Sept 29 3 Hour Search and ZERO Drum

Chris is headed back to Florida tommorrow and I'm headed back to Hatteras today so we made a quick trip out to catch a few Red Drum. Nearly perfect conditions on the beach had our hopes high! Unfortunately, the water was dirty, there were hardly NO Finger Mullets present on the beach, and there was 5 solid miles of Cownose Rays milling in the surf. In 3 hours of searching I saw 2 Red Drum and both of them were "on the run" from something. We did catch a few Bluefish and Lizardfish. I think if we could've waited the tide out, we could've found what we were looking for, but it wasn't to be! Fishing is shaping up good this week. Huge schools of Menhaden are up and down the beach. I would expect a good King Mackerel bite to develop off Shackleford Banks this week. Wish I was going to be here. Oh well, I'll be at Hatteras until Oct 7.

Sept 28 Lizardfish Frenzy and a 21" Flounder

Finally got a hook in the brine this morning. I had planned on going in the Boat, but all my "pals" bailed out on me. I thought about going to Cedar Island tonight also. My last shot at the Big Drum for 2008. I can't really get too excited about it for some reason. Anyway, I made it to the docks this morning and found ZERO bait. I tied on a plastic bait and figured I could catch a few Lizards and Sea Bass. I wasn't disappointed. After clearing the bottom of these hard hitting and decent fighting pests, I was mildly suprised when my final strike at Dock #2 was from a 21" Southern Flounder that weighed 3 lb.s 14 oz. Final Tally was 1 Flounder, 1 Black Sea Bass, and 8 Inshore Lizardfish.

Sept 26 Largemouth Bass over the Fence

Chris and I went shopping for Bass again this time in Beaufort. This time we had to cast over a chain link fence. Here's how it went. While Chris was battling with his woman on the phone; my first cast was crushed by a fat 2 pounder. As Chris's battle raged on, I promised him I wouldn't cast agin. He finally stepped up to the fence and caught one on his first cast! An hour later we had released 12 Largemouth Bass and 2 Bluegills. These Freshwater adventures in urban mung holes has been fun, but I'm ready for some Salt Water Action.

Sept 25 WIND and more WIND

The Lavender color shows a Gale Warning and the Purple shows a Storm Warning. My biggest question tommorrow will be: After two weeks of North winds, topped off by 2 days of Gale Force North winds, where will we find ANY Finger Mullets? Hopefully there will still be a few around so we can get back to catching some Flounder and Red Drum.

Sept 24 Largemouth Bass, Bluegills, and Gale Force Winds

My buddy Chris has been sitting around watching the wind blow for a week. It killed his Dove Hunting. He talked me into going fishing with him today. At Wal-Mart! In 2 hours, by fishing 5 different "mud-puddles" we caught 11 Largemouth Bass and 8 Bluegills. We actually had 3 Bass that were in the 2 pound class. Wacky Worms and Roostertails did the trick. We took a few pictures with our cell phones, hopefully they will work okay.

Sept 23 Citation Flounders and a Great Loss in Horrible Conditions

What a week at Hatteras. I always look forward to getting a Night Run in September. It should be a Flounder Killing. Last year the grass killed the Fishing and one of my evenings was interrupted when one of my crew mates, Tina Meekins, saved 5 drowning Flounder Giggers. This week, I fought constant North and Northeast winds, dirty water, and horrible bait conditions. We also has the misfortune to have a Crew Member pass away on my Ferry while underway. It was a terrible tragedy and a very stressful predicament. Luckily, we found 2 Nurses and a Physician's assistant onboard so our crew didn't have to second guess ourself's in our life saving skills for the next 25 years. Everybody performed with courage under the worst possible conditions. Trust me, when your Captain is fighting for his life and you have 30 cars and 100 peoople onboard a Ferry, it ain't good. Toss in 40 knot NE wind and a very narrow channel, and another Ferry approaching and we had a major disaster in the making. God Bless you, Capt. Lou, I was proud to sail under your command. As far as the fishing went, The numbers fell off throughout the week, but the size was decent. I always hope for a 10 pounder up there in September, but this year my top Flounder was 7 pounds. I also had a 5 lb. 2 oz, I had 4 fish between 4 and 5 pounds, and all together I caught 24 Flounders in 5 nights of Fishing. I also caught a nice sized Octopus, app. 40 Black Sea Bass, and a few Pinfish. The 7 pounder was a last second miracle, caught at 4:50 on Monday morning.

Sept 16 Hatteras Bound FLOUNDER KILLING AHEAD

I'm out the door to Hatteras and working the NIGHT SHIFT. That means 2 things. I'm going to smoke the Flounders and I can take people out on the Beach for Guided Surf Fishing. Rates and Hours are highly variable. Call my cell phone if interested 252-241-8350.

