Captain's Favorite Fish

 

WAHOO are my #1 fish because of their size, beauty, speed, and power. These fish are great to catch offshore, but in the fall when they mix with King Mackerel east of the Cape Lookout Shoals, watch out. Nearly all these fish weigh over 50 pounds and with most anglers using 20 pound test on live bait tackle, it is a pretty fair fight! One of my best fishing days ever was Oct. 30, 1997. First thing that morning, I caught an 85 pound Wahoo on a Boston Mackerel that I was dragging behind the boat while we were trying to get anchored up to bottom fish. Later that day, I caught a 53 pound King Mackerel on the last bait in the livewell. In the fall of '95, I caught Wahoos on three straight King Mackerel trips. These fish weighed 45, 53 and 83 pounds each. I was fishing by myself the day I caught the 83 pounder. This fish took over 2 hours to land and I chased it over 5 miles! My biggest Wahoo, a 96 pounder, was caught on October 3, 2001. That fish was also caught on light tackle while King fishing. I hooked it less than a minute after my buddy, Gerald Currin, had boated a 67 pounder! The best fish caught on my boat in 2005 was a 68 pound Wahoo that Charles Putnam caught on a half day charter. This Wahoo suprized us on a slow day and was caught only a few miles offshore! Wahoo are one of the fastest fish in the Ocean. They make long, powerful runs and frequently change directions making anglers think they have gotten away. Wahoo sometimes sky rocket 25 feet high, like King Mackerel, and hit your bait as they enter the water! Quite a trick. A Wahoo needs to be seen alive to be truly appreciated, before it's colors and stripes fade. They are also great on the grill!

 

COBIA is a great fish in our area because it is a "bragging" fish. Everybody fishes in close proximinity to each other and competition is fierce. All the Cobia fishermen know who caught what and where and how big. Cobias are rugged battlers that use every obstacle (anchor lines, bouys, other boats, etc.) to their advantage. Some Cobia jump out of the water and fight it out on the surface, while others prefer to stay near the bottom. Sometimes they don't fight at all, until you gaff them. These are the ones that wreck boats! You don't "have" a Cobia until it is in the boat and even then, they have been known to escape. A nice thing about Cobia fishing is the season doesn't last very long. The middle of May to the end of June is about right. I don't get tired of Cobia fishing. My personal best Cobia, so far, is an 83 pounder. I hope to top that this year! I almost did back in June of '03. Fishing by myself, I battled a huge Cobia for over an hour. By comparison, my 83 pounder was in the boat in 10 minutes and I was by myself that day, too. Anyway, this Cobia eventually escaped, even after it had been gaffed twice. The first time it simply rolled and twisted off the gaff, like a Shark. The second time I had the fish laying on the gunnel, at it's pivot point. One or two more inches and it falls in the boat! Then with one mighty flip, the fish ripped the gaff from it's flesh, and fell over the side. My line popped as the Cobia hit the water. He swam away in a cloud of blood. How big was it? I don't know, but I did catch a 77 pounder later that day. It was a routine catch; a 10 to 15 minute job. Cobia are very good to eat and can be prepared many different ways. The 2007 Cobia season was a sucessful one. I had a new Boat record set on May 23rd when we caught a 92 pounder. The previous day, I caught 4, including 67 and 57 pounders, and lost one that was close to 100 pounds!

 

