Fishing in the Outer Banks

   I got to skip 3 days of school last week to go to the Outer Banks for my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary... I spent an incredible amount of time with a line in the water, I would say from just after sunrise until whenever I stopped that night. I only took breaks to eat dinner, and sometimes lunch(I even skipped lunch one day), but breakfast was always eaten while I was fishing, because I love being on the water first thing in the morning. I had a great time, even though the fishing wasn't as hot as usual when I go in the summer. All the fish were still getting into the "waking up in spring" routine, and the locals said that everything was behind this year. You probably want to hear a little more about the fishing though...I would have to write a novel to cover everything, but here is a short summary...
    We arrived around 8:00(pm) the first day, and my brothers and I grabbed some flashlights and headed to the closest spot we could fish near the house. There is a small bridge that crosses the channel where the canal system on Pirates Cove meets the Roanoke Sound. There is a lot of current moving through there when the tide is moving, and we are usually able to catch a couple of decent sized fish there, usually flounder, sea trout (spotted), red drum, or stripers. We fished for 3 hours and I managed to catch a 14" puppy drum, and a 12" striper. Wyatt caught a 16" puppy drum and Ewing caught a very slimy eel...
    We got up early the next day and fished under the Washington Baum Bridge...It is a very long bridge that stretches across the sound, and it is mainly 3-5 feet deep under it, except for the channel that is about 10 feet deep, we fished on the edge and did pretty terribly, only catching a few small pinfish. We tried chumming the stripers in the marina and I hooked a bluefish that must have been 10 pounds, but he chewed through the leader. We fished Jennettes Pier  mid-day and caught some pigfish and small spotted hake, a new species to
go on my list! The highlight of the day didn't come until the evening that Wyatt and I went trout fishing. We fished where a dock wraps around Pirates Cove facing a flat that borders the channel leading out of the marina. Wyatt caught a 16" trout within 5 minutes of our arrival and we continued picking off a decent fish here ad there untl we had our limit shortly after dark (4 fish per person 14" or greater).
     On Thursday, the water was too rough to take the boat out, so we played around on Pirates Cove again. I fished with my friend Jimmy in the morning and we crushed the sea trout. He lives on Roanoke Island and his dad owns one of the bluewater yachts that charters out of Pirates Cove. I have fished with him numerous times while staying in Pirates Cove, and we have become friends over the years. One day I'll go out on his boat (21 footer) and hopefully learn a thing or two from a local, because he knows just about everything there is to know about fishing in the outer banks.
      The next day when our boat arrived, we headed out to the AR160 wreck, 3 miles off the beach in 70 feet of water. We caught a few sea bass (out of season!), some croakers, and a few pigfish. We then headed to the AR145 wreck 6 miles out in 60-80 feet of water. We caught more out of season sea bass and a few pigfish. We decided that since the sea conditions were nice, we would go to Tower C, a Navy tower that is no longer used in 80 feet of water. We all caught really nice sea bass on our first drop, and I switched to a 2 ounce pink stingsilver (jigging spoon) and continued catching them. But since they were out of season, we had to release them. We also tossed pieces of shrimp unsuccessfully at 10 inch to 10 pound spadefish swarming around the tower legs.
      That evening, Wyatt and I collected a bunch of fiddler crabs between 9 and 11 pm when the tide was out and the mud under the marsh grass was exposed. Our intentions were to get out to Tower C and catch the sheepshead that were swimming around with the spadefish... Unfortunately the seas were 3-5 feet and we can't fish in that with our boat, so we went to the Oregon Inlet Bridge to try for sheepshead, even though it was a little early in the year. My dad dropped us off on one of the bridge footings (concrete rectangle at the top of the pilings) with a net, some bait and tackle, and our rods. Within minutes, Wyatt was hung into a decent fish that ran him around the pilings. He handed me the rod and I got him out and handed the rod back. When we got what we expected to be a nice sheepshead to the surface, we were surprised to see a little 16" tautog flapping around. Well, we called my mom and asked her about the regulations on them, and there is literally nothing in the NC saltwater regulations about them, be my guest to find the regs and let me know. We turned it back to be on the safe side, my taste buds told me not to though, a tog is a heck of a fish on the dinner table.  We caught 4 more togs, and fished around on different pilings for a couple more hours, but that was it.
      We got into some blues trolling just inside the sound behind the bridge, and I caught a couple casting, but the bite slowed and we headed in. We stopped by an island near Wanchese that we had seen 4 boats trout fishing on our morning run out, and picked up 3 keepers in about half an hour. We then headed home and packed up the boat. The next day, after packing up, we fished Jennettes Pier for a few hours, and caught a bunch of spotted hake, a few pigfish, a dogfish, and more skates than I have ever caught before. I have never seen so many skates landed in that amount of time. You could constantly look around and 1 or 2 rods would be doubled over, and at one point, all 4 rods Ewing and I had set up for skate (times were desperate) were hooked up (and we landed them all). I have always wanted to try skate, and we decided to take the wings off of 3 and bring them home. I tried them tonight, and they were surprisingly good! I will be fishing in the salt again in June, and hopefully I can tie into something more interesting to write about, but until then, thanks for reading!

 

A picture of a little spotted hake is about all I have, sorry.