. So we went bottom fishing and put it to the silver snappers, vermillion snappers, triggers, jolt-head porgies, black seabass and scamp groupers pretty good. Not our best day by any stretch, but a very full effort was put in and when the scamps don't fit in the cooler, that ain't bad. Between this Sunday and last Sunday we have put 22 nice scamps on ice. We did see some good sized blackfin tuna busting flying fish on the way in, stopped and put out feathers and circled the area. Got one bite and he about spooled a Penn320 reel. Pulled off the fat blackfin tuna right at the boat, dang it. No sushi for us. It won't be long before the trolling bite picks up, I hope. Until then we will keep giving the groupers a fit.

Incredible tarpon action

2010-10-12T13:50:00.004-04:00

Wow, we hit it absolutely perfectly at the cabin in Costa Rica.
Incredible weather and great great fishing. The tarpon were literally jumping in the boat. No really, we had one hit a lure and land on top of the motor on his second jump. A 200 pounder. It could have been ugly but he slid back into the water and took off jumping again. The first afternoon we fished, within 5 minutes of starting we had a quintuple header. One boat with a double and one boat with a triple. The picture to the left is of Rick Blase, Daniel Simmons and myself working on a different triple header. We went 13 for 33 the first afternoon and 25 for 72 in one full day and 2 half days of fishing. Incredible.

Ocean Isle offshore trip Friday Sept 24

2010-09-28T10:38:00.002-04:00

Well, the offshore bite out of Ocean Isle hasn't exactly been worth a crap lately, but we went anyway. We knew there was no temp change or current edge. We also knew they were catching the fool out of the wahoos and dolphin up at Hatteras and Morehead. There was a super-nice cold water eddy with a 3.5 degree temp break out at the Bubble Rock that I really wanted to run to, but it was nearly 90 miles offshore and we just couldn't justify it. So Brian Robbins, Steve Austin and I played paper-scissors-rock to see if we went to the McMarlen, Steeples or 100/400... Steve won and it was off to the 100/400 again. Once again we got lucky and spotted a mylar balloon floating about 45 miles offshore. I doubted it was enough to hold anything, but as we eased up to it a half-dozen gaffers shot out from under it. We quickly had the first one hooked up on a hunk of squid, but the other ones got wise and wouldn't bite. Until Brian threw about 30 live pogies at them and put them into a frenzy. With a nice gang of decent dolphin on ice, we continued to the 100/400 where 3 hours of trolling in beautiful deep-blue but lifeless water produced exactly one small dolphin which we lost. We couldn't replicate the bottom fishing success we had the previous weekend and struggled catch some grunts and other assorted critters, nothing to write home about. But the ocean was slick calm and it was a good time, plenty of dolphin filets for the grill. I'm ready for some temp breaks to form. No pics from this trip, too hectic while we were bailing and then nothing to photograph after that. We did catch a bunch of puppy drum in the backwaters Thursday afternoon and Saturday to top off the catch.

Good day of taking what the ocean will give us!

2010-09-14T12:35:00.005-04:00

Brian Robbins, our friend Thomas from Ocean Isle and I blasted off headed offshore thru Shallote Inlet at about 5:30AM Friday morning. We were hoping to catch some wahoos out at the 100/400 ledge some 60 miles offshore. Well, turns out that was about the only thing we didn't catch. The offshore waters down that way are still warm and blended and the gulf stream trolling isn't all that great yet, so we were really happy when, at about 7:15AM and some 35 miles offshore, we saw a big fiberglass dockbox floating along about a halfmile away. We eased up to it hoping to see dolphin or cobia or tripletails hanging out around it. The dolphin were there, thick! 30 minutes later we had 25 of them in the ice box. The limit is 10/man so figuring we would catch several bigger ones in the gulfstream we left 5 shy of our limit. That was a mistake.
An hour later we were trolling the continental shelf and not much was going on. After 3 hours or so we decided to troll in to a bottom fishing spot on the ledge. Before we got there we had a double header knock down and landed one out of 2 blackfin tunas, a nice one about 17 pounds. Sushi!!! Another hour spent trying to find his buddies proved fruitless, so we went to bottom fishing. The first drop yielded a gag grouper and a big vermillion snapper. We were onto something. The next drop something that fought alot like a big grouper straightened my hook out half way up, dangit. We continued steady catching bottom fish until we ended up with our limit of 5 really nice vermillion snappers/person, our limit of 1 silver snapper/person, a bunch of big trigger fish and purple grunts. And a 50 pound barracuda that kept eating our catch on the way up. We re-educated him and I don't think he will be doing that anymore. So final count of our combination trolling, casting to dolphin and bottom fishing trip was 25 dolphin, 15 vermillion snappers, 15 trigger fish, a half dozen grunts, 3 silver snappers and a gag grouper. No wahoos, but thats ok, a box full of tasty critters.

Drum fishing with the family

2010-09-08T08:32:00.003-04:00

Lauren and Derek had a great time catching drum this weekend out of Oriental. Cheryl and my buddy Trey Massengill were with us as well and the weather was beautiful. We light- tackle fished Saturday afternoon and Lauren caught a 4 pound flounder on the first cast. We moved to the next point and the puppy drum were snapping. About 15 nice drum from 4 to 12 pounds later we ran back in. I dropped the kids off (they wanted to go to the pool) and ran back out 15 miles to set up and catch the big drum, which we did, including a monster 50 pound plus female.

Sunday we went day-time fishing for the big drum and found them being very cooperative on the second spot we stopped at. Lauren landed the first one, a nice 30 poundish male drum. Derek got the next one, a very big drum for a male, pushing 50 inches long and probably over 45 pounds. Smiles all around. We had a bunch of other bites but couldn't keep them glued on. No worries, we caught all we needed. We ran back in, had fried flounder and cajun-blackened drum courtesy of the fish the kiddies caught the day before, and then drove to Atlantic Beach for a sunset game of beach football.

On Monday, Jeff Crisco, Trey and I tried to beat our way out to the gulfstream to take advantage of the great wahoo fishing going on. The weatherman got it wrong and by the time we were 25 miles offshore it was blowing 20kts out of the NE and with a strong westerly current bucking the wind the waves were stacked up and 5-6 feet. When a 56 foot sportfisher turned around and headed back to port, we decided that there was no shame in doing the same... save our backs and the boat for a better day!

Big Drum trip to the Neuse River

2010-08-30T11:02:00.002-04:00

With big swells from hurricane Danielle and a North-East wind stirring up the ocean, we went to Oriental for the first big drum trip of the year. We found them biting pretty eagerly, catching 7 out of 9 nice ones from 30 to 45 pounds Friday evening. Saturay we caught our limit of keeper sized drum from in a hurry, then had fun releasing the 5 to 15 pounders all afternoon. We set up for the big ones about an hour before sunset and caugh 3 out of 4 in the next hour, and called it a trip. Lots of fun.

Hog Snapper, several groupers and huge triggerfish

2010-08-23T11:26:00.003-04:00

Finally got offshore on Sunday, the wind gave us a break. We got a couple nice scamp groupers, a bunch of nice grunts and a few seabass, and this rare catch, a beautiful hog snapper, at a ledge about 50 miles offshore. We then ran to the gulf stream and trolled for a couple hours, catching a nice blackfin tuna and getting a likely wahoo bite that didn't stay glued on. We then bottom fished on the continental shelf and got into the huge (5-6 pound) trigger fish and got a great big red grouper, pushing 25 pounds. Really fun day. It was about a hundred degrees in the shade and there was no shade, but worth it to see the ocean slick as glass for a change! We made it in about 30 minutes ahead of a huge line of thunderstorms. Sweet.

Wind

2010-08-16T14:25:00.002-04:00

Had 150 live baits caught and penned up, we have found the groupers and I had 6 days in which to get offshore and catch them... just needed a little decent weather. The wind howled all 6 days and we didn't get to go. Oh well.

Tarpon Tournament. We ate more bait than the tarpon did.

2010-08-05T09:34:00.006-04:00

The tarpon tournament went about like it usually does for me. The weather was beautiful Monday-Thursday the week leading up to the tourney and everyone was seeing and hooking tarpon. I showed up Friday and the wind changed out to the North-East and it howled. It was rough and tough and no tarpon. Fished hard for 3 days and never even saw one. The wind did lay out for about 2 hours Sunday in between thunderstorms and we were right where the big body of fish has been, but no luck. We did slip into one of my drum holes and catch some nice puppy drum which we blackened and enjoyed for dinner. We also ate some of the bait. We use fresh spots for tarpon bait and since the tarpon didn't want them, we put a mess of them in the breading and fried them. All in all, another frustrating tarpon tourney. Ready to get back to chasing groupers, tunas and wahoos.

Well, they can't all be good reports...

2010-07-22T08:21:00.002-04:00

Went to the Neuse River/Pamlico Sound for the first time the summer, and the SW winds really beat us down. It was very rough, and while that usually means good drum fishing, all it meant for us was 2 really tough days on the water. It was still fun, and we managed to scrap out a nice 27 inch puppy drum for the grill as well as a couple spanish mackerels, small flounders, a handful of bluefish and a purple grunt. And the first big skate of the year... many more to come. That would make for a good 15 minutes of fishing, unfortunately that was 2 days of hard effort. Gonna lay low this weekend, then tarpon tournament coming up next!

Scamp Groupers and Sea Bass... and a bunch of them!