FLOUNDER is a fish I didn't know I loved until 2004. That summer I found myself fishing for Flounder day after day. I could not get enough! My Grandaddy was a Flounder fisherman and I could never understand how he could be so dedicated to one species. Now I know. Flounder fishing requires a higher level of skill and concentration. There is not a lot of luck in Flounder fishing. It is a fisherman's fish and that is why I love them. Plus, 2 straight years with a 10+ pounder helps! Unfortunately that streak ended in 2005 when my best catch was a 6 pound 12 oz Flounder. My favorite place to fish for Flounder is on the Wrecks and Reefs in 50 to 60 feet of water. The suspense of wondering "how big is it" while reeling in a nice Flounder from deep water is very exciting. I love to use big baits for Flounder in deep water. It is always a thrill when you know a Flounder is eating your bait. Especially when your bait is a 7" Thread Herring. You know you are about to get a shot at a citation Flounder. I also love a fish that occurs regularily enough at my boat slip in Taylor's Creek, that some days I never even leave the dock. Such was the case in Oct. of 2004 when I had several 10-12 fish rallys, catching them as fast as I could drop a Finger Mullet to the bottom. Many of these fish were 6+ pounders,  including 4 one morning. My mother in law even caught a 6 pound 6 oz. Flounder, her first. At the Dock! My work with the NC Ferry Division also puts me in position to catch a lot of Flounder! One night in September of 1994, I caught 28 Flounder from the Ferry Basin at Cherry Branch, all 2 to 4 pounds each! Plus the last 4 Septembers ('04 -'07) I've racked up 14 NC Citations from under the Ferry Ramp at the North end of Ocracoke Island, including a 10+ pounder in 2004 and a pair of 8+ pounders in 2006! 

 

RED DRUM fishing means many things. It conjures up several images. Catching as many big 40 to 60 pounders as you want at night from the boat. Standing waist deep in the surf at Hatteras or Ocracoke hoping it's your night. Sight casting to vast schools of hungry Giants in Ocracoke Inlet in early May. Catching 3 to 4 pounders on every cast at the Rock Jetty or in Taylor's Creek. Cruising the surf off Shackleford Banks in October looking for schools of 8 to 10 pounders. Stalking fish that are sunning on a mud flat in the dead of winter. It's all good! I caught my first Red Drum 23 years ago, a little 3 pounder that amazed me with his strength and stamina. They have never since let me down. I don't always fish for Red Drum, but I'm always glad to catch one. When conditions are right, trophy Red Drum fishing out of Cedar Island in August and September is the closest thing I know of to a guarranteed thing in fishing. Given good weather and good bait, I expect to catch multiple Drum from 30 to 50 pounds every night. My top Cedar Island Drum is a 59" caught in August of 1998. World Record length, but it was a lean fish with a 33" girth. Like Flounders, I also catch dozens of Red Drum every year from the dock where I keep my boat. It sure does take the pressure off when I leave the dock with 25 pounds of Flounder on ice and a couple of Drum releases. When these Drum are in Taylor's Creek, they are so reliable you can set your watch by them! Same place on the same tide, day after day. In 2005, the average size of the Drum in Taylor's Creek was the biggest I can ever remember. Lots of fish were over the 28" slot! Most of the Drum that I catch are released. Small Drum (3 to 6 pounders) are very good to eat. One of my favorite Red Drums was the 53", 60+ pounder that I caught on my flounder rod. Last one of 11 released on Sept. 4, 2006.

 

STRIPED BASS because for years when I was a kid, they were just pictures in magazines! It seemed like I had no hope to ever catch one in North Carolina. Now we are catching them. They have filled a void in the dead of winter, making inshore fishing a year round proposition. Stripers are incredibly fun to catch, especially when they are hitting top water plugs, or blitzing the surf like they did on Dec. 18, 2004 at Hatteras Inlet! That day I had an dozens of 30 pounders busting Menhaden right in front of me. I could tickle their backs with my rod tip! I heard there were over 200 Stripers caught from the beach that day, and I guess maybe 30 fishermen. I fished with waders over my ferry uniform, and left them biting because I had to go to work. It was a truly amazing sight! Someone at Red Drum Tackle in Buxton said this was Hatteras Island's best blitz since 1972. In Jan. of 2005 we caught them at an average rate of 8 an hour, all 20 to 25 pound fish, up at Oregon Inlet. These fish can be ridiculously easy to catch. What else can you consistently catch at this size and at that rate? The Striped Bass is the perfect fish. To me, this what a FISH is supposed to look like. The fact that we catch them during the middle of winter, when not much else is happening, only adds to their appeal. If you catch a nice one, you will become addicted to Striper fishing! They are also a great fish to eat. In December of 2003, 2005 and 2006 we had several great days of Striped Bass fishing at Cape Lookout. All of these fish were 25-35 pounders and were caught by casting into the whitewater on top of the shoals. Very exciting!

