June 26, 2007

Well, I guess these reports are better late than never. My schedule has been unforgiving the last several months, but I’ve decided that it’s Friday evening and I’ll take a few moments to reflect on the very infrequent fishing I’ve managed to recently squeeze in. My spring fishing this year was plagued by my schedule, inopportune boat maintenance, taking the Course for my Captain’s license, nasty weather, business travel, my brother’s wedding, etc. Hopefully I’m back on course for some more regular fishing trips.

This last Tuesday was the first chance I had for a full day’s fishing since April 3rd and boy was I raring to go. We had three boats planning on going out together, my boat (Scott Erickson's - Reel Dream), Colin’s boat (Reel Blessed), and Taylor’s boat (Reel Return); I guess we were the Reel Team. Colin had family in town visiting and on his boat so his boys started the trip with me and I had also brought along Leonard Minium. Leonard is living the good life; retired, fishing and golfing most days of the week, and yet has his wife working for me full time (he’s my idol). Leonard is always a great joy to have on the boat because he’s been a fisherman of some sort or another his entire life, and yet enjoys it more than an 8 year old that has just caught a state record Brim. What could be better than fishing the Topsail Island Coast with these guys?

We met at the ramp at 5:00 am and wouldn’t you know that after spending 3 hours getting my gear ready the night before and another half hour thawing, brining, and preparing bait…I left the bait in the Frig. At 5:00 in the morning there are not any tackle shops open in these parts and making a round trip to the house and back to the ramp would have taken an hour. Luckily Colin had brought 3 packs of Ballyhoo and shared one pack with us at the ramp.

My plan for the day was to catch Dolphin (Mahi Mahi, Dorado) trolling and Grouper bottom fishing, hopefully with a Sailfish thrown in for good measure. My lure spread being trolled behind the boat matched my plan. I was trying to avoid targeting King Mackerel because I had caught a bunch the week before on a half day trip (report below). Besides, I much prefer Mahi Mahi on the grill or a sandwich than King.

Our first stop was about 24 miles offshore to the Sneads Ferry Ledges. The ride out was a little bumpy but we still averaged about 20 knots to the fishing grounds. When we arrived I had just gotten two lines out and was working on the third when a King Mackerel skied (jumped out of the water) on our long line about 12 feet in the air…it was looking like it might be a good day.

We fished the SF Ledges for about an hour and half with slow but steady action, catching a King Mackerel and 2 Dolphin but I think all three boats were hoping for faster action. I think the other boats only had Kings at this point. We chatted on the radio and decided to try Cripple Rock which was about another 8 miles offshore. The waves were really starting to lay down by this time and it shaping up to be a beautiful day on the water. Taylor and Colin were going to troll over that way but I decided to just make the run on over. Colin’s son, Palmer, was feeling a little seasick from the ride out (the boys were bouncing around in the cabin below) so we transferred him over to his dad’s boat where he could get to his food and be with dad before we made the run.

About two miles from Cripple Rock we came up on partial weedline and decided that it looked fishy enough to be holding some dolphin. We were right! We caught several more dolphin off the weedline including one nicer one that Colin’s youngest son, Peyton, reeled in. That was a fun fish to catch because both Leonard and I had spotted it cruising under the weed patches and then when the baits came by it grabbed one just like it’s suppose to.

While working the weedline we did have a sailfish come crashing through the spread, crashing several baits. It was pretty cool to watch this big black sail weaving between our lure presentation, slashing at select baits with it’s bill. We tried the drop back technique but it didn’t pick it back up. Still it was a good show.

By this point I had run through the pack of Ballyhoo Colin had given me, but Taylor was kind enough to share a spare pack that he had, along with one of his custom tied super duper sea witches. It ended up being the most popular lure in the spread for the rest of the day.

After pulling all the fish we could muster off of the weedline, I convinced the other boats to run out to WR2 with me (about 43 miles offshore). We arrived to find absolutely gorgeous clear blue water. About the time a got the last line out, we watched a 5 foot long Wahoo sky on the long line and come down with the lure. That fish was all lit up, stripes ablazing. Unfortunately it missed the hook and let go of the lure after burning off about 100 yards of line. Serious bummer!

We caught several more Dolphin, most of them preferring Taylor’s custom lure, into the early afternoon. At about 1:30 a Big King nailed that pretty seawitch Taylor gave us. Peyton was on the rod and did a great job of fighting a true Smoker King…that is until a shark ate the back half of it. We estimated the fish at 35 to 40 pounds had it been whole. I later weighed the half we had at about 26 pounds and still 29 inches long.

At 2:30 Colin and Taylor decided to call it a day. The boys had baseball games that evening that they needed to get in for. We transferred Peyton over to his dad’s boat in trade for a box of cigar minnows, and then Leonard and I got ready for some bottom fishing.

We dropped the anchor over a nice ledge and I had a big fat Red Grouper coming up from the bottom before Leonard even got his rod wet, 26 inches. On the next dozen drops the bait stealers made it to the bait before any Grouper could find it. While trying to fight off the bait stealers, the boat got swarmed with a school of Dolphin buzzing the boat. I grabbed a light spinning rod, baited it up, and tossed it out to a school of hungry fish ranging in size from about 2 pounds to 7 pounds. Catching Dolphin on light spinning rods is about as good as fishing gets in my opinion. Beautifully colored fish, buzzing all around you, making spectacular leaps right beside the boat while fighting them, and keeping the bigger ones for Mahi Mahi sandwiches later…pure joy!!!

Leonard very quickly decided that this was about as much fun as he’s ever had and went about catching about a dozen, with us keeping a couple of the bigger ones while releasing the rest.

At one point while Leonard was on the other side of the boat giggling like a little boy with his favorite toy, I pulled out my butterfly jig rod to see if I could get a Grouper interested in it. I was anxious to try it out because I had just put my new Penn Torque 300 on that rod, with 42 pounds of drag. On the first drop I had managed to work the jig about halfway back to the boat when something big grabbed it. Now when I say something big, I mean something tougher than anything I had ever caught on that rod, or maybe any rod. It pinned me to the rail three different times on screaming runs where it was treating that massive drag, which was set at full force, like it was an ultra-light Crappie reel. After about 5 minutes of punishing me, it simply let go of the lure. I don’t know what it was, but the brand new jig still looked brand new, missing any telltale signs of teeth from a possible shark, cuda, king, or wahoo. Still wondering what it was. My guess is a really big Amberjack, maybe around 100 pounds. Last week I was catching two AJ’s at a time on the butterfly jig with each fish varying between 15 to 50 pounds.

Many more drops of the butterfly jig, but without any interest in it, so I change it out to a Gitzem jig with a rubber skirt and tip it with a cigar minnow. Sure enough, up comes another fat Red Grouper. But then the bottom bite dies altogether, so Leonard continues catching Dolphin until our supply of cigar minnows is about empty while I go about putting the boat back in order from an exciting day of fishing and get things ready for the ride back in.

43 miles later we are clearing the inlet after a great day on the water and with a box full of fish. How did I go so long this spring without days like this? 12 Dolphin, 1 & 1/2 Kings, 2 Red Grouper.

Go Catch Some, Scott Erickson