all the wrong moves

I rode a lot of miles looking for albies yesterday and I never seemed to go far enough or I was always headed in the wrong direction. On the way home we poked around the marshes in the tower and we did see a few puppies. I couldn't believe the excitment in my customer when an 11 inch lizardfish slammed his fly. I sure would have liked to have showed him something different. Tough day.

laazy Saturdays

Well, I haven't gotten much done today. Everyone hooked a tarpon yesterday with the Dentist Group at Silver King Lodge, I'll have a full report later. After our bang up puppy drum day, I fished the same guys Wednesday afternoon and we caught 6 kings up to 22 pounds on the same tackle that we were catching the puppies the day before. On Thursday we landed an albie on the fly, the goal for the whole trip, and we caught a couple of sight casting puppies. I got a lot done in the office yesterday and have totally goofed off today. Fishing shows are off the tube and football is on the air, so I'm going to cut the grass.

wet feet and dirty hands

Yesterday I had a fly guy and his dad, who was spin fishing. Their identity will not be revealed for fear of retribution from the extremists in the fly fishing community.

I met them at Atlantic Beaach at 7 am for albie fishing. It felt like 35 degrees and a stiff 25 out of the NW. They jumped all over the idea of Plan B, puppy drum fishing out of Oriental.

We splashed Greg's boat in Oriental and were fishing by 9. We caught "slot" size puppies everywhere we fished. Last year's crop of puppies, now 14-16 inches were numerous and also everywhere we stopped, 6 locations in all. The first and last stops were the best.

We chunked mullet strips on a miniature Owen Lupton Drum Rig with a 7/0 Eagle Claw circle hook. We held the rods and reeled very slow until we felt the bite, then we raised the rod and reeled until everything was tight and the drag was screaming. It took a bit of time to get the hang of it and we only landed 8 slot puppies and "yearlings", drum over 27 inches, but not yet adults, the teenagers. (I know it's confusing, but I call puppy drum anything under 27 inches, anything between 27 and 40 inches are yearlings, and everything over 40 inches, a citation, is an old drum.)

Stop 2, 3, 4 and 5 all produced fish, but we really found them stacked up on a windy point at the last stop. All in all we landed 40 "slots" and "yearlings", another 30 of the sublegal 14-17 inchers, a nice trout and a flounder, a 70 fish day.

We caught 6 on the fly rod.....notice I didn't say the fly, well one of them was legitimately on the fly.....although a little Lunker Sauce may have bonded to the bucktail. The others were caught on the fly rod, using a new cast that my father developed on the Roanoke River when using a foot long live river herring fly.

It involves stripping out about 60 feet of line at your feet, letting your...err..fly hang down about 7 feet and using a pendulum type action slinging the bait...I mean fly... outward and upward, letting the wind 25 knot gust "shoot" your line. (My father has only broken one rod using this technique, he should have been using a 10 wt and not the 7 wt. )

And to you stuck up do-gooders who don't like catching fish.....you guys probably don't remember being a kid and having your feet wet and hands dirty trying to dig up stuff to feed to a fish. Yesterday, three grown men were kids all day long.

fishing report

Capt. Ray and I smacked the puppies yesterday, a lot of little guys, but Ray had 25 "slot" fish, also a 4 1/2 pound trout. He has also been doing good with the flounder gigging, 42 pounds of filets from 24 flounder. Sounds like things are also firing off in the ocean with the kings, spanish, albies and even trout at the jetty. We are staying very busy, but still have openings.

115 for 275



4 day total, 115 landed for 275 in the air, plenty more bites. Local fishing reports and tarpon pictures coming up, but I'm swamped right now.

tarpon pay back...

I've been waiting for this all summer.

46 for 104 on day one, 17 fishermen. Dad and I doubled up on the fly this afternoon, catching 3 for 6 and other couple on conventional.

light tackle and live shrimp...

...and you never know what the next cast is going to bring, 5 inch pinfish or 5 pound trout. It's been a lot of fun fishing the last several days, mostly half day trips. Lots of little puppies, a few decent trout and flounder, several striped bass and the "trip maker" has been the black drum, catching 6-12 fiesty 2-5 pounders/half day trip. Here are some pics from the Thompsons.




















Greg and Ray will be holding down the fort while I'm in Costa Rica next week. I'll be checking e mails fairly regularly, but to book a trip, give the office line a call at 252-249-3101.
posted by Capt. George Beckwith

Flounder gigging with Capt. Ray

Flounder gigging with Capt. Ray is a must do. The trip started with about an hour(usually 2 or 3 hours, but I was late)of light tackle fishing. There's nothing like fishing in the marsh at "magic time". Behind Drum Inlet with the moon rising, the sun setting and the whole place coming alive. We caught several puppy drum, a pair of 3 pound trout and a keeper flounder. At dark we started poking around the edges of the marsh checking out the puppy drum and even catching one on a rod and reel under the lights. We passed up a couple of 16 inch keeper flounder and headed towards the sloughs and bars, looking for the big ones. Ray called it a super slow night because of the filling moon and said that things would be better next week when the moon is waning. We ended up sticking 6 flounder between 4-6 pounds. Ray had a 12 pounder and several over 8 pounds one night last week.

Ray and I are mixed bag fishing over the next couple of days, hopefully followed by good reports. Things are starting to fire off on the coast with the albies and the kings.
The flounder gigging should get better as the water cools and be good through November.

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