November 2007 was honestly one of the best months of fishing I have ever experienced. The fish, for everything, was consistant and the weather was even better. No matter what we did – we found fish. Particularly Albacore – after a slow ’06..07 was a nice relief. I can’t remember a single bad day – we either had good steady fishing with decent fish all day or simply put – some absolutely EPIC days with unbelievable amounts of fish put in the boat.
Specs? After a slow October, they really fired up with the cold front that rolled in around Halloween – while the bite was not as good as 2006…it was fantastic by just about anyone’s standards. We managed many, many big fish and had many days of limits of of 2-4lb fish. There was also a great number of small fish – so 2008 should be another fantastic season!
Win – this guy ALWAYS finds fish. IF there is 1 fish to be caught, rest assured – he’ll find it. Oh yeah – his brother David is pretty good too 🙂
We found a great number of trout, including a clear citation that threw the hooks at the boat – we even managed a few on the fly.
Jerry and his friend George. While it was Jerry’s trip – George is a man I will never forget. Not only is he a fantastic fisherman who has fished the crystal coast since the early 50s (and probably fished beside my granddaddy more than a few time) – but this man was an officer in General Patton’s 3rd army and was there for all of the european theatre. He told me about the Bulge…liberating concentration camps – one story after another. He also claims he was the only man to ask Gen. Patton for leave…so he could go fishing. 😀
He passed away in February 2008 – I can just say that I am so proud to have taken him fishing in his beloved NC one last time. RIP.
Don and Gary SMOKED – I mean SMOKED the trout today. We also had a nice flattie, a slot red…and bunch of trout including one that was an oz or two shy of 4lbs.
Regular client Phil and his friend…well, we found a few trout but it was slower than the day prior….but we still managed a good haul of fish with probably 25 or so put into the boat. We did however find a good drum bite in the morning finding several nice schools in less than a foot of water…that just jumped all over our spinnerbaits.
On the 5th I tore up my lower unit on the skiff…but it was alright, Morehead Marine bailed me out in no time…and i was putting the skiff up anyways as it was time for albacore come Nov 6th!
Lundin with 1 of his 10 or so albies that we caught on the beach in less than 10 foot of water – talk about some reel-emptying runs!
John continued the great beach bite with one of several albies caught in less than 15 foot of water – and they smoked our reels. We finished out the day casting to smaller 8-12lb fish sipping small baits in about 40 foot of water…and we managed to boat a good number of those as well.
John and Burt – two of the most skilled fly anglers I have ever had the pleasure of fishing with came down for three days again this year…and we managed to get out on 2 of those. The albie fishing was pretty good and we managed a little bait-ball action and had fish on the beaches for better part of 2 days.
Burt with a prop-wash caught albie!
BIG anchovies – bigger than my biggest gummies!
Mike and son with a couple nice albies!
I had a couple cancellations this week, and I was able to get out and take advantage of the SLICK-ARSE calm conditions. My friend Ted and I smoked the albies from Beaufort Inlet to the cape, found 20lb fish on the wrecks dredging flies…so we moved on to some deeper structure and started jigging. Welp, with stingsilvers we managed a 4lb seabass, a 5lb citation seabass, a 28inch gag and a 30inch gag. So we switched to bait and heavier rods…and SMOKED the big seabass and managed a LIMIT of nice gags (aka 4). We quit soon thereafter and tried to do a little AJ fishing, as they were swarming the boat. The problem is that they were too big…and Ted fought a approx. 100lb monster for almsot an hour before it snapped 80lb drag. So we went king fishing – 2 mins into the troll, ted brought in a 25lb smoker that we quickly photographed and released. We caught a few more 20 pounders…then fly cast to a few more albies and released 4 more….and went home.
Does fishing get any better than that!?!?!
After a 1 day blowout and some slow trout fishing – John and crew SMOKED the big albies landing probably about 40 during a full day. We tried to do a little kingfishing, but we had giant 20lb albies eating our 12-14″ bluefish. I’ve never seen that before!
Guy, a veteran surf angler from the Northeast, brought his two sons down and we hoped to find a few albies. Did we ever. It was probably the best day I have ever had. We boated and released over 100 fish in 5 hours…and that was all our arms could take.
It started off very foggy with some good bait ball action..and we had fish on the entire time. Then the son came out…and I found my favorite Nov. sight….big rafts of pelicans sitting tightly on the surface, ladling bay anchovies out of the water with their beaks. …so we idled over to the closest raft and pushed them off their baitball which decided to attach itself to the bottom of my hull. And the albacore circled them and attacked them for over 4 hours…and we had so many triple headers my mind was spinning. …got some great video footage too!
Well, I thought the day prior was my best day ever. Nope – Nov the 21rst took the cake. My inlaws came to town for thanksgiving and i took them out, along with my wife katie.
Today there were no baitballs – just albies. We drifted, blindly with the engine off, for 5 hours in deadtree hole…and blind casting would produce albies on just about every cast. We had them eating flies off the gunnel. We had to be careful – twice, when messing with a reel…we had a fish eat a lure/fly that was mere inches from the gunnel. It was absolutely insane. Seriously. We ended the day due to extreme fatigue.
[b]Katie on the fly![/b]