2010-07-11T20:00:00.002-04:00

We really put it to the Scamp groupers and big sea bass on Friday. Last Monday my fishing buddies Daniel, Brian and Kennan left me behind (I was working) and went out and crushed the groupers. We went back out Friday and they were in the same place and we smacked them again. Live pinfish were the ticket, they couldn't resist them. A limit of groupers was quickly caught and then we went to working on the sea bass. Great fishing and a real treat, Scamp is about the best tasting fish in the ocean.

Sailfish out of Ocean Isle Beach

2010-06-20T06:00:00.002-04:00

We got this nice sailfish only 12 miles off the beach on Friday, Fun stuff!!!

41 dolphin, 4 tunas and a handful of bottom fish!

2010-06-15T12:13:00.003-04:00

We fished Brian Robbins' 29 Center Console this weekend out of Harker's Island. Friday we rode out to the gulf stream and put 10 dolphin in the boat in the first 2 hours. We probably missed 15 others, but it was just the two of us and we did the best we could. We could have really used some help but trying to get people to go on a fishing trip is the hardest part of the whole deal. At 9:30 AM we pointed the boat to the deep and put out a couple dink baits on the flat lines for white marlin/sailfish/whatever wanted to eat and some big chuggers out to try and temp a blue marlin. A good effort yielded no bites so after several hours we worked back in to 300 feet of water. We saw a few gulls diving, and then saw the blackfin tunas busting under them. We trolled over and got one good bite, it turned out to be dolphin #11. Couldn't buy a blackfin. The wind started howling so we rode on in. After a night of flounder gigging, we headed back out Saturday morning. Steve Austin was with us and our crew of 3 really worked on the dolphins. We put a limit of 30 of the tasty critters in the boat, non-stop pounded them... along with 4 blackfin tunas, several sea bass, trigger fish, grunts and a red grouper. The fish of the day snapped Brian's bottom fishing rod in half, likely a big gag grouper. We also pulled off a big blackfin tuna... but hard to complain about a box of fish like that! I cleaned fish for hours, gonna eat some tonite.

Smacked the tarpon!

2010-06-02T09:31:00.006-04:00

Went down to the Florida Keys to meet Ben and Rick Blase over Memorial Day Weekend and hit it just right. Thousands of hungry tarpon in big feeding schools, we smacked them good. Ran offshore one morning and put 25 dolphin in the boat on the fly rod and a couple blackfin tunas on poppers to boot. Great fishing!!

Far Out Shoot Out

2010-05-18T13:08:00.005-04:00

We fished the Far Out Shoot Out out of Ocean Isle Beach last Saturday. We picked a bad day to lose our touch. We did catch a bunch of nice dolphin, my buddy Daniel Simmons' wife Amber is holding two of them in the picture. But we needed a nice wahoo and tuna to go with them. We had tunas busting around us, and for the first weekend in a long time we couldn't get a tuna bite. We had 3 wahoo bites and lost them all. Oh well, still alot of fun. We also caught 15 flounder between us the day before and after the tournament, including one that went 4 pounds 13 ounces.

2010-05-18T13:08:00.001-04:00

Grilled Mahi with Mango Salsa over Pasta, easy and yummy!

2010-05-12T08:34:00.003-04:00

Here's a quick and easy recipe when you want to do something a little fancier with your fish. Simply season your fresh mahi fillets with whatever you like, in this case it was a quick brushing of olive oil, a healthy sprinkling of Chef Paul Prudhomme's Seafood Magic and a squirt of lemon juice. Grill it till its done, lay it over a bed of pasta and cover with a healthy dose of Mango Salsa. You can get the mango salsa in a big jar at Costco. Serve it up with a little red wine and its better than anything you'd pay 30 bucks for at a high end restaurant!

Monster gag grouper, huge blackfin tuna, 21 dolphin, 2 wahoos, 30 lb king and some sea bass. Sweeeet!

2010-05-10T09:27:00.005-04:00

I couldn't make it for the Thursday part of the Thursday and Friday trip this week, but I wish I could have... just to see that huge grouper come over the side. The Friday fishing was great as well so I can't complain. Quite a 2 days of fishing again, we are on a roll. Thursday morning at 4AM Daniel Simmons, Brian Robbins, Kennan Hill and Steve Austin left the dock on Daniel's 32 foot Contender. I got up at 3:30 and checked the satellite shot for them and after a phone call to discuss where the temperature break was they decided to run to the Steeples. The other option was to go way south to the Winyah Scarp. They made the right call! With a live well full of 100 menhaden, 5 spinning rods rigged with a combination of live bait hooks, topwater poppers and butterfly jigs, 3 electric reels rigged with jigs, and 10 trolling rods all rigged up they ran toward the Steeples. They found a 5 degree temperature break 6 miles inshore of the Steeples with a nice weedline on it. Sure that it held dolphin, they kept going on to the Steeples to try and find the early morning tuna bite, figuring they could come back to the weedline later. The tunas were not to be found grouped up on the spots they were the past couple weeks. They put out a trolling spread and immediately caught a super nice blackfin of 30.7 pounds. Another hour and a half of trolling yielded no bites and still no tuna marks on the depth sounder so into the weedline for plan B. They eased up to the weedline and started throwing handfuls of live baits out the back of the boat. When the dolphin came shooting out from the grass, they would throw topwater poppers and live menhaden at them. This resulted in some really fun action but the big ones were tough to get to bite this way. So they went to trolling the weedline and the faster motion got the big ones fired up and soon Kennan had a really nice 26 pound bull dolphin boated. They put 10 dolphin in the boat, and with the dolphin still biting on the weedline they decided to try and complete the meatfish slam and headed west to a likely wahoo spot. Several hours of trolling yielded no wahoo bites, but they did mark a nice bottom fish mark in 200 feet of water. Changing gears again they switched from trolling to bottom jigging and on the first drop Steve Austin hooked into something really big. It fought hard and straight down like a grouper, but it seemed too big and strong for a grouper. It came up looking brown and everyone thought it was a reef donkey (amberjack). Then Brian Robbins saw it roll over and realized it was a massive gag grouper. It was successfully lifted into the boat and Steve had just landed the largest gag grouper ever to be weighed in at Ocean Isle Fishing Center. It topped the certified scales at 37 pounds and is the fish of a lifetime. Gagzilla! That fired the boys up to try for more groupers so they stopped in at another likely grouper hole on the way in but only found some really nice sea bass. So the day one count 1 citation gag grouper, the biggest one weighed in ever at OIFC, a 30.7 pound blackfin, the biggest one weighed in at OIFC this year, 10 dolphin including a 26 pounder which also was the biggest one yet weighed at OIFC this year, and a dozen sea bass. But no wahoos.

The next morning Kennan, Brian and Steve were back at work and now it was my turn. Daniel and I ran out to try and clean up the wahoo part of the equation. 2 hours of trolling at the blackjack and no bites. Uh oh things not looking good. We tried to repeat yesterdays plundering of the weedline, and ran in and found it. Another hour and a half of working the weedline and we only had 2 small dolphin. Also, listening to the radio everyone was complaining about a slow bite at all the likely spots. At about 11AM we picked up and ran 12 miles to the west to a spot that we had heard gave up some wahoos yesterday. Good move. We put the spread out and immediately landed a nice wahoo. Then we had a double header of really big dolphin. It went like that steady from noon to 2:00PM and when it was over we had iced down 9 more big dolphin and a pair of wahoos, and pulled the hook on another wahoo inches from the gaff. We also got a really nice king mackerel pushing 30 pounds. And we missed alot of dolphin but with only 2 of us on the boat that is the way it goes. At 2:00PM the bite shut off completely and that was that. With a 2 day total of 21 dolphin (most of them really nice ones), a dozen sea bass, a pair of wahoos, a citation blackfin tuna, a 30 pound king and a trophy gag grouper it was quite the trip. Again.

Tunas tunas tunas!!!

2010-05-03T11:02:00.003-04:00

The first picture is what the fish box looked like after 5 minutes of fishing. The second one is what it looked like after stuffing it slam full to the top with blackfin tunas and wahoos. Big blackfins too! Great fishing again this Thursday and Friday. Incredible tuna fishing with blackfins busting flying fish on top and in huge schools down deep. We got them trolling, got them throwing top water poppers and really smacked them deep jigging. Also a couple nice wahoos trolling and lost several more including one great big one. A North Carolina citation blackfin is 20 lbs, (you get a nice certificate for an outstanding catch), Brian Robbins got one 29.9 lbs and everyone had a citation over 23 lbs. With the bite really slow up at Oregon Inlet and Morehead, we have found the honey hole way down south off of Ocean Isle Beach and are gonna keep pounding it until the fishing heats up back up our way.

Meat fish Slam. Great fishing!

