Oak Island Vacation Sep 30-Oct 14, 2017
Oct 21, 2017 0:56:39 GMT -5
bigjon, Brian, and 3 more like this
Post by ikMOON on Oct 21, 2017 0:56:39 GMT -5
October is the month I wait all year for. For the last several years I've loaded up the family, all six of us, for a two week vacation on Oak Island. The weather is cooler, the water is still warm enough to swim in, it's less crowded, and the fish are biting (most of the time).
My fishing report is as follows:
The beginning of the first week was too windy to get offshore, so we surf fished a couple days. The beach was covered with a conveyor belt of mullet about 8 feet wide as far as the eye could see left and right. We had all the mullet we wanted. So many we dug a pit in the sand that my youngest called his fish tank. It provided hours of amusement for him and all the bait we could feed the bluefish. Other than an occasional black drum that was all that was going on. The bull reds from last October hadn't made an appearance yet, and wouldn't, while we were there.
A few days later I was able to get offshore in the mornings. But the water was a bit on the turbid side for the fish I was after. Bait was easy enough with a snatch rig, but only sharks were there to take my offering. Offshore I fished strictly live bait (menhaden) and there were enough of them to fill the Battleship right off the beach most days, and nice big ones too.
Some of the smaller sharks I was able to release, and retrieve my rigs, but others were too big and cut right through my seven strand SS wire king rigs. That, or tail whipped my leader in two. It was easy enough to tell if this had happened because it would look like the leader had been sand blasted through, so you knew when you'd been sharked. I fed at least a dozen rigs to sharks over the trip. You can see the stained water in the picture.
Midweek a strong NE-ENE wind set in for several days and kept me inshore. I took a buddy along in my other kayak one of the days. I fished live bait (peanut pogy) while he fished Gulp. He beat me with a dink throwback slam of flounder, red drum, and speckled trout. I got a throwback flounder and a junk fish slam of pinfish, oyster toad and lizard fish.
On another solo inshore hike things were sloooooooow, but I did manage one trout.
Early in the second week with the NE wind loosing steam we surf fished a bit more, waiting on the sea to calm down enough to get offshore again. I noticed what looked like a bunch of false albacore busting the water about a 1/4 mile offshore, so I went back to the house and got one of the kayaks in case it happened again. It did, and I chased those suckers down with a casting rod and a metal jig. Hooking one of these football shaped members of the tuna family is an absolute blast on light tackle. Pound for pound they are the best fight you'll find near shore!
I later snagged a glass minnow (what the albies were feeding on) and found it to be a pretty close match of the hatch.
Finally, toward the end of our last week the surf calmed down enough for a safe launch, and I was able to fish the last three days for my target species, king mackerel. The first of those three days was still quite choppy, but the water was much clearer, "king green" as they call it. I managed to feed all but one of my rigs I had tied to sharks over the afternoon. Even one bluefish, that had taken a pogy, I put out on the same hooks he was caught by, and was eaten by a shark. I did have a 4 lb Spanish take a big boy bait in the afternoon... but late in the day I finally hooked a king. After days of sharks there is no mistaking a king, he took over 100 yds of line three separate times in seconds, I even stared him in the eye near the end... but like 5 others before him last year, he came unbuttoned, this time right under the boat.
The next morning I'm out on the water early, this time with another buddy. I had plenty of bait, and plenty of rigs. We added spinner sharks to the list of bait snatchers this time, BIG ones. I've got a video of one of them jumping that I'll post up when I get back to my other computer. EDIT: I've added the video further down in the thread in a separate post.
After 8 hours of fishing and four sharks a piece for the both of us, its late afternoon, and I'm down to my last bait. I start telling my buddy that I'm going to pull this last bait to the pier and then I'm hanging it up, when it gets nailed. This one takes a single 200 yd run and taps out, my hooks do their job and I've got my first king in the boat! It may sound like a small thing but I've been after this fish since I read about it in magazines as a kid. For one reason or another they had always stayed just beyond my reach. Not any more.
The next day we went out again, last day of the trip. Bait was a little tougher until we found a boatload in the opposite direction up the beach. While snatching bait (my snatch rig consist of four #4 treble hooks snelled inline and spaced 7" apart with a 1 oz metal jig as a weight at the bottom) a pelican bombs my rig at boat side and gets completely nerded up in the hooks! It takes me at least 15 minutes and several attempts to cut the line between the hooks without transferring those hooks to my arms or hands, in order to free him enough to fly off. He did fly off eventually, complete with applause from the beach.
We got our bait in the water and headed in the direction of the "Hot Hole" which is the outlet for the cooling water from the Southport Nuke Plant that empties a couple hundred yards off Caswell Beach. Once we circled around the hole and got back in the cooler water, in about 20', I hooked up. Same 200 yd run but this one was hooked in the top of the head and had more leverage. Eventually I got it in the boat, and headed back home to a fish feast fit for a king. This one was a little bigger than the other and weighed 20.5 lbs at 42".