Sept 15 BABY BIG FISH at the Dock

During this weeks Red Drum quest I haven't done any dock fishing in Taylor's Creek. With my free time running short, I tried it this morning regardless of high SW winds and dirty water. These conditions don't make for great fishing on Front Street, but at least the tide was on my side. The fishing was not good though. It was horrible! However, the ever present Red Drum once again bailed me out. Pesky little 10" to 12" Red Drum were eating my finger mullets pretty quickly. I also caught a baby Gag Grouper and a Lizardfish. The Lizardfish never got the hook, but he was so hungry he wouldn't release my bait until he hit the deck. For the morning session, I caught 5 Red Drum, 1 Gag Grouper, and 1 Inshore Lizardfish. NO FLOUNDER BITES.....

Sept 13 Cedar Island Red Drums

I finally went fishing for the Giant Red Drum tonight. First time all summer and it was pretty good. David, Kyle, and I fished from 8pm until 11pm and the bites were steady. We were plagued with Bluefish, and caught 7 of them up to 2 pounds. By my best guess, we caught 15 Red Drum out of 19 probable Drum bites. David had the biggest at 46" and he also the smallest at 36". The majority of our Drum were from 38" to 42". We caught 10 that measured 40" or better. I liked the numbers, but just like last year, the biggest Drum seem to be absent from the water off Cedar Island.

Sept 12 More Red Drum Pics

Conditions are Perfect for Sight Casting to Schools of Red Drum. After 10 years of soaking bait for Giant Red Drum, I must admit: "THIS IS MUCH MORE FUN". If you've caught 1 Big Drum, you've caught them all. Let's go Sight Casting!

Sept 12 The RED DRUM Motherlode and the Albacore Show Up

Ryan and Chris fished on a huge school of Red Drum today. I've been fishing on a nice school for a couple of weeks, but today we decided to look in another spot. Good call Chris! We found a huge school of Fish. After we hit them for a triple header, the school broke into 3 parts and each school was 5 times bigger than the school I'd been hammering. After catching 9 Red Drum (3 each), we went looking for something else and we found a few schools of Albacore and Spanish Mackerel. We each caught an Albacore and we each caught a few Spanish Mackerel. Then it was back to the Drum and we found them right where we left them. Chris caught 3 more Red Drum, including a smoking 34" Red Drum that weighed over 14 pounds. Ryan got 2 more Red Drum. Final Tally for the day was 14 Red Drum, 3 Albacore, and 8 Spanish Mackerel.

Sept 11 Sight Casting to RED DRUM

Kyle and I had a great afternoon of fishing. The annual Finger Mullet migration is underway and the sheer numbers of fish headed south off Shackleford Banks is mind boggling. Amidst all this bait we found the school of Red Drum that we were looking for and enjoyed a couple of great hours of light tackle casting. The final tally for the day was 10 Red Drum, with the biggest fish at 33", or about 12 pounds. That Drum put up an incredible fight on 8# test! Kyle also caught a Bluefish that got in a little too close to the Drum. Kyle also let me "climb down" and get me a out of the slot Red Drum!

Great Picture

I found this picture on the internet on the charter boat Trophy Hunter's website. While fishing to the NE out of Oregon Inlet a couple of days ago, they found a monster Mako Shark eating a 150 lb. Swordfish. Attempts to hook the Shark were unsuccessful.

Sept 8 I'm HOME...Let's Go Fishing!!

I'm back from Ocracoke and ready to go. TS Hanna is in the rear view mirror and we're looking good as far as the Tropical complications go! Last week my fishing consisted of snagging Jumping Mullets with treble hooks. It was a productive and expensive operation. I ended up with 20 some fish from 2-3 pounds, but I broke a Rod, lost a spool full of PowerPro, and lost 25 treble hooks. I'm ready for some great fishing action. Give me a call or I'm going by myself!

By the way, I've still got 1 free IGFA membership to give away. If you fish with me please remind me and it can be yours.

Aug 31 Awesome Red Drum Fishing

Brad and his crew fished with me today and we got a late start due to the victorious ECU Football Team! The weather man did his usual great job, 5-10 NE wind? As usual it was 5+10 NE. The wind and a rapidly growing ground swell made the Shoals a little scary (where the motherlode of Bluefish was yesterday) so we looked elsewhere. After a long search we found a nice school of 25"-32" Red Drum, 75 fish at least. Casting soft plastics and metal on light spinning tackle, everybody (5 anglers) caught 2 or 3 each. I figured we caught between 10-12 Red Drum total and we picked out 4 keepers at 27" and we released the rest and all but 1 was out of the slot, too big. We caught a few Bluefish in the 2 lb class and saw a couple of nice Sharks, schools of Pompano, a few monster Sea Mullet, and a Tarpon. We looked for a Shark to catch later in the afternoon and couldn't find a single one.

