Oct 8 Casting to Spanish Mackerel and Bluefish

When the wind is already blowing at 7am; I never really know what the day will be like. It might be a tough one. Thankfully, my clients wanted to catch fish and they were very realistic. When we found some Bluefish west of Beaufort Inlet first thing this morning, they said "Let's Whack Em". Music to my ears. After catching all the Bluefish they needed and stuffing the livewell, we headed east to look for something different. A quick look at the Cape Lookout Shoals and all that nasty brown water and choppy whitecaps and I decided that it wasn't worth it. We looked around where the Spanish and Albacore were 2 weeks ago and that produced nothing. So we headed back to Barden's Inlet. Before we got there we saw about 6-8 of the smallest Spanish Mackerel you'll ever see jump. Worried about what we might be doing for the next 7 hours, I told the guys to start casting. I figured it was going to be a 2 minute stop and if we were lucky we might catch a 8" Spanish Mackerel. Little did I know that 90 minutes and 35 Spanish Mackerel later that we had "made our day". These Mackerel ranged from 11" throw backs to 2 pounders. Most were over 1 pound. Nice fish on the spinning rods. After that, the day was a struggle. We fished for King Mackerel with less than ideal baits and never got a bite. It was disappointing because there was a decent bite taking place! We searched in the very dirty surf for schools of Red Drum that we never found. We briefly chased schools of Albacore that were a little too erratic for our liking. We casted to 2 different Rock Jettys and came up empty. Total Catch for the Day: 50 Bluefish and 35 Spanish Mackerel.