Canal Flatties

Canal Flatties

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Wreck Fishing in the Outer Banks

     This weekend, for my birthday, I went down to pirates cove fishpiratescove.com on Roanoke Island where my dad and his friends had been staying all week for their annual "guys trip" where all they do is FISH. Most of the guys had left so it was just my grandfather, my dad, my brothers and I, and one of my dads friends along with his kids McKellar and Will.
      We woke up early and caught amberjack bait (pinfish, pigfish, spot, etc), and then we loaded up on our boats, I fished on Scotts (Will&McKellars dad) boat, along with Will, McKellar, and Steve (one of our game warden buddies) a 23' Polar walk around, my brothers fished off of our boat, a 21' Hydra Sports walk around. We headed out and as soon as we got out of the inlet, we started trolling clark spoons behind #1 planers and inline sinkers ranging 2-6 oz. We quickly caught 2 dozen 12-16" blues and 3 keeper spanish mackerel, tossed the blues in the live well and headed to tower C. We dropped blues down on Shimano Trinidads and while they waited for AJs, I decided to fish for something else. To be honest, AJs just don't intrigue me anymore, after a day this summer when the bite was so hot we got tired of fishing for them and went to fish for other stuff, they kind of lost their "pizazz" in my opinion.
     I dropped a 1/2 oz stingsilver to the bottom and began snapping it back up, much like butterfly jigging but less aggressive. I was hoping for false albacore, because last "guys trip", I caught a bunch of 5-10 pounders at the tower on stingsilvers. At about 50 feet (80 feet to the bottom), I felt a sharp tap on the line. I kept jigging at that depth so my bait would stay near that fish, and I kept missing it until finally I set the hook and felt some pretty substantial weight on my line. After about a 2 minute fight, I saw color, I was expecting a false albacore but was pleasantly surprised by a fat grey triggerfish. We rigged up more stingsilvers and proceeded to catch big triggers jigging at around 50 feet.
     But, the bite slowed down, so I tied up a dropper loop rig with a 2oz weight and a 1/0 circle hook and dropped it to 50 feet with some squid on it, I missed fish 3 or 4 fish with no bait on my hooks when I reeled up. I decided to filet a blue and use cut bait from it to see if I would get different results that way. I immediately hooked up and pulled in a nice trigger. Then everyone tied up dropper loops or tipped their stingsilvers and the bite was on once again. Thumbs up to Will for gaffing the triggers with the mini gaff! We also caught 2 amlaco jacks, McKellar caught one on a stingsilver, and I caught one on cut bait. The triggers shut down around 1:00 and we motored back toward shore to the AR145 fishaven wreck for seabass. We started hammering them on the drift, and decided to anchor up to see if that would work. We caught a few small bass and a couple nice triggers, but decided to drift for the last hour of the day and we caught 2 small bass on every drop with the occasional keeper (12.5") seabass or triggerfish. We headed back home and cleaned a PILE of fish, then took a good nights rest (except for Wyatt, McKellar, and I, we fished for stingrays till 12am with no sucess) and headed back home the following day. Thanks for reading!
My first trigger of the day on top, and "the crew" posing with the days catch on the bottom. We brought back 28 triggers, 8 seabass, and 3 spanish mackerel. Ewing is holding the smallest one, and McKellar decided to hold the baitfish haha.

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