Weekly report – April 20, 2011

Water temps are about the same as last week, maybe edging up a degree or two.  The fishing definitely continues to pick up.

The biggest news has been an excellent flounder run around Cape Point, the South Beach and Hatteras Inlet.  Easy limits of nice-sized fish up to 4 pounds have been widely reported with the hottest spot being the hook of the Point – always a worthy flounder location.  We’ve had some good April flounder runs at the Outer Banks, but they are not reliable.  This year’s has been the best in recent memory.  Hopefully, it will both continue and bode well for a good flounder season.

Otherwise, the reports are much the same as last week – at the Outer Banks, good big drum fishing for those making the walk to Cape Point, good bluefishing, with some larger fish to 7 pounds or so, and plenty of bottom fish like sea mullet and blowtoads.  North of Oregon Inlet, the water temps are pushing into the low 50s and the fishing is starting to pick up with scattered bottom fish.  In the sounds, some pups, specks, and flounder are starting to show.  Likewise, down south of the Outer Banks, the bluefish are starting to hit in force, along with good runs of bottom fish off the piers and beaches.

Slacker posting, not fishing

Despite my recent posting inactivity, I have managed to get a little bit of fishing in since my rather unproductive new years trip to the Outer Banks.   So, here’s a capsule…better late than never!

First up was a unique experience fishing out of a traditional dugout canoe on the beautiful Lake Atitlan during Sarah and my trip to Guatemala in February.  Everyone recommended billfishing, as Guatemala is apparently a mega-hotspot, but that’s not really my thing and this was a rare vacation that did not revolve around fishing (vacation was amazing by the way).  We fished with Don Fernando and caught a handful (literally) of feisty bluegills on handlines baited with larvae from the weeds along the banks of the lake.

Lago Atitlan

Don Fernando, el pescador

"El hombre is muy grande"

la pescadora

spearfishing is where its at

In early March, Sarah and I made our annual pilgrimage to the beautiful Windfall, an old hunting/fishing lodge on the intracoastal waterway north of Charleston, now owned by the family of one of Sarah’s college buddies.  Flounder seem to be the name of the game on our March trips to Windfall, and this was a banner year, with steady action on big 18-21″ fish.  Enjoy!

Windfall pond

Tiller gets in on the action

Nathan with the catch

Fatty flattie

Weekly Report – April 12, 2011

Spring has sprung and the water temperatures are now ranging from about 50 north at Duck to the low-mid 60s on the southeast coast, with some nice warm water holding along the south facing beaches of Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands.

The fishing has been steadily improving over the past few weeks, with a few good nights of fishing for big red drum and an increasing number of bottom fish during the day.  At the Outer Banks, the blowtoads have outnumbered the sea mullet, but they will probably switch positions pretty soon.  Some of the blowtoads being caught at Bogue Banks have been huge, between 1 and 2 pounds.  In addition to these front-runner fish, some others are just starting to come onto the scene, including nice catches of bluefish (mostly 2-4 pounders along with a few larger) on bait and lures, and some nice keeper flounder along the South Beach of Hatteras Island recently.  Blues don’t seem to be as prevalent along the southeastern coast yet, but that is just a matter of a few days and a few degrees. They are thick at Cape Lookout.

Inside, a friend of mine has been catching some nice gray and speckled trout along the banks of the Carteret County creeks.  In the rivers, the word is mostly shad with a few stripers beginning to show.  My buddy in Richmond reports some nice stripers moving upwater in the James.  Speaking of stripers, shore anglers are catching them along the sodbanks in Jersey and a few scattered are starting to hit in the surf, mostly on bait.

0 for 11

2011, that is.  In fact, I only had one clear hit in the final four days I spent at the Outer Banks.  Yes, things have slowed in the surf.  Conditions were nice, but the fish were decidedly not bunched up, nor were they very active.  I do know a few small pups were caught, but the emphasis is on “few”.  I mostly jigged the south beaches for pups and whatever else might be mixed in (turns out, nothing), but did spend one night plugging for stripers, both ocean and sound.

Mid-week, right when I had to leave, the stripers really made it down to Oregon Inlet south.  I saw some light, but interesting, birdplay heading over the OI bridge Wednesday morning and wouldn’t you know that a new state record striper was caught that day just by a charter running outside the inlet.  That state record, by the way, has already been usurped by an even bigger fish (64#) that is now the pending state record.  I can’t help but think about how a few, very large stripers were caught just before total collapse of the stock in the 80s.  According to the charters and tackle shops (who of course have nothing to gain by creating a frenzy over the striper bite), there are a lot of fish out there.  Based on the reports I’m seeing, and my personal experiences, I still think the current body of fish is a mere fraction of that of the late 90s and early 2000s.