2010-04-26T09:20:00.004-04:00

We fished the Martini's Hook-a-Hoo tournament this Friday. As there was a 74lb wahoo to beat, we knew that would be tough, but still possible. We were also in the tuna and dolphin calcutta, and both of those categories were very winnable. With lines in at 7AM, we left the dock at 4AM for the 70 mile run. Pretty neat being 55 miles offshore when the sun comes up. We ran to a beautiful temp break at the Blackjack Hole and found it right where the satellite shot said it would be, right on the continental shelf. Perfect. With 72 degree water we put baits out at 7 and had 3 rods go off at 7:03. One didn't stay glued on, the other 2 fish were a small wahoo and a really big blackfin tuna. With the leading fish at 17.9 pounds and 30 of the 51 boats already done fishing, we knew our tuna had a good chance of winning the tuna division. That tuna ended up weighing 26.92 lbs, a very nice blackfin. We consistently got bit by nice blackfin tunas on the long shotgun rod all morning. We ended up with 6 blackfin, including another one over 25 lbs. Another one we fought for quite a while and couldn't gain any line on it, then suddenly it got alot easier to reel. Came in with a big blackfin tuna head and the rest bit off. I guess shortly after the tuna got hooked up, a big shark or massive cuda or wahoo grabbed hold of it and we were then fighting that fish, then finally however that connection was made let loose, maybe we had a little of the hook in the second fish or the tuna was just stuck in its throat, who knows. It was exciting as we thought we had a monster wahoo on. Oh well. We also had 4 wahoos with the biggest being a nice 42 pounder, and a 17 pound cow dolphin that came in with 5 or 6 dolphin following her. One was a nice bull that probably would have won us the dolphin calcutta but we couldn't get him to bite. We also had a king mackerel. With a box full of fish that made up a "Carolina meat-fish slam" (Tuna,Wahoo,Dolphin,King) and with the seas getting pretty sloppy out there as the winds built.... we left early to make sure we would make the scales with our tuna. We took over first place and stayed there until only 2 boats left to weigh in and managed to get beat by 7 ounces. Oh well, fun day of fishing out in the gulf stream!

Wahoo, tuna, mako, king mackerel!

2010-04-17T20:23:00.006-04:00

Only one of each but a nice mixed grill of tasty critters! First fish to bite was a 47lb wahoo, then we lost another nice wahoo. Next came a blackfin tuna, then the surprise of the day... another mako shark! Finished it up with a king mackeral. Fished with Daniel Simmons on his Contender out of Ocean Isle Beach. 65 mile run one-way. We found beautiful 71 degree water and while we were quite happy with our haul we were a little surprised we didn't get more bites as pretty as the water was, sitting right on one of our favorite spots. We earned these fish as we were the only boat to run out there Friday, ran out in the face of a small craft advisory and while the conditions were great while we were fishing we paid for it on the way in, as it got a little sporty. Wind blew us out for the wahoo tournament this weekend, have to fish it next week. Wish Friday was a fishing day.. we would look pretty good with that 47 pounder on the board.

Covered up by Yellowfins!

2010-04-13T08:23:00.008-04:00

The wind howled all week then laid down on Saturday. Sunday was beautiful, the only problem was the water was waaaaay offshore everywhere. Daniel Simmons and his wife Amber decided to meet me in Morehead City and run way out to the deep, to a little finger of warm water... if we could find it. Sometimes looking at the computer screen in your little office doesn't correlate to what you find out there on the big ocean. We cast off at 6:00AM Sunday morning and cleared the inlet at squint light. We rode to the Big Rock and kept on going. 5,10,15,20 miles clicked by. Finally, 21 miles past the continental shelf where we normally would start fishing, the water temperature went from 65.5 degrees to 70 degrees in a very nicely defined rip. We were very very relieved and excited to have found it. Normally Morehead in April is wahoo city, but we were so far overboard (offshore) that it was unlikely to encounter any wahoos in this 2,000 feet deep water. Them wahoos like humps and rocks and wrecks and the like, 200 feet is the magic depth for them. We had an extra zero. Tuna, dolphin and marlin are the likely quarry in this depth, and since it is a little early in the spring for the dolphin and marlin we put out a tuna spread and hoped for the best. Now, you can count the number of yellowfin tunas that have been caught out of Morehead City this year on two hands and still have plenty of fingers left over, and a thumb or 2, so we knew it was a shot in the dark. They just havent been here. About 3 hours into our day and still biteless, the comment was made that this may be a dry run. I think it was me that said we could go from zero to hero in the blink of an eye. Then Amber said "Watch we are gonna hook 5 of them" Well she was close because a couple minutes later the right flat line got nailed and the reel started singing. Then the left flat and both short riggers started screaming. Finally both long riggers snapped out and we had flushed the spread, 6 on at once. 2 of the fish crossed and the leaders broke simultaneously, and one pulled off... but we still had 3 of them on. It was obvious from the amount of line they were taking that these were not little football tunas, but nice ones! One by one the fish came to the boat and made their way into the box. The last one was a bit chunkier that the first two, and that was Amber's fish, pushing 60 pounds. The other two were around 55 and 45 pounds. Nice nice class of yellowfin tuna. Well that was the only time we drove over them all day. When we got back to the dock and not a single other boat had a tuna, we realized how fortunate we were. Another great day on the water, and as you can tell by the lack of winter coats and full waterproof suits that it was alot warmer than it has been, just beautiful out there. Wahoo tournament next weekend, I can't wait!!

Mako Shark

2010-04-06T08:36:00.006-04:00

Well, we headed out to Oregon Inlet to fish Friday and Saturday. We left Asheboro at 7:30PM Thursday after a full day of work, and full of expectations for the weekend. The weather was supposed to be 80 degrees and sunny, with light winds... and the bluefin tunas were still here. The wind had blown solidly for a week and no boats had been out. Wednesday a couple boats went out and they found the bluefins... we hoped to get one more crack at them as surely with this hot weather now on us they would be leaving for colder climes any day. We pulled into Nags Head at 1AM and got up at 4AM. Our real wakeup call was about 2 hours later when we powered over a big nasty 9 foot curling wave in Oregon Inlet. After we cleared it we looked back in time to see it break with plenty of power to turn our boat into splinters. Sweet. That inlet is something else.

The ride out to the gulfstream was fine, if a bit bumpy. 48 miles later Brian Robbins pointed at the veil of steam off about 2 miles in the distance. Thru the steam you could occasionally see mountains of water. He said "There's the gulfstream". I corrected him. "There's the end of the world", I said. I have seen alot of things out there, this one was a new one on me. The winds had been strong out of the southwest for a week, which is in the same direction as the gulfstream. This had generated a big swell. Now the winds had turned around to the North-East, and that big swell was bucking against them. On the cold side short of the gulfstream seas were 3 feet with a gentle swell, 47 degree water. On the hot side in the stream, the water was 72 degrees, the current was racing at 5 miles an hour and 7-9 foot confused and nasty looking waves were there to meet us. In the middle, where the 2 waters met, a thick steam rolled off the water in sheets and swirls. It was almost unreal. I almost didn't want to go thru it. Our friends Daniel and Amber Simmons had driven up from Ocean Isle to fish with us. They fish all the time, so they knew what they were in for. We all glanced at each other with a knowing look, well aware of how fun this was about to be. After an hour or so it either calmed down a bit or we got used to it, I guess.

What we didn't get used to was the fact that nobody was catching fish. A few charter boats hit a couple yellowfins, then we started piecing together the deal on the bluefins: it was a slow bite, but the ones that bit were big ones. The problem was we were 20 miles south of it again, and would have to run into a nasty head sea to get there. We were trolling with the seas, trying to decide what to do when I decided to turn her back north into them. Thats when we got our one bite. Now we have hooked mako sharks before but they always chewed thru the leader before it got interesting. This one bit a ballyhoo rigged to a big 11 aught bluefin hook and his teeth couldn't reach the fluorocarbon. We didn't know what we had at first, only that it looked too white and was fighting to close to the surface to be a tuna. Maybe a big dorado? A trash fish of some sort? Daniel was on the rod, Brian on the gaff and I was driving the boat... none of us too worked up at this point. We got real excited when we saw it was a Mako... possibly the finest eating fish in the ocean. Also one of the meanest. But since this was a small one it wouldn't be a problem, right? Well here is what I learned about Makos.
1) They freak out at the boat. I mean its bad: twisting, slashing mad dashes this way and that. They do not want to come in the boat.

2) They have lots of teeth, sharp ones too. And their jaws are constantly snapping open and closed. And those jaws are attached to a limber body that can twist around 180 degrees on itself in the blink of an eye. Did I mentioned the teeth and the snapping?

3) Hitting them over the head 20 times with a heavy fiberglass brush handle as hard as you can, then sticking a gaff in their head and burying them under ice in the cooler is not enough. I know this because 20 minutes after we did all this, the cooler lid came flying open and a very very alive and upset mako shark set out to kill us all. Luckily he didn't come all the way out of the cooler and we were able to beat him back into it and slam the lid shut. Then we all sat on the cooler lid (while the shark was doing its best to throw us off it) and pondered our next move. Lets just say that we wont forget the shotgun in the truck next time we go out into Mako country. I can't imagine dealing with a 300-400 pounder.

After all that we weren't up for a 20 mile pounding, and a few yellowfins were starting to be caught around us, but not many. We could never buy a tuna bite, which put us in good company with about all the other boats out there. But we did have a Mako in the cooler and all our fingers and toes, and that made our day. Instead of being 80 degrees, the high out there Friday was 56 degrees with a cold NE wind. About an hour after we got back in the sea fog rolled in, so bad you couldn't see 50 feet. And it got colder. And windier. We love to fish, and there were still some bluefins around. But this was enough for us and we called it off for the next day and went 4-wheeling on the beach. In the cold fog. It was a blast, and there were no 9 foot breakers or crazed sharks trying to kill us. And the soy-ginger grilled mako steaks were amazing.

