September weather, November fish

Can’t beat that, can ya?

Sarah and I decided to hit the beach last weekend, with confidence in the exceptional short-term forecast, rather than embarking on our more traditional – but less weather confident – Thanksgiving weekend excursion. A bird in hand is better than two in the bush, I said. Well, turns out that this Thanksgiving weekend is shaping up very nicely with a cold front today and tomorrow followed by nice high pressure Fri-Sun. But I digress. This post is about last weekend. What can I say – the weather was great and the fishing was pretty darn good as well.

I challenged Sarah to be hardcore: “I used to wake up at 2 am so that I could be on the beach before first light,” I told her. We compromised and I set the alarm for 6 am, but snoozed till closer to 7. We arrived in the Wilmington area around 10:30; a full one-quarter of our most reliable possible fishing times (Saturday sunrise, Saturday sunset, Sunday sunrise, Sunday sunset) wasted. I guess I am just not as hardcore as I used to be, but with the trout creel limit down to four, I still liked my chances to fill up during the sunset/night bite.

We started off bottom fishing the surf at Fort Fisher. Conditions seemed pretty nice, fishing with seafood market (i.e., fresh!) shrimp top of the rising tide in a nice hole in front of an old wreck, in breezy/choppy surf. We ended up only landing one nice, 14″ sea mullet before we split for a big lunch to prepare for the main event: late afternoon/evening trouting. We arrived to our evening spot to find small blues chomping on glass minnows. Some people consider the small blues simply a nuisance, but to me they are usually a welcome sight indicating lots of bait in the water, good feeding conditions and the likelihood of plenty of leftovers for less aggressive fish species when the sun goes down. Although it took a while, the trout moved in after dark and the action was very good on a mixed class of fish ranging from about 15″ to 4 pounds. I landed 6 (released two) and we were given one. Sarah had one on and then landed a small blue and a monster sized hogfish, both released.

Sunday was positively gorgeous – proverbially “too nice” for fishing. Indeed the action was much slower, but I eeked out three nice trout between the morning and evening sessions. Overall, a real fun weekend and we were able to get a good start on filling the freezer for the winter.