Apparently, there has been some bait in close to the beach along Hatteras Island.  Some bait fish that were presumably chased up on the beach (although with all these weird fish and bird kills lately, who the hell knows why they were there) in Buxton yesterday.  If the weather holds out, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a blitz or two along the beach.  However, I wouldn’t make a special trip chasing blitzes.

For me, this was a pretty disappointing fall season.  I shouldn’t complain too much, as I had good or very good action most days, until this last trip.  However, the quality wasn’t there.  Everything was small.  My largest puppy drum didn’t break 19″ and my largest trout (at the Outer Banks…further south was better) didn’t break the 14″ keeper size!  After a few disappointing years of hyper focusing on fishing the Outer Banks during the usually-excellent late fall months of November-December, I am going to start diversifying again next year.

Cape Point a.m.

sunset

1 fish/2 days

We’ve finally been treated to awesome weather…the kind of weather I remember from Cape Hatteras winters past.  The stars seemed aligned perfectly for a repeat of last winters’ super puppy drum fishing, but Mother Nature reminds us of the fickle nature of fishing.  Friday (NYE) and Saturday (NYD) were both beauts: clear, calm, and seasonably warm.  However, the fishing has gotten worse, after reports of good-to-excellent puppy drum fishing earlier last week.  We hit the tail end of a fair bite Friday afternoon near Hatteras Inlet.  I landed a 17″ pup and Sarah hooked one up on a mirrolure that pulled off.  We each felt a lot more fish, but getting them to bite was a challenge.

Sarah, sexy in her waders and Phillies hat

the author holding his rod

Yesterday, in even prettier surf conditions, was nearly dead slow.  The only action we saw was back near Hatteras Inlet and it was a really slow pick of small pups.  I finally got one nice strike, but didn’t hook it up.  I measured the water temperature along the beach near Hatteras Inlet at about 48.5 F.   The weather has clouded and we expect the wind to pick up tonight, before settling back out tomorrow.  Perhaps the change will get the pups biting again.  On a more positive note, striper fishing out of Oregon Inlet has been good, though its mostly been a trolling bite a few miles off the beach.  Hearing of a few scattered off the bridge catwalk, but most of the fish are staying off the beach where the water temps are in 50F range.

fishing 2010 away...

Ice fishing report

Well…not real ice fishing, but close as it gets at the Carolina coast.  I actually fished last weekend (the weekend of Dec 18-19, that is) and my first stop featured large pillars of ice formed on pilings, rip-rap, and along the shoreline.  Ice fishing.  The water temperature at this particular soundside location read 38 on my pool thermometer, but I split before it bottomed-out and my legs – protected only by breathable wader fabric and some fleece sweats – told me the water was COLD.  The early winter surf temperatures are very much mid-winter in magnitude.  Upper 30s at Duck, with mid-upper 40s south.  I’m a broken record here, but these are in line with the lowest water temperatures we usually see in a season, and about 10 degrees south of where the water temps usually are in late December.

Even with all the cold, wind, and yes, snow, there still has been some surf fishing activity.  I’m not hearing much from the southeastern beaches, but there has been some good fishing on Hatteras Island.  I found concentrations of puppy drum both Saturday and Sunday last weekend along the beaches south of Cape Hatteras.  The first day they were mixed in a tight school with jumping mullet in a small slough along the beach.  I caught a six pound mullet (mouth-hooked no less!) along with a bunch of short pups.  The second day they were tight against the beach and hitting hard.  Both days featured very strong and cold northerly winds, along with lots of clouds and some rain.  Tough conditions, but fish on the line helped keep me warm.  The same weekend, a couple keeper stripers were hooked (with one landed) on the Buxton beach.  A few trout were also caught, but they were much less active than the pups, and several were snagged rather than mouth-hooked. The fish are tightly schooled and it is not uncommon to strike out at numerous spots along the beach before finding the motherlode all bunched up in an area the size of a small room.

A 24", 6# mullet that hit a jig in the Hatteras surf

Tons of bait pouring out of Hatteras Inlet, but nothing feeding on it

Despite my earlier optimism, persistent cold weather has caused the season to indeed pass us by and we will likely remain in a winter pattern till the waters warm significantly around April.  Although its hard to imagine enough good weather to warm the waters significantly, the current short-term forecast is calling for a nice New Year’s weekend and the longer-term outlook is still for a relatively warm winter.  Winter surf fishing for pups, scattered stripers, and trout (when the shallow surf sloughs warm up a few degrees in the sun) is a viable – and underrated – option the next couple months.  We’ll try again next weekend and then probably lay low and keep an eye on the weather forecasts, water temperatures, and fishing reports before planning our next outing.