Sunday Tunas

2010-03-25T09:31:00.006-04:00

Sunday found us slipping out of Oregon Inlet in the pitch dark at 5:30AM, that inlet is no fun, and we were a bit anxious about navigating it in the dark. We fell in line with 2 commercial trawlers and figured they knew what they were doing. Even with instruments and boats that do it every day guiding your path, it is a little hairy running that place in the dark. No problems on this calm day. The sun poked over the horizon at 7:16AM, we were already almost 40 miles offshore. At 7:30AM we were in 2000 feet of water, still about 4 miles short of the gulfstream in cold 47 degree water. Off to the starboard a couple hundred yards out I noticed a ruckus. Bill Garner saw it too and pointed it out. I told him I was pretty sure it was porpoises. Thats when the unmistakable silhouette of a 150ish lb bluefin tuna arched thru the air in hot pursuit of a bait fish. We eased the throttles back and made a plan. I slowly moved the boat thru the slick calm water towards the frenzy while Brian Robbins and Bill Garner readied themselves. Cape Fear spinning rods, packed with 80lb braid and 150lb leader, with 400 gram butterfly jigs tied to the end were about to get a workout. As we eased up to within 20 yards of the action, quite a sight beheld us: the bluefin tunas had the 5-10 pound bluefish balled up in an approximate 8 foot diameter circle. The tunas were circling the bait ball and taking turns crashing thru it gorging themselves on the bluefish. The bluefish were balled up so tightly that the ones in the middle of the ball were literally getting squeezed out of the water. Brian flipped his jig into the melee first and instantly was hooked up, rod bent over and drag screaming. Then the hook pulled. He started retrieving again, and another tuna grabbed it and bowed the rod over. Bill chunked his jig in next and it wasnt a couple seconds before his rod was doubled over and the braid was rapidly disappearing off the spool. Sweet!!!! This is when Brian's second hookup came unglued, dangit. As he worked the jig in, a 6 pound bluefish couldn't resist and Brian landed bait. Evidently the bluefish chafed up the leader because on the next strike the leader broke. By the time we could tie another one on, the bait ball and the tunas had vanished... but Bill was still hooked up solidly. Our striper fishing buddy from Badin Lake, Wendall Nunn, expertly spun the boat in reverse to keep the tuna straight off the starboard quarter while I ran the video camera. I video'd the whole thing, haven't seen it yet but hope its good and hope to post it soon. After what seemed like an eternity, we could see the bluefin making circles about 40 feet down. It wasn't a huge bluefin but it was perfect for a spinning rod battle, and about 10 minutes later Brian struck the gaff home and we had our first ever jigging bite Bluefin tuna on ice. We trolled the 72 degree gulfstream after that, with Wendell landing a nice yellowfin tuna in the first 5 minutes, then another one. Since you can only keep one bluefin/day and we already had ours, we were thrilled to find some yellowfins. We broke off 2 more tunas, and with a long drive ahead of us, and a nasty front racing our way, we called it off early. We didn't load the boat with tunas, but finding that bait ball of bluefish with those big bluefins crashing thru it...all to ourselves in slick calm clear water, just after sunrise... one of the neatest things I have ever seen on the ocean. National Geographic stuff. Hope to figure out how to put the video up.

We got them again this weekend

2010-03-22T12:03:00.007-04:00

This trip started like they all do... working nonstop on the boat every evening for the week prior to repair the damages from the previous trip, improve on the rigging, etc... Then its check the weather, check the water temperature satellite shots, read the fishing reports for the ports up and down the coast, and make the call if and where to go at the last minute. This weekend it lined up for the likely best bite to be off Oregon Inlet again, and the weather looked as good as one could hope for for Saturday and Sunday. A gale on Friday, and another gale coming Sunday night. Big swells on Saturday but calm winds, then flat out beautiful on Sunday as long as you didn't overstay your welcome. So off we went, covering the 270 or so miles in about 5 hours. Check in to the hotel, buy bait and ice and food and whatever else we need, rig baits & rods, check the boat systems, make the last minute call on exactly where to go, and try to sneak a couple hours of sleep. Saturday we arrived at the ramp at 6AM, idled out to the long, snaky, shallow cut that takes you to the inlet and ran it in the dark, we got to the inlet at squint light and it was nasty. A big swell still pushing thru. We punched thru and beat our way out to the 280 line, some 45 miles away. Well, the boats that went to the 200 line caught yellowfins, the boats that went to the 450 line caught bluefins, those that went in the middle caught squat and that was us. We put 2 and 2 together by about 10AM, picked up and ran the 20 miles to the 450's and got bit by a big bluefin as soon as we started. We pulled the hook on him and then the current really started ripping and shut the bite down. Skunked! It was an early morning bite and the boats that made the right call on where to start out hit it big, those that didn't got to tuck tail and feel the disappointment. Lucky for us we were going to fish 2 days, now the pressure was on to get it right on Sunday.

It got better for us on Sunday in a big big way. Report and more pics to follow.

Bluefin Pics from the Monday March 8th off Hatteras N.C. Remember, you can click on pictures to enlarge them!

2010-03-11T14:44:00.006-05:00

Some more pics from our bluefin tuna weekend.
Daniel Simmons has a 150 lber leadered up in the first picture while Brian Robbins waits to gaff him. Daniel, Brian and Kennan Hill slide the tuna in thru the tuna door in the second photo while Andy Purgason can finally relax after fighting this fish for almost 2 hours. I am up top doing a little boat steering and picture taking... about all I am good for with this broken right thumb. Picture 3... thats a big tuna! Picture 4... I wonder what the people on that cruise ship thought as the ship weaved its way thru about 100 boats out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter. All of the boats in the photo are hooked up fighting bluefin tunas. If I was on that cruise I would have put on a lifejacket and jumped off right then. Somebody get me a fishing pole! #5, getting ready to head back in, putting the rods up and getting ready to put the throttles down after a great day of fishing. Enlarge that pic and check out the green butterfly jig on the spinning rod. Notice where the blackfin tunas have chewed the paint off that thing? I LOVE IT!!!

We got them this weekend!

2010-03-10T10:15:00.003-05:00

We ran out of Oregon Inlet Monday morning and put out in 72 degree water a little south of where we found them the previous week. The first bite happened shortly thereafter, on the short shotgun bait. We all saw a estimated 40 pound little bluefin sky on the bait and miss it. Dropped it in freespool and instantly it got bit. Hookup with what we thought was a throwback bluefin. We were all quite surprised (in a good way ) when a 45 pound wahoo, very green and anxious to get away, started freaking out at the back of the boat a few minutes later. Bonus citation wahoo reeled in by Kennan! A few minutes later a nice slick popped up and we turned toward it. We didn't make it all the way there before 5 reels were screaming at once with nice class bluefin tunas. Chaos. We managed to "quick release" 4 of them before settling in for an hour and a half fight on what turned out to be a very fiesty 150 pounder. These fish fight incredibly hard in the warm 72 degree water and when they have 2,000 feet of it to dive into, the fight is gruelling. High fives all around when Brian Robbins sunk the gaff into that fish and put him in the boat. We released another one about 80 pounds a little later, and then had a nice blackfin tuna hit the flat line. As it was getting reeled in, you could see dozens of other ones following it in. Fun time!!! We left him in the water, threw some chum in and went to work on them with the spinning reels and butterfly jigs. 10 nice blackfin tunas later we pointed the boat to the inlet and headed in with a box slam full of meat! Tuesday the ocean was slick calm, maybe too calm as the bigger bluefins didnt bite for us... but the small ones did and we had a blast catching and releasing 10 bluefins from 40 to 80 pounds, while keeping 1 for the box. Incredible to spend a day in sunshine, with slick calm seas and warm water after the lousy winter we have had. Great 2 days of fishing, really got lucky with the weather and the fact that my hand is broken let me slip away and take part of this amazing fishing. Hopefully I will get back to work soon.

Our little Bluefin Tuna!