Aug 30 FISH EVERYWHERE

Today was a very fishy day! I would like to say that we had a great day, BUT.....We did catch lots of fish, but two particular species left us completely baffled. Flounder and Spanish Mackerel. In my opinion, the Flounder fishing on the nearshore ARs out of MHC has sucked the last 2 years. From 2002 to 2006 I could catch 10 fish over 20" any day from June until November. Last year was terrible. This year I really haven't tried. Today we did, with good bait, and all we got was Black Sea Bass and Lizardfish. As far as the Spanish Mackerel go, we had 12 bites from big Spanish on live bait and for a myriad of reasons, we lost every single fish. Pulled hooks, bite off the swivel, they even bit off the blood knot at my shock leader connection. Plenty of guys were catching 3-5 pound Spanish Mackerel, but we were not among them! We eventually made our way to the east where we did find the biggest concentration of Bluefish that I've seen in 5 years. Amazing numbers. We caught app 25 from 1-3 pounds. We also found a small school of Red Drum and Gerald caught a 5 pounder. We saw hundreds of Sharks up to 100 pounds cruising the shallow water. The final blow was a nice Pompano that I hooked from the tower. I passed the rod down to Gerald and started to climb down for the net and the hook pulled. Our Citation Pompano in the 4 lb. class was gone. Par for the course on this day!

Aug 29 Fishing Tommorrow

I managed to do my part for the environment, my bank account, and local fish populations by staying out of my Boat this week. Besides, the Dock fishing has been okay and dirt cheap. Tommorrow I'm headed out with Gerald Currin and we're looking for a light tackle adventure. I've got around 20 dozen Mullet that are ready to go. Special thanks to Marcus R for catching me some bait. Marcus R is the best with a 3 foot cast net that I've ever seen. He was spinning it today into the wind 30 feet and hitting perfectly on top of pods of 10-25 Finger Mullet. He was catching entire schools in the small net, time after time. Like I said, at 30 feet! Today I caught 3 Red Drum and 3 Black Sea Bass at the Dock.

Aug 28 Morning Drum, Lunchtime Flounders, and Afternoon Drum

Checked out the Dock three times today. This morning I caught a Red Drum pretty quickly and when I brought him to the top, about 15 of his buddies follwed him. When it was over I had caught 5 total Red Drum, all under the slot. The Drum in the picture was 16" and was released. I looked around for a Flounder and found none. I did see monster Stingrays, large Jumping Mullets, Sheepsheads, and Spanish Mackerel. Checked out the Dock again after lunch and a few Flounders have shown up. I got 3 Flounders and kept an 18" Southern Flouder and released a pair of 15"ers. Later in the afternoon I made my third trip down to the dock and found plenty of action. Small Red Drum, Black Sea Bass, and Lizardfish were chewing. During this 30 minute session I caught 3 more Red Drum. Total for the day was 8 Red Drum and 3 Southern Flounder.

Aug 27 Citation Flounder

Slow, Slow, Slow in the creek today. Conditions are perfect but the bites were hard to find. I made one bite pay-off big during low tide this morning when a 25" Southern Flounder that weighed 6 lbs 5 oz decided to eat my 6" finger Mullet. Later in the afternoon, when the tide was perfect, fishing was very disappointing. In 75 minutes of swimming Mullets around heavy structure all I caught was a 10" Red Drum and a 16" Southern Flounder.

Aug 26 Poor Fishing Today

Pretty Bait. Nice Flood Tide. Clear Water. Late August. That is the perfect recipe for a small scale Red Drum and Flounder killing in Taylor's Creek. However, in two hours of fishing all I produced was 4 Inshore Lizardfish and 1 Black Sea Bass. On a positive note, 2 of the Lizardfish were nice ones. Taylor's Creek is over run with very aggressive schools of small Pinfish. They were killing my finger Mullets pretty quickly. I might trap a few dozen tommorrow just to teach them a lesson. Also, looks like a good chance for rain the next couple of days. It will be interesting to see how it affects our fishing.