This kinda says it all

Daily high and low air temperatures for Buxton, NC (courtesy of accuweather.com)

Well, except that it doesn’t say anything about the wind (or the wind chill), water temperatures, or crummy fishing.  But you get it.  In 20 years in North Carolina, I can’t remember a colder, more wintery December…and it’s only the 12th!  The month’s high and low temperatures are running a good 10 degrees below historical averages.  In fact, those water temperatures have dropped precipitously, nearly 10 degrees since the beginning of December at Wrightsville Beach.   Water temperatures at the Duck Research Pier are in the upper 40s, which we normally don’t see till mid-January.

Water temperature trends for Johnny Mercer Pier, Wrightsville Beach, NC

Surf and shore fishing news continues to be somewhat sparse.  I spent last Saturday night in southeastern North Carolina and found a decent bite of trout (some nice ones mixed among more dinks) and bluefish, but that was before another week of unseasonbly cold temperatures.   Indeed the blues were pickin’ rather than slammin’ my mirrolure.  The trout hit with more authority.

I saw a few other reports of similar action along the SENC beaches, and an excellent bite of big sea mullet in this area continued.  Some folks were also finding large blowtoads on bait.  Cape Lookout (the rock jetty in particular) continued to fish pretty well – pups, grays, and specks of various sizes.  The nearby Radio Island rock jetty and beach produced gobs of small trout, but nothing of size.

The Outer Banks have been a tougher go.  With cold NW winds most of the week, most of the action was around Hatteras where there were reports of black drum, along with a few pups, yearings, and small-to-middlin’ trout.  There had been some promising reports from the north beaches, but the NW muddies up the water and makes fishing in these areas difficult, to say nothing of the plunging water temperatures.  Nevertheless, stripers had been trickling in along the beaches near Oregon Inlet, and keeper trout were reported in Rodanthe.  The Buxton jetties and motel beach had a few pups and trout as well.

There have been multiple reports of dive-bombing gannets moving south just off the northern Outer Banks beaches and indeed, the striper charters have been focusing off Corolla and Duck lately, so there are fish moving south.  If there is a silver lining to this crazy cold weather we are having (and that’s a big if), its that we might see a mass exodus of fish out into the surf zone, much as we did last January with the puppy drum.  The short- and medium-term forecasts offer little reason for hope, but this weather has to break sometime.  Perhaps January will be unseasonably warm…but at that point, it may just be too late.

A few trout and blues continue to bite in SENC

Oh, speaking of Lookout, check out this great slideshow put together by Capts. Brian Horsley and Sarah Gardner documenting their recent season at the Cape.

 

A quiet, relaxing Thanksgiving

What a strange thing for a North Carolina surfcaster to type!  In years past, Thanksgiving could be counted on to be among the most exciting peaks of the fall fishing season.  A couple weeks ago, I was in a tackle shop on the Outer Banks when a customer asked an employee whether the ocean stripers were in yet.  His reply was that it was waaay too early for stripers in the surf.  Too early?   Let’s take a look at some recent history…

1996 was probably the first year that stripers were caught in the Outer Banks surf with regularity since the early 70s.  That year, big blues and stripers were consistently caught from mid-November to mid-December (and probably later). In 1997, stripers began to be caught regularly from the Outer Banks surf by the end of October.  A strong NE blow on November 5th and 6th produced some of the best striper fishing in over 20 years, with at least 45 stripers to 28 pounds decked on Outer Banks Pier (S. Nag’s Head) alone.   Big blues blitzed Nag’s Head on November 12th, and stripers hit the north point of Oregon Inlet on November 17th and 18th.  Mixed big blues and stripers blitzed the Outer Banks over Thanksgiving weekend.  Surely there were other excellent bites that went unreported this fall.

In 1998, keeper stripers were being caught in the Outer Banks surf beginning around October 26.  In 1999, lots of stripers were reported on the shoals off Oregon Inlet as early as November 11.  In 2000, stripers were being caught for at least two weeks prior to Thanksgiving.  In 2001, stripers were reported in the surf in early November.  They blitzed Kitty Hawk on Nov. 15-16 and Thanksgiving was hot along the beaches near Oregon Inlet.  Stripers were reported in the surf at Pea Island on October 20, 2002, with great bites on eels and plugs by early November.  The first ocean stripers in 2003 were reported in late October, although the fishing didn’t really take off till after Thanksgiving.  In 2004, the first ocean stripers were reported in late October to early November.  In 2005, decent numbers of stripers weren’t reported till around Thanksgiving, with the first all-out blitzes coming in early December.  In 2006, fish were being caught at Pea Island as of November 12, with the bite moving further south by early December.  In 2007, only a few stripers were being caught by Thanksgiving, with a little better fishing in December before action fell off.  Since then, stripers have been nearly non-existent in the surf , with just a short flurry of fish for a week in early December, and then a handful of strays throughout the rest of the season.