My family and I had a great trip! We had an absolute ball together. But as they say, all good things must come to an end.
Now its striper time...
My fishing report is as follows:
The beginning of the first week was too windy to get offshore, so we surf fished a couple days. The beach was covered with a conveyor belt of mullet about 8 feet wide as far as the eye could see left and right. We had all the mullet we wanted. So many we dug a pit in the sand that my youngest called his fish tank. It provided hours of amusement for him and all the bait we could feed the bluefish. Other than an occasional black drum that was all that was going on. The bull reds from last October hadn't made an appearance yet, and wouldn't, while we were there.
A few days later I was able to get offshore in the mornings. But the water was a bit on the turbid side for the fish I was after. Bait was easy enough with a snatch rig, but only sharks were there to take my offering. Offshore I fished strictly live bait (menhaden) and there were enough of them to fill the Battleship right off the beach most days, and nice big ones too.
Some of the smaller sharks I was able to release, and retrieve my rigs, but others were too big and cut right through my seven strand SS wire king rigs. That, or tail whipped my leader in two. It was easy enough to tell if this had happened because it would look like the leader had been sand blasted through, so you knew when you'd been sharked. I fed at least a dozen rigs to sharks over the trip. You can see the stained water in the picture.
Midweek a strong NE-ENE wind set in for several days and kept me inshore. I took a buddy along in my other kayak one of the days. I fished live bait (peanut pogy) while he fished Gulp. He beat me with a dink throwback slam of flounder, red drum, and speckled trout. I got a throwback flounder and a junk fish slam of pinfish, oyster toad and lizard fish.
On another solo inshore hike things were sloooooooow, but I did manage one trout.
Early in the second week with the NE wind loosing steam we surf fished a bit more, waiting on the sea to calm down enough to get offshore again. I noticed what looked like a bunch of false albacore busting the water about a 1/4 mile offshore, so I went back to the house and got one of the kayaks in case it happened again. It did, and I chased those suckers down with a casting rod and a metal jig. Hooking one of these football shaped members of the tuna family is an absolute blast on light tackle. Pound for pound they are the best fight you'll find near shore!
I later snagged a glass minnow (what the albies were feeding on) and found it to be a pretty close match of the hatch.
Finally, toward the end of our last week the surf calmed down enough for a safe launch, and I was able to fish the last three days for my target species, king mackerel. The first of those three days was still quite choppy, but the water was much clearer, "king green" as they call it. I managed to feed all but one of my rigs I had tied to sharks over the afternoon. Even one bluefish, that had taken a pogy, I put out on the same hooks he was caught by, and was eaten by a shark. I did have a 4 lb Spanish take a big boy bait in the afternoon... but late in the day I finally hooked a king. After days of sharks there is no mistaking a king, he took over 100 yds of line three separate times in seconds, I even stared him in the eye near the end... but like 5 others before him last year, he came unbuttoned, this time right under the boat.
The next morning I'm out on the water early, this time with another buddy. I had plenty of bait, and plenty of rigs. We added spinner sharks to the list of bait snatchers this time, BIG ones. I've got a video of one of them jumping that I'll post up when I get back to my other computer. EDIT: I've added the video further down in the thread in a separate post.
After 8 hours of fishing and four sharks a piece for the both of us, its late afternoon, and I'm down to my last bait. I start telling my buddy that I'm going to pull this last bait to the pier and then I'm hanging it up, when it gets nailed. This one takes a single 200 yd run and taps out, my hooks do their job and I've got my first king in the boat! It may sound like a small thing but I've been after this fish since I read about it in magazines as a kid. For one reason or another they had always stayed just beyond my reach. Not any more.
The next day we went out again, last day of the trip. Bait was a little tougher until we found a boatload in the opposite direction up the beach. While snatching bait (my snatch rig consist of four #4 treble hooks snelled inline and spaced 7" apart with a 1 oz metal jig as a weight at the bottom) a pelican bombs my rig at boat side and gets completely nerded up in the hooks! It takes me at least 15 minutes and several attempts to cut the line between the hooks without transferring those hooks to my arms or hands, in order to free him enough to fly off. He did fly off eventually, complete with applause from the beach.
We got our bait in the water and headed in the direction of the "Hot Hole" which is the outlet for the cooling water from the Southport Nuke Plant that empties a couple hundred yards off Caswell Beach. Once we circled around the hole and got back in the cooler water, in about 20', I hooked up. Same 200 yd run but this one was hooked in the top of the head and had more leverage. Eventually I got it in the boat, and headed back home to a fish feast fit for a king. This one was a little bigger than the other and weighed 20.5 lbs at 42".
My family and I had a great trip! We had an absolute ball together. But as they say, all good things must come to an end.
Now its striper time...