Fishing Goals, Priorities, and Gas Prices

A couple of people have asked this question: "Why does the text on your website spend so much time talking about types of fishing that, according to your fishing reports, you never even do?" Good question. Here's my answer. First, most of that text is 5 or 6 years old and fishing changes and my preferences change. Second, as a Fishing Guide, I take people out and do the things they want to do or the things I think we will be most successful at. Third, and most importantly, because as I have gotten older and spent more days on the water, my goals and interests have shifted. When I was young, I fished inshore because that was all I could do. Through the mid-90s to 2001, I fished as many as 12 King Mackerel Tournaments per year. I fished for King Mackerel probably 50-75 days a year. From the late 80's until around 2001, I went Offshore Trolling every possible chance I got when King Mackerel Tournaments didn't create a conflict. Finally, I worked on a Headboat in 1990 and 1991 and also fished commercially for Grouper off and on through the 90's and until around 2005 I still spent 10-25 days a year Grouper Fishing. Somewhere during all of this King Mackerel, Offshore Trolling, and Grouper Fishing, I really started missing the Inshore Fishing again and that is now my primary focus. Plus, how can I not say the price of GAS is also a big factor! All that being said, I do miss the King Mackerel and Grouper Fishing and hope that I get more chances to fish for them during the fall of 2008! By the way, the first picture is a 35 pound Gag Grouper that I caught in Feb. of 1991 with Capt. Pizza Kannon in the background. The second picture is a 46 pound King Mackerel, my largest of an 18 fish catch that weighed over 500 pounds in Nov. of 2000.

Aug 24 The Final Citation Sheepshead?

Okay, all good things must come to an end. Next shift, I'll be on the Ocracoke-Cedar Island Ferry and all my Sheepsheads will be safely out of reach 13 miles to the Northeast. By the time I return to Hatteras in September I will be a "Flounder mode". So the 8 lb. 10 oz. Sheepshead that I caught today could be my last one until next summer. It was a blast! That's 12 over 8 pounds from 1 single cluster of Pilings and over 30 total with 4 "babies" between 3 and 4 pounds. All the rest were 5-7 pounders. Wow!

Aug 22 Citation Sheepshead Frenzy!

I finally had some help with all those Sheepsheads today! Dave "Fog" Radke, a world famous mate from West Palm Beach, Florida to Oregon Inlet, NC, who now in "semi-retirement" started working with us on the Hatteras Ferry was crewed up with me today. Fog and I were casually playing around with a urchin on a string and hardly trying. Suddenly as I was pulling my Urchin in to re-cast a crazed 8-9 pound Sheepshead charged up out of the depths and exploded on my bait. And missed. Fog went ballistic. A man who has caught hundreds of Blue Marlin, thousands of White Marlin, and has old pictures of himself, as a kid, with 30+ pound Snook stacked like firewood went apeshit over a Sheepshead! Two hours later, I had a 8 lb. 9 oz. and a 8 lb. 3 oz. Sheepshead and Fog had a 8 lb. 4 oz., a 7 lb. 4 oz., and a 4 lb. Sheepsheads. Awesome. Same cluster of pilings. We're in the 30's now with 11 over 8 pounds!

Aug 21 Another Sheepshead

I got another Sheepshead today. This one weighed 7 lb. 8 oz. One bite and one fish in about 10 minutes of fishing. There are still a few hanging around that same cluster of pilings!

Aug 18 Citation Flounder and Broken Lines

Another "nearly" great day of fishing. 6 Southern Flounders and 2 Gulf Flounders on live bait that measured 24", 22", 22", 20", 19" and three released. The 24" Flounder weighed exactly 5 lb.s. The bad part was that we hooked up 7 Red Drum in heavy, heavy structure and even with the 80# PowerPro we couldn't keep them from breaking off. I finally managed to catch a smaller Red Drum at 24". Also giant Lizardfish and roving hordes of Pinfish made fishing interesting and aggrevating. We caught several of the Lizardfish. Lots of bait around, nice size too. Fishing is good now and should get better. Too bad I've got to go back to Hatteras tonight. The total for the day was 8 Flounders and 1 Red Drum.

Aug 17 Every Cast Mackerel and Bluefish

Ferdinand and I fished to the east today and it was very fishy, to say the least. First thing we encountered was school after school of Spanish Mackerel. We would get long drifts with multiple casts in a row hooking up. Then we would run to the next school and do it again. These Mackerel ran from 10" to 2 pounds. After an hour we had enough and went to look for our next challenge. I guess we caught close to 40 Spanish Mackerel, keeping all we wanted and released the rest. On the shoals we searched for the school of Drum I fished on Tuesday, but we never found them. We even set out on foot at one point to fish a hard to reach spot, but that didn't work either! We did find the motherlode of Bluefish. We caught Bluefish from 1-3 pounds until we couldn't take it anymore. We caught them on metal and top water plugs. We probably caught around 50 Bluefish, keeping a few and releasing the rest. Finally, on the way home, we ran over a huge school of Red Drum. We spent a good 2 hours searching for them and waiting to see if they'd come back up on "their spot" but we never saw them again. Oh well, a good day that nearly turned great! Total for the day was 40 Spanish Mackerel and 50 Bluefish.