 

KING MACKEREL would have been number 1 from 1993 until about 2000, back in the days when I fished about 8 to 10 KMT's a year. We had tunnel vision for Kings in those days! Break off a Sailfish or a Cobia because to catch it would waste too much valuable tournament time! I did manage some great days, a few great fish, and a first place at Snead's Ferry in 2000. There will always be something special about a 30 pounder twisting 20 feet out of the water, with your bait dangling from it's face. And the screaming burn of your reel's drag as your 40 pounder runs, always offshore, it seems. The one I remember the best I never even saw! August of 2001, I was by myself, west of the Beaufort Inlet and I noticed one of my baits was very nervous. I looked up to quickly check my heading and at that very moment I got a strike. Believe me, my mistake was thinking I could at least clear one line before turning to follow that fish. Within about 15 seconds, my Shimano TLD 15 was stripped of 300+ yards of brand new 20 pound test line. Gone! My 96 pound Wahoo never even got close to the spool on that same reel. With that kind of speed there isn't many things it could have been. My instincts say King Mackerel 60+ pounds. I'll never know. It did run offshore, of course. One memorable King that I did catch was a 34 pound 8 oz. Smoker that hit a Peanut Shad on a popping cork rig off Shackleford Banks on July 14, 2002. I usually wouldn't call a King of this size a "Smoker", but since I was standing knee deep in the surf holding a Penn 550 SS, loaded with 10 lb. test, the name definitely applied!  

 

LITTLE TUNNY better known as False Albacore, or just Albacore, or Fat Albert. I've had a long love affair with this one. I still remember my first one in the fall of '78. In the mid 80's, my cousin and I spent many a day, all day, chasing schools and throwing hopkins lures. The rest of the fishing world caught on in the 90's. I had them all to my self for a decade. I still remember the best day. It was in the hey day, probably around November of '97 and all the boats were there. Right in Beaufort Inlet. The Albacore were SO THICK that casting wasn't even necessary. The fish would pick your lure right off the rod tip! Just reel your lure up to the tip and stick your tip in the water, then wiggle it back and forth, and hang on.  I'm not making this up!  Also, I had my landing net that day because I thought I was going Trout fishing. The Albacore were SO THICK I caught one by simply holding my net straight down under the boat. Within seconds I felt the thud, felt the weight, and lifted out an Albacore. Nobody believes this story. You need an explanation? The inlet was packed with baitfish that day, tiny stuff, and whenever you would knock your boat out of gear, tens of thousands of the helpless critters would surround your boat seeking shelter, then the Albacore would come up and out from under your boat, waves of fish, 20 abreast, mouths open, gorging. Nobody believes the story, but if anybody who was there that day reads this, they'll say "Oh Yeah, I was there that day!" The fall of 2005 was a great season for Albacore. There were days on the wrecks East of Cape Lookout when it was impossible to catch anything else. One day we caught them casting, vertical jigging, on live bait, and topped it off with a doubleheader on a 2 hook bottom rig! My two anglers quit counting at 40 releases that day. The top Albacore day of 2006 was conveniently on the morning of the CCA Inside/Outside Tournament, which I was fishing the Albacore Release Division. My 2 clients and I released 17 that morning before 11 am and won by 17 releases! A shutout!

