A day of Firsts
Well, I picked me up a lil bote from a good friend of mine (Thank you.it must be lucky). The weather has sucked, t-ball has ensued.... We planned a trip to the Wilmington section of the Cape Fear river for this past Saturday. As you may know, the Cape Fear is similar to the Roanoke. It is spring spawning grounds for ocean stripers. The fishery introduced a moratorium on the fish in 2005 due to the decline of the fishery. It has been catch and release for some time. They have added fish arches at the locks and dams trying hard to bring back the striper. This is was the home of the ONE striped bass, that is used to stock every single striper for NC stocking. Pretty neat nugget of info there.
Fast forward, we did our word of mouth and cyber scouting, so we had an idea of the whens and wheres. Most of the reports were casting at the mouths of feeder creeks in a falling tide, and the other was trolling buck tails or hard baits. We had a plan.
Saturday morning came, we left Raleigh about 5 am, sitting at the boat ramp eating a biscuit about 6:45. Met a fellar from Holly springs down there who also wanted to try it. Barreled up the river dodging floating debris. Found some starting points, went to casting jerk shads and curly jigs at em. Bout 2 hours of nothingness, with one "felt like a hit". WE then are talking about all of our other options, flying blind, this may suck yada, yada. Put out 4 lines, were going to start pulling. Trash in the water was making this suck worse.
We say you know, we need to head south and get in some cleaner water. So we did. Put out 4 hard baits, 2 15 footers, 2 20 footers. Started working the edge of a shoal in the center. And it was on. Pod of fish pulled up in the baits, hit 3 of the 4, got 2 of the rods up, one shook off of Frye's line, mines still on!! Fought hard, to the bote, peel the spool, to the bote, peel the spool. These fish were strong. Finally got him tired, lipped him. Low and behold to our surprise, the fish has a yellar reward tag hanging from his belly! We expeditiously measure him, put him back. Get the bote moving again, 5 minutes later, 2 more rods knock back. Dan gets one of the in the bote. 27". Get moving again, we get 2 own at one time, put both of them in the bote. 25" twins. Our action ended as fast as it started, and the wind set in. We fought the boate till about 2:30, picked up, was sitting at home at 5:45.
We ended up with 4 good fish, 2 dinks.
31"
27"
25"
25"
2 20" or lessers.
First time outta wilmington
first salt water striper trip
first fish in the new bote
first fish on these hard baits
first tagged striper
First Reward for fish
God smiled on me saturday.
tight lines to ya.
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Originally Posted by Dook
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