Booked for a half-day, I headed out with Philip and Shawn from Raleigh with Spanish and flounder on the agenda. Just after 6:30, we made our way to the Beaufort bar looking for some Spanish to cast to. Didn’t take long – birds were working and the Spaniards were busting the surface – little greenie shad flying everywhere. But, within seconds, several very large members of the Spanish trolling armada appeared and commenced trolling through the schools of breaking fish and birds. Within minutes, the once large schools of Spanish were scattered and most of the fish driven down, and I saw maybe two fish picked up by the trolling boats. With several sportfishes and a half dozen skiffs scaring the fish away, we decided to forget the Spanish and headed over to a few of my flounder spots.
Being that it was such a gorgeous day, there were a lot of boats in the water and it was a bit hard to light-line for Spanish and kings. But, all in the all, while the flounder action has slowed a bit since last week, there are still plenty of fish to catch. In three hours of fishing, we managed 7 nice keepers (the largest being a 23in 4lb 8 oz summer flounder) and released another 8 or so short fish. The light lines produced several cut-offs, and Philip lost what I believe was a nice king on a flounder rig. However, we did manage to chum up a 4ft blacktip shark – I pitched a bait to it and Philip expertly landed the frisky shark.
On the way back in, we worked the inlet and found several big schools of snapper blues – two at a time on spec-rigs. The Spanish showed briefly, and while most of the strikes were short, we boated a nice 2lb fish and a dink king.
The action was a bit slow today, but that’s just fishin’ for you. However, these boys managed to do quite well for the conditions (simply too beautiful) – and they’ll be eating well tonight!