 

SPECKLED TROUT is everybody's favorite fish, might as well be one of mine too. It is a fish that some dedicated anglers fish for year 'round. Some people don't fish for anything else. I am not one of these people. As a matter of fact, If it wasn't for the Rock Jetty at Cape Lookout, I'd probably never catch another Speckled Trout in my life. Me and at least 97% of the other 1,000 boats up there every day in the fall. We are blessed that we have a location such as that, because it makes us all good Speckled Trout fishermen. It makes some of us great. I've had my moments, especially in 2000 and 2003. It is hard to beat those days when every cast with a green grub catches you a 20" Trout, and the bite lasts for hours! Even better when every live shrimp in your livewell catches you a 27" Trout and nobody else has any live bait! I had one of those days in December of 2007 when I caught 15 Citation Trout in one morning! What is not so good is when one person is catching 20" Trout and NOBODY else can get a bite, even though they are casting the same lure, to the same place. They can be a very weird fish. The weirdest Speckled Trout I have caught were down in Port Isabel, TX. To catch them at night around the lighted docks, you had to first snag a baby needlefish or a ballyhoo to use for live bait! That was the only thing they'd eat. I thought I'd seen it all. Here in NC, Speckled Trout fishing is at it's best in late fall. I like November the best.

 

 

GROUPER fishing is like Flounder fishing on a grand scale. It takes a lot of skill, concentration and luck. I love to catch Grouper on live bait. The anticipation you feel when your bait starts to panic and you know a Grouper is coming. There is no mistaking a Grouper bite and no comparison to the challenge of quickly getting a Grouper away from his home. If he "holes" you, he will probably live to fight another day. Another great thing about Grouper fishing is how quickly you can go from a bad day to a good day. One stop on the right piece of bottom and you can Load Up! In the past, I did a little commercial fishing for Grouper, and it would amaze you how fast it's possible to catch 3 or 4 "boxes" of Groupers. A box equals 100 pounds. Back in 1990, I  was part of a crew that had a 40 box day! That's a lot of Grouper. My best Grouper to date is a 35 pound Gag caught on Feb. 4, 1991. Also in 1991, I once caught a doubleheader of Snowy Groupers that weighed in at 34 and 29 pounds each, after they were gutted! Off Beaufort Inlet, we commonly catch Reds, Scamps and Gags.  Other Groupers occur in deeper water and are hard to target on rod and reel. In May of 2004 I tangled with some Black Groupers down in the Dry Tortugas that probably went over 50 and I lost. I did manage a 25 pounder on light tackle. Grouper are a fish you will never forget. Especially the 18 pounder that won me a $234 jackpot on the Carolina Princess back in Nov. of '89.

 

BLUEFISH have never really gone away, but I sure do wish they'd come back. When I was a kid in the 70's the runs were amazing, even when they weren't running you could still catch 'em every morning. Big fish would charge up and down the beaches, even Atlantic Beach, devouring everything in sight, earning the name "Chopper Bluefish". I hooked one in May of '76 on a gotcha-plug off the Morehead Ocean Pier and had it defeated, waiting for the gaff. Fate was not on my side that day as a wave lifted my big Bluefish and the surge propelled him around a piling and gave him his life back. Meanwhile, my cousin Tony, not as skilled as me (ha ha), struggled to bring in his Blue. Clumsily reeling upside down with his Mitchell 300, he finally brought his Bluefish alongside the pier; the gaff man had waited patiently and stuck Tony's 13 pound 7 oz. Bluefish. One happy 12 year old and one miserable 10 year old! I still love Chopper Bluefish, and they are still here in the Spring, but their numbers are a mere fraction of what they once were, and they usually stay offshore. Every year I try to make one April trip to search for them, redemption for May of '76. Spring of '03 saw a good run of 8 to 14 pounders on the Ocracoke and Hatteras beaches. It had a lot of people on the Outer Banks talking about "the good ole days." Spring of '06 was even better at Cape Lookout. The best Chopper run I'ver ever experienced. We released 30 one afternoon on light spinning tackle, with one topping out at 15 pounds! Smaller Blues, up to 3 pounds, are still common on the Shoals, off the Beaches and in the Inlets. They are always fun on light tackle and great to eat when they are fresh. October of '05 and '06 saw great fishing for hordes of 2 to 4 lb. Bluefish in crystal clear water on the shoals at Cape Lookout. This fishing lasted for weeks!