So, no, historically mid-November is not too early for migrating stripers at the Outer Banks. However, things have changed dramatically since the heydays of the late 90s and early 00s.  For a while, we blamed it on the weather – warm autumns.  However, the past several years have probably been colder and stormier than those prior.  Its not the weather.  There’s just less fish…lots less, and their range has retracted accordingly.

That said, a few big stripers have been reported from the Oregon Inlet area for the past week or so…and sadly, that’s probably the most exciting news as we pause at the symbolic start of North Carolina’s late season.  Our other late season target – the specked trout – continue to run small.  Blues, you ask?  Fuggetaboutit.

We hit the Outer Banks the weekend before Thanksgiving to take advantage of the nice weather (turned out that Thanksgiving weekend itself was cold, but otherwise pretty nice).  My fishing was decent – if not relatively good – with four small pups (one 18.5″ keeper) and a flounder (a short, of course) Saturday morning, and a slew of small specks at a great break in the bar on the outgoing tide Sunday.  In between, we fished bait in Frisco (ramp 49) with one microblue to show for it, and I managed to fish a nice flurry of small soundside stripers late Saturday night, after fruitlessly plugging the sloughs in KDH and KH for trout under the full moon.  The schoolie stripers moved within range of my cast, and I hooked up on 6 or 7 successive casts before they disappeared again.  These were real rats, though, with only one just over 18″.

Microblue

A WOW! sunrise

My partner, Sarah, works that great cut

As we pause mid-season, most of us probably find that we still have plenty of fishing left in us.   The question is: will the fish cooperate?  The excitement level recently is more reminiscent of early March than early December and reports are getting harder to come by.  Now’s the time to either get back to basics or to try something new…either way, get motivated to find the fish!  There are some mildly encouraging signs from the lower Virginia coast, where striper action has just started to turn on and a few nicer specks are showing.  I, for one, am thankful that we still have another month or so to make something of the so-far disappointing season.  Anything can happen…and quick!

The operative word…

…is small. Still decent amounts of speckled trout around with just a few better fish showing in the mix.  Lots of puppy drum are also starting to be caught; but again most of the fish are below the slot. I just returned from a few days at the Outer Banks and also caught a lot of flounder but all below 15 inches.  Even the few bluefish around after the recent blows have shrunk to dink size.  At Cape Lookout, last week’s hard winds have scattered the false albacore to the point of non-existence; after a great start, the guided alby season is really going out with a whimper.

The operative word could also be rough, windy, or muddy. The surf stayed up through Tuesday but finally began to settle on Wednesday. Despite a heavy high tide surf Tuesday afternoon, some trout and pups were landed in KDH and Frisco had some in the morning. It’s a good sign that fish have held to the same holes for a few weeks despite very variable weather and surf conditions. Now we just need some better fish to move in. A mild forecast and waxing full moon this coming weekend offer potential to score with big trout particularly north of Oregon Inlet where the season is beginning to grow short.  Thanksgiving weekend is shaping up for epic bad weather conditions so my partner Sarah and I are scrambling to change our plans to go this weekend instead.

Look for light tackle lure fishing for specks and pups to pick up this weekend and hopefully for blues and big drum to return. After the Thanksgiving blow, some striped bass should return to the shoals off Oregon Inlet; however I am not expecting a good season for stripers.

Weekly Report – November 13, 2010

Its been a tough week along the northern NC beaches, with gale force northerly winds, high surf, and heavy ocean overwash the past couple days.  The southeastern beaches have been much more fishable.  Water temperatures have continued to plummet – now in the mid-50s north at Duck to mid-60s south.  There’s still lots of warm water (thermal mass) nearshore, just off the beach, so I expect the water temps to recover some once the strong northerly winds lay out for a bit.

When the weather permitted, fishing was good this past week.  The Outer Banks were a really tough go, but there was some good trout and puppy drum action along the South Beach of Hatteras Island earlier in the week.  Still lots of small specks, but enough nice fish to keep things interesting.  Red and black drum and blues were scattered in the rough water of the Outer Banks for most of the week.

South of the Outer Banks, the highlights were big sea mullet and good speckled trout action.  I managed to slip away down to Topsail Island and Wrightsville Beach on Tuesday afternoon, fishing through the evening.  Earlier in the day, lots of big sea mullet were caught in Surf City; however, my focus was on trout.  I found lots of bait fish in the Topsail surf – cob mullet, finger mullet, and menhaden – and small schools of game fish pursuing them, especially at dusk and dawn.  I managed to scrape out three nice trout between 18-20 inches, one at dusk, one during the night, and one at dawn.  I also released a small blue, a small pup, and a small flounder, and kept a 15″ flounder.

This coming week is looking promising – the winds are dropping out as I type, although it will take some time for the Outer Banks surf to settle.  The forecast shows light-to-moderate winds for the foreseeable future.  Look for the fishing to get interesting.

Pretty afternoon on Topsail Island

Trout are about