2010-02-23T08:59:00.007-05:00

Well, it is not a big bluefin tuna by any definition... but it is the best tasting bluefin tuna that has ever been caught! Quite a weekend, we pulled Brian Robbins' 29 foot scarab to Oregon Inlet thurs night, got up Friday morning as early as we could on very little sleep and ran down to Rodanthe to chase stripers. Turns out that we got up about 2 hours too late. As we were leaving the inlet at 8:30 AM all the charter boats were already coming back in with their limits of stripers. We got to the spot and found thousands of gannets diving on huge schools of bait, but the stripers were long gone. Its an amazing sight to see hundreds of gannets falling out of the sky in unison, and usually means you are going to catch all the stripers you want, but not this time. What we did find was dozens of humpback whales feeding, and some of them came up within 10 feet of the boat, absolutely awesome. I enjoyed spending 3 hours with the whales more than catching a limit of stripers.
We pulled the boat to Hatteras Friday evening and got a good report on both Bluefin tunas east of the inlet about 38 miles away and yellowfin tunas out in the gulfstream to the south 30 miles out. The bluefins were in a lot deeper water than we were expecting (500-1000 feet) and we were a little undermanned both crew and rod and reel-wise for battling bluefins in that deep of water. We also woke up to a 15kt north wind which was supposed to fall out in the afternoon, which made for a much nicer ride to the south. Long story short, we made a bad decision and ran away from the bluefins and couldn't find the yellowfins. We did find cobalt blue 72 degree water which looked like it should have been loaded with fish, saw a 1000 pound manta ray, hammerhead sharks, hundreds and hundreds of two-tone dolphins, bottlenose dolphins and spotted dolphins, and discovered that off of Hatteras in the winter, when the wind is blowing out of the north against a gulfstream screaming to the north.... 2 foot seas turn into 8 foot seas in an instant. Pretty freaky and a long long day. We did catch 2 mahi mahi for our efforts... which is actually the first mahi I have ever caught in February. We got back to the dock exhausted only to find out that all the boats that went east hammered the bluefins. I felt like an idiot.
So... up at 3:30AM Sunday to get ready for bluefins, cleared Hatteras Inlet at daybreak and off we headed to the east. We pulled back when the water went from 56 to 63 degrees and put out a 4 rod spread. About an hour and a half later, 2 rods bent over double and started screaming like they had been hooked to a mack truck. With drags set so tight you literally had to use two hands to pull an inch of line off the reel, we watched as 400 yards of line disappeared in a matter of a minute. Absolutely incredible power. We had one of the monsters on a 50W and one on a 30W. We were going to focus on the one on the 50W and break the one on the smaller reel off... when the hook pulled on the 50. My heart sank. Our friend Carl Purgason was wearing the stand-up harness, we got the boat turned and the fish stopped with almost all the line gone off the reel, and the rod and reel strapped into the harness. We got over top of the fish and it went deep. Now we had a 200 plus pound bluefin on in 1300 feet of water, hooked up with the smallest reel on the boat. Great. We got our game faces on and settled in for the likely 3 hour fight.... which ended abruptly about 10 minutes later when that hook pulled too. With great disappointment, we re-rigged everything a put the spread back out. About 5 minutes later, the 50W with the blue and white Ilander and a horse ballyhoo started screaming again. This time we turned the fish after only a 100 yards or so, so we knew it was a smaller fish. Carl was still in the harness, he did a great job on the fish and less than10 minutes later, a 70 pound bluefin was boatside. We debated on whether it was the one we wanted to kill (you are allowed only 1 bluefin/boat/day) After just hooking 2 monsters and losing them, it was a tough call. But in all reality, the only reason for us to kill a bigger one would be for bragging rights and pictures. Bluefin tunas are unique in their physiology in that they can warm their bodies much like a warm-blooded mammal. Over the course of a long fight, this mechanism produces lactic-acid in huge quantities. The result is, that 200 pounder would have looked great in pictures and tasted poorly. And bluefins have so much oil in the meat you cannot freeze it. So you get 100 pounds of not so great meat that you have to eat in 4 days. Most of it goes in the trash. Another good thing about a 70 pounder is that if you have Brian Robbins on the boat, you dont have any gaff holes in the fish. Brian grabbed that fish by the tail and slung him into the cooler like a sack of potatoes, we bled it, gutted it and had it packed in ice 12 minutes after it was hooked. And it is the finest tasting tuna that anyone will ever eat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everything has to come together for us to get a shot at catching bluefins on our own boat. It has been several years since there has been a bite this good that coincided with good enough winter weather to let us go after them. Next time we go, if they are in that deep of water, we will be loaded with 80W reels and we will try to tame a big one. But for now, we are thrilled to have got the one we did. Seared bluefin loin and sashimi again tonite!

I got my Bluefin!

2010-02-21T23:26:00.007-05:00

It was rough offshore. We got the snot pounded out of us. I got my bluefin tuna, awesome adventure! Pics and report after I get some sleep for the first time in 3 days. In the meantime here are some whale pictures from this weekend from 3 miles off the beach where it was nice and calm, neat stuff!

Wow what bad weather, going bluefinning...

2010-02-17T10:39:00.002-05:00

Well I broke my thumb and the weather has been horrible, so not much happening as regards fishing the past month for me. But all the bluefin tunas in the world seem to have shown up off of Hatteras over the past week. We are going to pull the boat to Hatteras and get the snot beat out of us by the rough seas, and hopefully tussle with some bluefins this weekend. Report to follow and I will put up some more Costa Rica pics too.

A few pics from the Costa Rica trip

2010-02-04T20:02:00.002-05:00

We all had a great time but the bite was pretty slow compared to what we usually find down there. We caught 4 sails and missed a blue marlin trolling on our way to the reef day 1, then live bait black marlin fished for 4 hours without a bite... anchored up and bottom fished all night with only a handful of small snappers and 2 lost great big ones to show for it... then the next day we lost a monster yellowfin tuna but did manage to catch this huge amberjack of about 90 pounds. Also some jacks and rooster throwing poppers to the rocks and a few cubera snappers like the one pictured above bottom fishing. We always jump in the water with a few of the sailfish. I will post day 3 and 4 pics later. Another great trip to Costa Rica, just missed the big bite by a week or so (it is ON right now)

Costa Rica Trip

2010-02-02T12:02:00.002-05:00

Downloaded all the pics and then my home computer crashed. As soon as I get it restored, I will write up our 4 day fishing adventure, including an overnight on the boat... where we targeted sailfish, marlin, tuna and dolphin on the troll; snappers and monster amberjacks with live bait, and roosters, snappers and jacks with top water poppers... with varying degrees of success. It was pretty wild.

Big NC Wahoo from last Thursday, lots of other stuff to come

2010-01-26T09:00:00.005-05:00

I am just getting back from our annual week-long fishing trip to the central coast of Costa Rica. We flew out of Charlotte Friday morning. Thursday was the first day in a month that the wind has cooperated here in NC... so in my infinite wisdom instead of resting up for the big trip, I took off to Ocean Isle Beach Wednesday night with Brian Robbins. We met Kennan Hill down there and we rigged up got a couple hours of sleep before blasting off to the Steeples some 70 miles offshore at 5:30 AM Thurs morning. We got thru the inlet at 6AM with the air temp a balmy 28 degrees and pointed the bow east.

A quick 3 hour ride later and we had lines in about 9AM. Our trolling pattern was big circles to put our spread over the "Steeples" formations themselves, and then go inshore to about 170 feet of water which is the notorious depth for big wahoos to hang out, then swing around to deep water and do it again. After an hour and a half of no luck, the blue and white Ilander/ballyhoo combination on the way back rod got nailed and the 50W Shimano Tiagra reel started screaming, we were in 170 feet. Brian Robbins was on the rod and announced right away that the fish was shaking its head like mad... almost certainly that meant it was a wahoo. 15 minutes later and a couple of tense head-thrashing runs at the boat just out of gaff range, this nice 46 pound wahoo came aboard. About an hour later the black and red Ilander sea star on the long rigger got nailed and after a sizzling run that wahoo shook free. Rats. With a 3 hour run in, then a 4 hour drive to the airport facing us, we took off at about 1:30 after trying to deep jig some blackfin tunas (we only hooked amberjacks). We stopped and weighed the fish in at Ocean Isle Fishing Center and it merited Brian a N.C Saltwater Citation, which is a nice plaque issued for a trophy fish. The minimum size for a wahoo citation is 40 pounds and this one covered that easily. Seared wahoo steaks for dinner, a little sleep and off to the airport!

It's over at Badin... water too cold. Trout bite hot at the coast

2010-01-03T10:31:00.006-05:00

Global Warming is taking its toll as this is the COLDEST the water has been at the end of December at Badin Lake since I started fishing it 15 years ago. The second coldest??? That was last year. I tell ya, Global Warming is really sneaky, disguising itself as Global Freezing. What a load of hooey. Anyway, Brian Robbins and I took off in search of fish Sunday after Christmas. Too windy to go offshore after wahoos and yellowfins, too windy to even venture out the 15 miles or so you need to go to hunt giant bluefins. So we headed to the Chesapeake Bay to fish the last couple days of the striped bass season. We got there about 6 PM Sunday, got ourselves checked in to the hotel and put the boat in at about 7:30PM. We fished in the dark, cold and wind until about midnite. This is slow fishing, waiting for one big bite from a big female striper. We got our bite at 10:30PM and missed it. It felt like a big one. We had a several friends fishing that day and 2 of them got skunked. 2 of them however caught real trophies, a 52 pounder and a 58 pounder. Who knows how big the one we missed was. We fished all day the next day in a building NW wind with no bites. We got out of there at 8AM the next morning, just before the winds became gale force and they closed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to boat traffic. We hauled the boat down the Oriental N.C where we spent the next 2 days duck hunting and speckled trout fishing. The ducks didnt fly too well for us, we got 2 bluebills and 2 buffleheads... but the trout bit just fine. We caught 106 specks over the 2 days, all on mirror-lures and gulp shrimp. We released most of them as I love fresh trout but dont care for it once its been frozen. We also brought back 2 bushels of Pamlico Sound oysters.... and the trout fry, oyster stew and lightly grilled oysters on the half-shell last night were a true N.C coast feast!

Bite still strong at Badin

2009-12-23T09:58:00.002-05:00

Caught 10 nice stripers on Badin Friday in the freezing rain/snow/sleet. It cleared off for the weekend and the bite shut down. Water is getting cold, about 47 degrees. The stripers will still bite as long as it is above 45 degrees but getting dicey.