 

ATLANTIC BONITO is a great fish in several respects. There is no finer fighter for it's size in the Ocean when matched against light tackle. It is also a great eating fish. I believe it rivals Yellowfin Tuna when prepared in the same methods. Grilled, ceviche, sushi, or in a salad it is equal to fresh Tuna. It is also a beautiful fish with all the predatory hardware of a King Mackerel. Finally, perhaps the Bonitos finest attribute is when it occurs. Peak numbers in our area are usually in mid-April to mid-May. They definitely provide the best game in town during a time of the year when inshore options are limited. In recent years the Bonito's popularity has sky-rocketed as more anglers have discovered this fishery. I can remember coming to the dock in the early 90's and being ridiculed for bragging about a big catch of Bonito. I knew nobody really knew what species I had caught! I probably wouldn't have either except I had spent my younger years reading any fishing book I could get my hands on. One of these books, Fishing from Boats written by Milt Rosco and published in 1968, had a picture of a Bonito caught on the NC Outer Banks. As a kid, I always wondered why I never saw one. Back in those days (the 70's), my Dad and I only fished in the Summer and Fall. I just wasn't fishing during the right time of the year. Nowadays Atlantic Bonito are a fish you should plan your Spring fishing around. To completely miss a season's Bonito run would be tragic!  

 

AMBERJACK is the fish that got me hooked to start with. The one single fish that turned a hobby into an obsession! June 24, 1988, I was trolling for Spanish Mackerel in the mouth of Beaufort Inlet when a 66 lb. Amberjack swallowed a Spanish Mackerel I was reeling in on an old Penn Senator 3/0 and a size 00 Clarkspoon. The tiny hook held and I had caught my first "big" fish. Fishing has been my life ever since! The following year I learned that Amberjacks were the most readily availiable and easiest to find "big" fish in our area. I made many trips out to the reefs and wrecks with a live well full of Pinfish in my 17' Boston Whaler and loaded her down with huge Amberjacks! In the following years, I noticed both numbers and the average size of Amberjacks were in decline. Thankfully, in 2005 things started to improve and by 2006 Amberjack fishing was better than ever! I release nearly every Amberjack caught on my boat nowadays, and I still love to hit the wrecks. It usually doesn't take long for an Amberjack to eat a live Pinfish, Bluefish, or anything you got. Landing one can be a different matter. One day in October of 2005, a buddy and I stopped at the D Wreck to catch a couple of Amberjacks and we found nothing but trouble! The Jacks on the wreck that day were something like out of Jurassic Park. A school that reminded me of the early 90's! Nothing but 60 pounders and up! We only had King Mackerel tackle with us that day and the Amberjacks were never in serious trouble. When it was over, we were out of 2 dozen live Bluefish and I had to replace the line on 4 reels. We fought alot of Amberjacks, but we never landed a single Jack. All we wanted was a couple of pictures! That's the way it is Amberjack fishing over structure with light tackle. It's also the reason I keep going back.   

 

My honorable mention fish would include Barracuda, Blacktip Shark, Sandbar Shark, Sailfish, Spadefish, Sheepshead, Spanish Mackerel, Dolphin, American Red Snapper, Triggerfish, Crevalle Jack, Bluefin Tuna, Yellowfin Tuna, Pompano, Ladyfish, Hickory Shad and Cownose Ray. These are all local favorites. I have managed to tangle with some other great fish while traveling, including Snook and big Mangrove Snappers in Texas. Down in Florida, I love to catch Bonefish, Permit, Tarpon, Swordfish, Mutton Snapper and Yellowtail Snapper. In May of 2004 I managed to catch a 5 foot Alligator on a mirrorlure down in the Everglades near Flamingo!  But, I must admit the Swordfish and the Snook definitely beats the alligator, and pound for pound,  everything else on this page!