Our family went to Ocean Isle NC the first week of June. We took a 12 foot vee, and 4 horse Evinrude, so fishing was kinda tight, but we we managed just fine back in the Intracoastal waterway. Anyway, I hadn't done much saltwater fishing before, caught a few whiting, sheepshead, seatrout and catfish off the surf at St. George Island FL a few years ago, but not really much. Now I started catching some "real" fish, and I must say, I like salt a LOT more than I used to.
Here are a few of the larger ones.
A nice flounder. I think it is about 19 or so inches, as we had to fold up the tail to fit in our 18 inch cooler. Never thought I would have a bit of interest in catching these, but it was apparently high flounder season up there, and those were the only fish people were talking about. You could ask about other species, but pretty soon, they would start talking about flounder again. I like catching these things a lot more than I would.
Here are a couple seatrout dad and I caught. His was 25 inches, and mine was 22 inches. In this picture, they are folded up quite a bit, as the only cooler we had on board was 18 inches long.
Here is my first red. This is what I was ready to catch when we went up there, but all people cared about were flounder, and some trout. This was caught on a flounder rig, with a mud minner, as were the trout, and some of the flounder.
Here is a very bad picture of a 30 inch hammerhead I caught. Dad was unable to fish that day, and wasn't sure when he would be back with the car, thereby leaving me unable to pull the boat out, so I fished from the pier that morning. After catching foot to 18 inch sand sharks by the dozen, I hooked onto this. We lifted it onto the pier with that crab net you can see at my feet that a lot of the regular pier fisherman have for this purpose, but never get to use. Unfortunately, the guy who answered my call for "someone grab the camera out of that red bag" didn't really know what he was doing with photography, and the picture didn't turn out too great. I can't complain much, as I don't much better.
Most nights we went on the pier from about 9 to midnight, and would catch these little sand sharks by the dozen, to the point that they were a nuisance. Quite frankly, I was tired of taking them off the hook, especially that morning I caught the hammerhead, being there from about 6:45 to 1:00.
The real surprise though, were the 2 flounder I caught on Gotcha plugs.
https://www.seastriker.com/gotcha/gotcha_files/100series.htm
I got a couple of these, as people were supposedly killing bluefish off the pier with them. One morning, we weren't catching diddley on flounder rigs, but there were mullet jumping all over the place. I got bored, and green fish mentality kicked in (artificials only, constant cast and retrieve fishing), so I tied one of these on, just to test it out, and see if mullet would eat it. All I had in the boat was an 8 foot surf rod, and tired myself out quickly trying to work a jerkbait. After about 3 casts I said I would put it back after 5 casts. On the fifth one, I latched onto something, and was incredibly surprise that I had a flounder on the end. Thought I just snagged it. But, I had somehow snagged it on the inside of its mouth, so in the cooler it went. 2 casts later, I got another, again, snagged on the inside of its mouth. 1 may have been a fluke, but 2? I realized they both were caught on the tail hook, and flounder eat a minnow from the tail forward, chewing off the scales as they go, so it made sense that he would hit the tail hook. The people at the bait shops were just as surprised as I was to hear about flounder eating these things.
Anyway, that was vacation in a (very big) nutshell.
Here are a few of the larger ones.
A nice flounder. I think it is about 19 or so inches, as we had to fold up the tail to fit in our 18 inch cooler. Never thought I would have a bit of interest in catching these, but it was apparently high flounder season up there, and those were the only fish people were talking about. You could ask about other species, but pretty soon, they would start talking about flounder again. I like catching these things a lot more than I would.
Here are a couple seatrout dad and I caught. His was 25 inches, and mine was 22 inches. In this picture, they are folded up quite a bit, as the only cooler we had on board was 18 inches long.
Here is my first red. This is what I was ready to catch when we went up there, but all people cared about were flounder, and some trout. This was caught on a flounder rig, with a mud minner, as were the trout, and some of the flounder.
Here is a very bad picture of a 30 inch hammerhead I caught. Dad was unable to fish that day, and wasn't sure when he would be back with the car, thereby leaving me unable to pull the boat out, so I fished from the pier that morning. After catching foot to 18 inch sand sharks by the dozen, I hooked onto this. We lifted it onto the pier with that crab net you can see at my feet that a lot of the regular pier fisherman have for this purpose, but never get to use. Unfortunately, the guy who answered my call for "someone grab the camera out of that red bag" didn't really know what he was doing with photography, and the picture didn't turn out too great. I can't complain much, as I don't much better.
Most nights we went on the pier from about 9 to midnight, and would catch these little sand sharks by the dozen, to the point that they were a nuisance. Quite frankly, I was tired of taking them off the hook, especially that morning I caught the hammerhead, being there from about 6:45 to 1:00.
The real surprise though, were the 2 flounder I caught on Gotcha plugs.
https://www.seastriker.com/gotcha/gotcha_files/100series.htm
I got a couple of these, as people were supposedly killing bluefish off the pier with them. One morning, we weren't catching diddley on flounder rigs, but there were mullet jumping all over the place. I got bored, and green fish mentality kicked in (artificials only, constant cast and retrieve fishing), so I tied one of these on, just to test it out, and see if mullet would eat it. All I had in the boat was an 8 foot surf rod, and tired myself out quickly trying to work a jerkbait. After about 3 casts I said I would put it back after 5 casts. On the fifth one, I latched onto something, and was incredibly surprise that I had a flounder on the end. Thought I just snagged it. But, I had somehow snagged it on the inside of its mouth, so in the cooler it went. 2 casts later, I got another, again, snagged on the inside of its mouth. 1 may have been a fluke, but 2? I realized they both were caught on the tail hook, and flounder eat a minnow from the tail forward, chewing off the scales as they go, so it made sense that he would hit the tail hook. The people at the bait shops were just as surprised as I was to hear about flounder eating these things.
Anyway, that was vacation in a (very big) nutshell.