51 stripers at Badin on Sunday

2009-12-13T20:33:00.004-05:00

Sunday in the cold rain at Badin, Brian Robbins and I and a couple other buddies put 51 stripers in the boat. We kept these 27 and some largemouths and perch. Released 24 other stripers. 51 is alot of stripers, crazy good fishing!!! The striper I am holding in the picture was the first of the 51. The biggest fish was about 13 pounds and the average was about 7-8 pounds. Lots of baked striper, broiled striper, fish stew etc... for alot of people from this day on the water!

Monday Dec 7th striper report

2009-12-08T10:36:00.001-05:00

Slipped out of the office a little early Monday and put 13 stripers in the boat from 3:30 to 5:00 yesterday afternoon. Put the boat in, turned the corner and saw about 50 birds pounding the water in the back of a cove. I put a spread of 6 rods out and slow trolled straight to the back of the cove. Every rod went off, 3 with double headers, 3 with singles. 9 stripers on the first pass, what a hoot. That school left, found another one just before dark and got 4 more. Biggest fish around 10 pounds, 6 pounds about the average fish. Fun fun.

Striper Slaying on Badin Lake

2009-12-07T10:05:00.002-05:00

I put 18 in the boat by myself Friday morning. Seagulls screaming and diving, stripers busting bait everywhere... and then as soon as it starts it is over. If you are in the right place at the right time it is a hoot. I think the body count between myself, Brian Robbins and Kennan Hill for the weekend was around 40 stripers, with several of them over 10 pounds. I have figured out my camera issues and will make an effort to have some good photos of the upcoming slaughters that will take place.

Thanksgiving stripers and then a big wahoo

2009-12-01T17:02:00.002-05:00

The stripers are doing their annual late fall, early winter feeding frenzy at Badin Lake and Brian Robbins and I got 6 of them on Thanksgiving morning... along with 3 largemouth a 2 pound crappie, a blue catfish and 2 dozen waccamaw perch. Sunday we rolled out of Little River Inlet South Carolina for the 70 mile run to the gulf stream and while it was far from a hot bite we did put a 43 pound wahoo in the boat, beautiful fish and my favorite to eat. Also a small dolphin and missed several other wahoo bites. My camera is messing up so no pics of the beautiful wahoo, bummer. I will be hard at the striper fishing and slipping out to the stream when the weather allows for the next month or so!

Some bad weather, some good weather.

2009-11-09T11:02:00.005-05:00

Yep, I've been fishing the past 2 weekends, just slack on the reporting. The weekend before last it was quite windy. We tried to get to the gulf stream and actually made it 2/3rd of the way on Sunday before we had to stop for safety sakes. On Friday we slipped out about 12 miles offshore from Ocean Isle Beach after the wind "laid down" from 22 kts NE to about 15 kts. Brian Robbins, Rick Blase and I pulled cigar minnows on planers and landed 6 nice King Mackerels up to 15 pounds or so. Saturday was very blustery. Sunday Brian and I made it to 45 miles offshore and with the winds not cooperating and the seas building we stopped short and found the current running so hard it was about impossible to make anything happen. Caught an amberjack, a couple sharks, and a few other assorted trash fish. Ran back in to where we had caught those kings on Friday and the water was void of life. Oh well.

Yesteday (Sunday Nov 8th) I went offshore with Jeff Martini. It was slick calm, 82 degree water, beautiful, but no real temperature break. Down N. Myrtle Beach way the water is still blended warm... hopefully in a couple weeks there will be a definite break where the gulfstream waters meet the inshore waters and the fish will stack up. We trolled the 100/400 for 4 hours and then went bottom fishing/scuba diving. We caught an Atlantic Bonito tuna for the grill, had 5 strikes where the wire and lures all chewed up, likely wahoo strikes ... 2 of the strikes good solid hookups. Pulled the hook and ALL 5 of them. Egads. Hi-light of the trolling trip was when the right long rigger snapped out, I dropped back and felt him take it... let him run, set the hook and in the air was a nice Sailfish about 65 pounds. I handed the rod to Jeff's 15 year old nephew for his first billfish fight. It put on a nice aerial show of about 6 consective somersaulting jumps and then fought hard. He got him right beside the boat and we "quick released" him before we could get any pictures dangit.
At 12:30 we headed in to a ledge to go bottom fishing and diving. (Not me, I stayed in the boat while they dove) The bottom fishing resulted in some nice purple grunts, trigger fish, an undersized gag grouper and assorted porgies. The diving resulted in some nice Hog Snappers (yummy) and a big (6 pound or so) spiny lobster, yum.

Grill is going to be fired up tonite. My camera lens was fogged up so no pictures of the sailfish jumping.

Barra Colorado, Costa Rica tarpon (click pics to enlarge)

2009-10-26T09:18:00.003-04:00

John somehow recovered from his near heat-stroke and after a nice lunch and a couple hours in the air conditioning, he was able to make the afternoon fishing with the rest of us. It wasn't long before he was at war with another big tarpon. Another big, mean, deep fighting yellowbelly... and another pass off of the rod after a long fight. Several tarpon were landed but John was still looking for his first start to finish tarpon catch. The next morning we slept in an extra hour... only to find out that the first hour of daylight had produced an insane tarpon bite... with one boat putting 10 tarpon in the air on the first drift. We missed it. We followed the school of fish to the south but couldn't buy a bite. Frustrated, we ran back to the river mouth and promptly John and Steve were hooked up with a double header. About five minutes into the fight, Steve's fish jumped off... but John's fish stayed glued on and after a spirited 20 minute battle the 100 pounder met the lip gaff for his first ever "official" tarpon release.

The rest of the trip was more of the same, a good steady bite with tarpon in the air and to the boat on a regular basis. The only time we got rained on was the last morning but it was rain without wind and the tarpon still bit. I am hoping someone will send me pictures off their camera of me with my fish, but who knows. Everyone landed multiple tarpon, several real monsters approaching 200 pounds were (with a lot of effort) subdued and the weather and food was great! Now if the wind will ever stop blowing here at home, some wahoos and groupers are going down.

Barra Colorado Costa Rica. Tarpon Tarpon Tarpon (click on pics to enlarge)

2009-10-20T08:17:00.004-04:00

Slid down to the cabin in Costa Rica this weekend with Brian Robbins, Steve Austin and John Cloninger. The weather was low 50's with rain and wind here in North Carolina from Wed - Sunday... 90 degrees and sunny in Barra Colorado. Good Call!!! A better call were the 2 air conditioning units I picked up at for 100 bucks each and flew down with. A quick installation and the 2 new bedrooms were nice and cool. We fished Thursday afternoon, Friday morning and afternoon, Saturday morning and afternoon and then Sunday from 6:30AM to 9:30AM ... then ran back in to meet our puddle jumper at 10.

We caught tarpon every session we fished. The fastest action was the first afternoon, which is completely opposite to how my trips usually go. We typically start out slow, maybe hook a couple fish the first afternoon ... then end up slamming them later in the trip. Not this time. Steve started us out right by getting a 125 pound tarpon in the air approximately 12 seconds into the trip. He was putting out his first bait, still had the reel in free spool drifting a ballyhoo out to the side of the boat when the line started peeling off the reel. Moments later a nice tarpon was somersaulting thru the air. Now thats how to start off a fishing trip! That one jumped off much to Steve's chagrin but it wasnt long after that he had another one on, and jumped it off too. The bite slowed at that spot so we moved out a mile or so and found the sardines thick. The tarpon bites came fast. At one point we had a double header on, and the moment John's fish jumped off, Steve hooked up... we were over top of a huge school and any bait in the water would get nailed. Brian and Steve both landed nice tarpon, but John would have to wait. He had never landed a tarpon before and while his first hookup was a solid one, it broke him off. Me... I was on picture taking duty, sipping a cold beverage and enjoying the melee. At 5 PM it starts to get dark in Costa Rica. We had put 9 tarpon in the air and had several other solid tarpon bites that didn't jump, we had only landed 2 but several of the jump offs we fought for 15-30 minutes. Good 3 hours of fishing... but no fish to the boat for John. Just as we were getting ready to go, actually reeling the lines in, John got nailed again. As the sun was going down an estimated 180 pound tarpon exploded into the air... and spit John's hook. Smiles all around with just a tinge of disappointment for John, we headed in. Little did he know he would get to battle another tarpon of close to 200 pounds the next morning.
Brian started us off with 2 tarpon hookups on a jig the next morning, then Steve landed another fish. The sardines had left the spot we found them the previous evening and the bite slowed. We headed to the river mouth, where the big ones live, and it wasn't long before John's line started screaming off the reel. He put the reel in gear and a big one was cartwheeling right next to the boat. Well the sun got higher and higher in the sky, and the fish fought hard and straight under the boat. An hour and a half into the fight it was into the hottest part of the day, no breeze, 100 degrees and the huge tarpon was not showing any signs of giving up. Most guys give in after about an hour of this torture in that kind of heat... John made it 1.5 hours before his complexion went from red to pale, he became incoherent and started having all the other signs of heat stroke. We grabbed the rod from him, and covered him in ice filled wet shirts. But we stayed out there another 20 minutes until we could land the fish. I mean, you have to catch the fish, right? We were ready to call it off at any minute and run into the air conditioning, but his color came around, he started making some complete sentences ... and finally his monster tarpon was boated. Pretty much an epic trip after just one afternoon and one morning of fishing. And plenty more tarpon to come. The question was... would John ever get one to the boat all by himself for his first official tarpon catch? (to be continued...)

