Headed north for a week two weeks ago. We had grand plans of the Bahamas but due to COVID, plans changed to a domestic trip.
Trailered my buddy's boat to NC for a week of beach and fishing. Readied the boat Friday, headed up Early AM Saturday in the rain.
Fished Sunday in the stacked up 4x4's blowing 15-20kts. Followed a few big boats through the inlet. Not fun, tough fishing, never got on the YFT, ended up with 10 skipjacks or so.
Regrouped, recovered and were blown out for the next 3 days. Had fun touring around in the rain, went to Corolla to see the ponies, saw some Carolina Boats in construction, had some delicious softshells etc.
The rain finally broke on Wed AM, Beach Day and prepped for fishing.
Thursday we rode out on a much nicer ocean heading to a different direction than where we found the skipjacks the Sunday before.
Got into the YFT and had constant action all morning. We ened up with 11 good fish and probably lost that many or more in equipment failure or sharks.
We would troll through the fish, hook up with 2-3, fight them, turn around and reset the spread. It was absolutely killer fishing.
Friday
Headed out to repeat Thursday in a half day before packing the boat up for the trip home. Found some fish, trolled through and hooked up on the center rigger, absolutely dumps it. Decide to try to go chase the fish, put it in the rod holder and start cranking. 20minutes into the fight we realized this isn't the same fish we left on the ledge the afternoon before. Fish sounds and we get straight up and down, decided to get in the bucket harness to see if some rod action can make some progress on the fish. NADA. After an hour, the fish heads for the surface, we gain about 200yds on it then after 8-10minutes, it sounds again. The closest we got to it on the surface was probably 300yds. Rotate out of the bucket harness for the next two hours with 22lbs of drag making no progress and finally chafe through the fluoro leader. On Thursday we busted a lot of 80lb leaders putting too much heat on the fish trying to stay away from sharks. We were hesitant to push the drag up past 30lbs because we knew it would make some tackle fail.
Never got to see the fish, thats why we go back! Suspecting a slightly out of place Bluefin or a monster blue marlin.
Licked our wounds, made a few more passes, caught 3 more YFT and headed for the hill at 12.
Trailer back to SC, jokingly discuss fishing out of Charleston the next day but decide we all like being married and opt to fish later.
Friday 6/26
Get a break in the weather and decide we need to eat something other than yft. Shot some scamps, caught lots of ARS on surface intervals. Took us a few dives find some groupers, ARS and Lionfish were thick. Viz was great on the bottom, muddy green water for the first 40ft, opened up nicely below with 50-60ft of vis.
I'm contemplating getting a zookeeper and targeting lionfish. I probably saw 100-150 in 3 dives without looking for them.
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