US OPEN King Mackerel Tournament

2009-10-08T08:50:00.003-04:00

Fished the US OPEN King Mackerel tourney out of Southport NC last weekend. We caught a bunch of Kings but the biggest one was only 19.5 pounds and that doesn't pay. It was fun, also caught some vermillion snappers, a gag grouper and some amberjacks. I have a couple pics that I will post soon. Next up... tarpon at the cabin. Need to be wahoo fishing but can't get a break from the weather on the weekend. This one is going to be a blowout too. Oh well, its tough being a weekend warrior trying to get to the gulf stream on a small boat.

East Wind

2009-09-22T08:58:00.002-04:00

East Wind all weekend last weekend. This is GREAT for the marlin fishing up at Oregon Inlet. Unfortunately I was at Myrtle Beach where this wind is NO GOOD. My buddies on the Waste Knot II went marlin fishing and had an awesome day releasing 2 Blue Marlin. Pretty work, Trey.
Also, the boats that targeted White Marlin had some incredible catches including 23 for The Pelican. Everyone needs to book a trip with Trey on the Waste Knot II soon. It's a marlin frenzy now, and soon the big yellowfin tuna will be pouring in. See the link to the right under "fishing friends" to contact them.

For us: we went flounder gigging and had a blast. 10 big flounder and a bunch of laughs for Brian Robbins, Tripp Cobb and myself. Waiting for this east wind to stop, it has been pumping for almost 3 weeks now. I might have to rethink the start of my offshore season from wahoos out of Ocean Isle Beach to marlin out of Oregon Inlet if the wind doesn't switch soon. No pics from the weekend. Too dark and rainy!

Amazing drum fishing, didn't quite connect with the marlin. Great weekend.

2009-09-13T17:26:00.002-04:00

The big red drum are really firing off in the lower Neuse River and Pamlico Sound. They will be there for another week or week and and a half until the next full moon... then they will have laid all their eggs and will pour out of Drum Inlet, Ocracoke Inlet, Hatteras Inlet and Oregon Inlet en masse. But right now, they are in my neighborhood and I got to meet a bunch of them up close and personal on Friday the 11th. Brian Robbins and I caught a couple big ones in the morning, a few puppies and flounder around lunch, a couple more big ones in the afternoon and then from 6pm to 8pm we caught them about as fast as we could go... double and triple headers until we quit and left them biting. Quite amazing and very fun. We then rolled straight up to Oregon Inlet and went out on the Waste Knot II saturday, hooking 1 of 3 white marlins but lost him... and landing 36 mahi mahi. Dinner!!!! What a great fishing weekend... just like usual here in North Carolina!

Lauren and Derek's fish pics!

2009-09-08T18:17:00.001-04:00

Lauren and Derek each successfully landed a citation red drum. Lauren's big one was 40 inches and Derek's was 42 inches. They put up a great fight but were no match against Kid Power!

Labor Day drum fishing... it was great

2009-09-08T09:23:00.002-04:00

The wind turned around to the North-East at the end of last weekend. It has been blowing that way hard ever since. As expected, this fired the drum bite up and ran the tarpon out. So last weekend's tarpon... barring any unexpected encounters... was my last NC tarpon until next year. The big drum are currently going crazy! You still have to work and find them, but once you do they come fast and furious. The peak of this last bite started a day or so after the NE winds came and lasted until Friday. Luckily I was there Friday evening and got in on some of it. Tripp and I caught 11 big drum in just a couple hours of fishing Friday evening. And it was beautiful... the wind dropped out for a few hours, no clouds, slick calm conditions and a beautiful sunset. Double header 30 - 50 pound drum making for a very fun evening. Saturday the winds came back. We puppy drum fished the morning with only so-so results... we landed several slot puppy drum and lost a big one but not the great bite I was looking for. Saturday evening, however, was alot of fun. We made a run back out to where we had got them the evening before and got the lines in precisely at 6PM... just in time for kickoff of the Tar Heel football game. It wasn't long after when the first reel started singing. I was very thankful for this as my kids where fishing with me this evening, and they each got to land a citation red drum! Out of 5 bites, we landed 3 nice drum... all reeled in by Lauren and Derek. Lauren ended up with 2 drum and Derek 1... but Derek's was the biggest! Smiles all around, good action filled fishing for about 2 hours and we ran in before it got dark. Great evening! I called a friend into my spot before I left and he caught 9 more there after the sun went down.

Sunday the storm set in and it was windy, cold and rainy. I couldn't make it happen in the morning. Fished 5 of my favorite spots without a bite. FRUSTRATING. After a hot shower and a little regrouping, Tripp, Steve and I ran back out for the evening bite and found the winds up to 20 knots with higher gusts out of the NE, with periodic rain squalls. Beautiful. The waves were stacked up 3-4 footers. This doesn't sound like much... but in the Pamlico Sound and Neuse River, the water is so shallow that these waves are very close together. I would rather be in 8 foot seas in the ocean. It took almost 45 minutes for me to pilot the boat 4 miles to a close in spot. We anchored up at 7PM and by 9PM we were soaked and happy and headed in with 3 big drum releases out of 5 bites. Not world shattering numbers for the weekend but 17 big drum and several puppy drum is certainly enough to qualify as great fishing. The above pictures are of Tripp getting a nice sunset drum Friday night... and then Steve and I holding the last fish Sunday night in the rain. The last pic was taken as a 4 foot breaker crashed over the bow and about knocked Steve and I over... almost a real quick release! Pictures of Lauren and Derek's fish to be posted soon.

Delayed Entry: Pictures of Ross and his 130 pound tarpon from the "Grand Slam" weekend

2009-09-02T11:18:00.003-04:00

This fish fought as hard as I can remember a 130 pounder fighting. The strike didn't seem like a tarpon strike, not the violent screaming strike I am used to... but I set the hook 4 times figuring it would be a drum, and then it launched itself 8 feet into the air. Tarpon! 1 hour solid, everytime it got close to the boat it would make another run. Several great jumps too. We tried to drag it into the boat for pictures but it wasn't to be... no sense in injuring a fish you are going to let go just to get a picture. We could have gaffed him (as well as the one from last saturday) and got some great pictures but the fish were still a little green. As we were waiting for them to roll on their side (that is when it is safe to lip gaff them for a picture)... the leaders finally gave way. Gotta love it though, tarpon in North Carolina... the very far northern end of their range. After this NE wind... I imagine it will be July 2010 before I see another tarpon in these waters.

Got another North Carolina tarpon and a 50 pound red drum....

2009-08-31T09:50:00.003-04:00

... in addition to several other drum ranging from a 3 pound puppy to a 25 pounder. Also a bunch of nice spanish mackerels we found busting glass minnows out in the sound. We turned the big spanish mackerel into dinner, and the medium sized ones into bait... which produced both the 50 pound drum and the estimated 125 pound tarpon. The two bites came within 15 minutes of each other, Steve Austin landed the citation drum and Charlie Edwards got to spend the better part of an hour working the citation tarpon in. The sun was always in our eyes when good photo opportunities presented themselves on the tarpon, no good pictures. That is a tarpon just under the water in the second photo, best picture we got. But what a strike, one of the most aggresive bites I have seen, so hard I thought it snapped the rod (something went CRACK, still havent figured out what broke). Thats 2 for 2 on tarpon my last 2 trips... on a little roll! We will see what this cool rainy weather does this week, it might run the tarpon out, but if it does it should really turn on the drum bite...

Tarpon and Billfish releases in the same weekend in North Carolina. My version of a N. Carolina Grand Slam!

2009-08-19T21:39:00.007-04:00

About a month ago I set out to catch a tarpon and a billfish in North Carolina in the same weekend. Well, I jumped off a tarpon and then the winds set in and had to cancel the billfish trip. So I accomplished neither. I made up for it this weekend! Friday, my friends Victor and Ross met me in Oriental and we set out bright and early to the middle of the Pamlico Sound. We quickly located a small pod of rolling tarpon but got no bites out of them. About the time they quit rolling and I thought we had missed our chance, a Cape Fear rod ripped over and the reel started singing. I set the hook 4 or 5 times and a huge tarpon came cartwheeling out of the water. Sweet!! Ross battled the tarpon, an estimated 130 pounder, for almost an hour which included a good 7 or 8 jumps before I got the leader and released the big fish. Great fun and step one accomplished. I am waiting on photos from Victor...

We ran in to beat the thunderstorms (almost beat them, a good soaking incurred) and headed for Oregon Inlet. Saturday morning came with a torrential downpour, but no wind. So out we went on the Waste Knot II and by the time we got to the blue water it was beautiful weather and seas. Shortly thereafter, the mayhem began. Now I am not going to complain, we had a great day... but wow what could have been. The first billfish that we raised was a nice blue marlin, about 225 pounds that would not let go of the starboard teaser. He had to have it. Unfortunately we could not get him to switch to a bait. Next, a pair of sailfish came cruising in. Matt the mate and I each hooked one and passed the rods off. Unfortunately for Victor, his fish came unglued. Our friend Jimmy successfully subdued his sailfish with some of the most unorthodox reeling methods I have ever seen, and I had my goal accomplished: hooking a tarpon and a billfish leading to a release in the same weekend. It was the next fish that really hurt. A small blue marlin, maybe 150 pounds came in and we hooked him solid 3 times.. and the hook pulled 3 times. Ouch. Same thing with the next white marlin that came in. When it was all said and done we went 0-1 on Blue Marlin (the first one never bit), 0-1 on white marlin and 1 for 4 on sailfish. Thankfully, yours truly went 1-1. Sunday was a bit slower but still great as we raised 6 sailfish, hooked 5 and landed 2. In all we landed a really big NC tarpon, raised 2 blue marlin, 10 sailfish and a white marlin and released 3 sails. Fun weekend and I sure wish we could have had a little more fun with that blue marlin. The best of the season is yet to come..... stay tuned!

More drum and flounder, this time in the ocean, last Sunday Aug 9th

2009-08-18T14:38:00.006-04:00

Well, after a great family trip to Montreal and Northern Vermont, I drove straight from where I stopped the night before on the drive home ...somewhere in Pennsylvania ... to Ocean Isle Beach.
Went fishing
Sunday with
Kennan and Danielle Hill, and Brian Robbins. The plan was to net up some mullet minnow and pogies and hit the artificial reefs and wrecks looking for flounder. After a couple moves we started getting bites.. big bites that we couldn't slow down with our flounder gear. The fish had a familiar thump, thump to the runs they were making, felt like red drum to me. So we changed leaders and put out some heavier rods in addition to our light spinning rods, and lo and behold we discovered that we had anchored up on a nice pod of good sized red drum. 7 nice ones landed and as many broken off. Also one lonely but very nice sized flounder and a gaggle of bluefish. Great weather, great fishing. A good warm-up to the big weekend that was to come next weekend! (Tarpon, Blue Marlin, White Marlin and Sailfish... all in a 3 day weekend in N.C. !)

Incredible fishing. World Class right now

2009-08-17T10:11:00.002-04:00

It's not that I haven't been fishing... it's that I have been fishing so hard and it is so good I haven't had time to post a report. Lets just say that if you want to catch a billfish, tarpon, drum, wahoo or mahi... right now the central coast of N. Carolina is the best place in the world to be. Report to follow soon!

Tarpon hook up, good drum and flounder fishing.

2009-07-28T18:29:00.004-04:00

Well, the plan was to try and catch a tarpon in the Pamlico Sound on Friday and Saturday then go white marlin fishing Sunday. Rick Blase and I hooked a tarpon Friday morning but the 9/0 hook broke in half on him. What a bummer. Strong fish. We had a school of tarpon rolling around the boat for about an hour, exciting stuff. Got run off the sound by a thunderstorm.
Then Saturday morning it was absolutely beautiful... slick calm... we could have seen a school of tarpon from a mile away but out of 50 boats fishing for them (it was the tarpon tournament) only 3 were caught. They just did not show up on Saturday. Not that we didn't look, put about 60 miles on the boat searching. The wind started howling saturday evening and we had to call of the marlin trip at the last minute. We went out in the Pamlico Sunday morning and beat the banks for puppy drum and flounder, and while it took us a while to find them we did pretty well catching 7 keeper flounder, a gaggle of undersized ones and several nice puppy drum. Rick caught this nice 28 incher on a Berkeley Gulp shrimp. All we did was cast artificials. It was big fun. I just wish I could have shown Dr. Steve Austin a North Carolina tarpon with a hook in his jaw. Next time!

I am taking a 2 week break from fishing... then will be back at it hard.

First Drum trip to the Pamlico of the year...

2009-07-19T21:39:00.002-04:00

... and it was good. Also had tarpon all over me for an hour and a half Sunday morning but couldn't get one to bite. Did get around 15-20 nice puppy drum and the same amount of flounder on Saturday, then went tarpon fishing Sunday morning. Did catch the nice "old drum" pictured, a 42 incher. Good trip. Dr. Steve Austin schooled me on the flounder fishing, glad to learn some new tricks!

Couldn't find the blue water, did find a nice grouper

2009-07-05T19:23:00.000-04:00

Fished out of Ocean Isle Beach for the 4th of July weekend. Friday morning it was quite rough, it calmed down nicely in the early afternoon. We caught live bait (pogies) along the beach, one throw of the 10 foot cast net by Brian Robbins and we had a couple hundred. We fished our way offshore, spot-hopping as the seas calmed down. We got 4 king mackerel bites at the Jungle, small kings. We worked our way out to about 40 miles offshore and the water was a nasty brown-green color. Not much going on. Saturday was nice and calm and we made the big run to the 100/400 to troll the gulfstream, sure there would be nice blue water out there. Wrong, it was 82 degrees and brown-green. Never seen it like that before. We messed around out there for about 3 1/2 hours and only caught a handful of barracudas. We then ran in toward the tower and found nice clear water. We decided to try and save the day with some bottom fish. We caught a nice batch of pink snappers, purple grunts, a few sea bass and a trigger fish... and the nice 18.7 pound Red Grouper cranked up by yours truly. Only 1.5 pound shy of a citation, rats. But the Grouper Fromage will be tasty tomorrow night!

Up at Oregon Inlet, Capt. Trey put the meat in the boat Saturday with 7 yellowfin tuna between 42 and 62 pounds. Sashimi! Lucky for me I know the crowd that fished on Saturday and have been promised a loin or two. So seared tuna will follow up the grouper feast. Gotta love it. Hoping that the next run to the stream will be in clear blue water because this weekend was hopeless for us.

Tarpon, Costa Rica style

2009-06-25T13:06:00.000-04:00

I arrived in San Jose Friday at 1:24 PM, I cleared immigration and customs at Juan Santamaria International Airport in 11 minutes and was outside in my buddy's 4-wheel drive at 1:36 PM. That, my friends, is knowing how to get thru a foreign airport. Lotsa practice.

Well, it slowed down from there. It rained in San Jose that afternoon. In fact, I have been there for some amazing downpours, but this one took the cake. Water was blowing out of the storm grates 10 feet straight up in the air. The city streets were flooded, some places 6 feet deep. The streets with a slope were solid class III rapids with a few IV's thrown in. We had to reroute several times to find a safe way out of the city. It was raining worse in the mountains.
The normal 2 1/2 hour ride to the river took 5 hours. Then I had a 15 mile ride down the river, in the middle of the jungle, on a skiff with no spotlight in the pitch dark to look forward to. Thankfully the rain was confined to the western slopes of the mountains and it cleared out and was beautiful on the coastal plain. When I woke up early Saturday morning, some of that rain water had made its way to the Rio Colorado river and it blew the big school of sardines out of the river mouth and messed up the blitz that had been going on. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and flat seas. After looking for them for an hour or so, we found the fish offshore a couple miles and I hooked and missed one on a 4 oz jig right off the bat. A big fish, looked to be about 150 pounds. Then the real BIG ONE hit, on a sardine I had put out on a circle hook... with a TLD 15 in freespool, clicker on. A 230-240 pound tarpon can make that clicker make noises you never thought you would hear. When I put it in strike, the tarpon immediately started jumping. And jumping and jumping and jumping. Usually those huge brutes don't jump much. This one put on a show right beside the boat I will never forget. 2 hours and a bunch of jumps later it finally started to calm down and we were able to successfully slip the circle hook out from the corner of its mouth, snap a couple pictures and let it go. It swam off like nothing had ever happened. We had another few minutes before we were due back in for lunch, so I put another sardine out, freshly jigged up with a sabiki rig, and it wasn't 30 seconds before another tarpon was in the air. Thankfully it jumped off on the first jump, I don't think I could have stood another fight just then. Pretty cool, that big tarpon was the biggest I have ever landed and pretty much as big as I ever want to land.

By the afternoon the rainwater was surging down the river in full force. The bite was off that afternoon but that was fine. The morning was amazing with that once in a lifetime tarpon making the entire trip worth it whether I caught another tarpon or not. Which was good because Sunday I did not. The water was now mud-colored at the river mouth, and where they usually congregate offshore was the dead sea. My buddy Gary arrived at 8AM and I ran back in from the ocean to get him, biteless. We stayed that way until 4 PM (unless you count ocean catfish and blacktip sharks as "bites" we caught a ton of them). Gary got a bite about 4 and reeled in to check his bait. We were fishing with a combination of jigs, sardines and ballyhoo. Gary had a ballyhoo. As Gary's ballyhoo arrived at the boat, a big purple shape materialized behind it and slashed at it. A big Atlantic sailfish had chased his bait in. Cool!!!! Gary got the bite but it tore the ballyhoo off the hook and took off. Still pretty wild. A couple minutes later, another bite and now Gary was battling the first tarpon of the day. After a bunch of jumps, the last jump sent the circle hook flying free through air. Bummmer. It was time to head in, about to get dark. (It gets dark at 5:30PM down there on the equator)

So, for the past day and a half we had one tarpon in the air. Gary had yet to land a tarpon and I only had one to the boat, albeit the trophy of my life. Should I be worried? NO, this is Barra Colorado! We had until Monday 11AM to find them, then it was time to fly home. One morning to go. When 11 AM Monday came, we had put, literally, more tarpon in the air than I can remember. Gary caught the first one about 2 minutes after we started fishing Monday morning, and it was a big one. The next one came several minutes after that. I can't remember when we had our first double-header but it was shortly after that. Then it got real good. I love Barra Colorado. We left a huge school of tarpon rolling and feeding in front of the river mouth. The rainwater had cleared out and the bite was on. I'm sure it is still going on. Too bad it was time to go home, but really that was all the tarpon I needed to catch to call it a monumental success. Pura Vida Costa Rica!