WaterDog Guide Service

Captain Scott and I Still have a few SELECT DATES available during Dec and January. I call our dates select because we chose to only hunt 3 days a week in order to keep the pressure off our spots and provide our clients with the best experience possible.

While we specialize in layout boat hunting for seaducks, depending upon the weather what’s available we also concentrate on divers and mixed bagged hunting.

Call or email if you’re interested.

Layout Hunts

When it comes to Crystal Coast Albacore - 2009 is one of the years we’re going to talk about for a decade. This year the albacore showed up in August, were reliable all September and busted wide open in November. Combined with the persistent and consistent north winds, it carried into November and got better and better and BETTER. It was wide open and non-stop just about every day through the middle of the month when the remnants of tropical storm IDA decided to dump about 10 inches of rain on us.

While the fishing was definitely slower post-IDA, most of our days would have been considered good days in past years with good shots at fish on the beach in the week following - and it was wide-open again a week following the storm. While the weather followed its usual pattern and got more inconsistant as we got closer to Thanksgiving day, we still experienced very good albacore fishing all the way through the end of the month!

Like I said - 2009 was the best false albcore year I have ever experienced and was clearly at par, or better, than the “glory days” of the late 90s. Many of the old salts say it was the best year since the 80s/90s when just about nobody was fishing for them!

While I spend 95% of my time chasing albies, the trout fishing was decent and we had some great days with the reds in the marsh.

John and Phil really know how to pick ‘em - but I will go out on limb and say they are being rewarded for a lifetime dedicated to conservation. They rang in the beginning of November with a truly epic day - bait balls and fish that stayed on top all day, non-stop, from the instant we left that inlet at 7am till we went in at dark. They can tell you how many they caught on the fly because I sure can’t remember the number - it was a lot. They were tired. As good as it gets. The end.

Paul and Briton had a great afternoon - we sat out the morning due to 25kt winds, spent some time looking and it busted wide open middle of the afternoon. Big pods of fish crushing silversides. I left my camera in the skiff but they sent me a photo to make the site!

Round two this fall with John - but this time he brought the man that all fish fear - Ol’ Burt . He came charging with fly rod in hand and swiftly conquered an albie, trout - and on our third day I finally got his fly in front of some reds. With a cold front bearing down the reds left the shallows…but we found them stacked up in a shallow hole in the lee of a small island and we hooked up into some screaming upper-slot fish. Burt had the hot hand landing several nice fish andd breaking off a beast that took him well into his backing - he was also kind enough to let John catch one! Burt landed his first decent redfish of his fishing carear and we was quite impressed - that’s saying a lot coming from a guy who’s caught more atlantic salmon (on fly) than I thought existed. Always great to have you.

…then it was three days with the boys from the vineyard before IDA wrecked our party. I lvoe fishing with these guys - fly, spin they do it all and are happy with everything and whatever presents itself. As much as they fish and as self-sufficient as they are it’s almost (but not quite!) a vacation for me! We crushed the albies for three straight days. Crushed them. We also got into some Jacks on the wreck on poppers, caught several big sharks and landed the biggest red drum I have ever seen in my life (measured boatside between 62 and 65″). The best fishing we had was our blind casting - hours just drifting, tossing topwaters and dredging flies with albies crushing our baits every other cast. These guys also introduced me to the Rebel Jumping Minnow - a lure which I would not have given a second thought to. Watching the albies react to it is mesmerizing. I have put a dozen in my tackle bow - just put it at that. Always a pleasure y’all!

The Campbell crew - or the “you should been here 4 days ago” or “can you stay 1 extra day” crew. This has been there story for several years and while the fishing wasn’t as good as the pre-ida blizes, we have nothing to complain about most part. We had gorgeous weather for two days and had workable numbers of fishing chasing small spearing on the beach and tidelines. We all managed a fish on fly on the first day, losing several. It could have been worse (because last year was!)! Great having y’all!

Mike and Cathy made their annual trip for albies - last year they hit it pretty good (lucky) and this year they came out pretty well despite some tough weather and tougher fish. It was howling out of the north (20+) for both days and with the water temperature still lingering in the mid to upper 60s, the albies decided to switch their diet over to micro-baits and thus become very hard to hook. Truth be told, they were still pretty aggressive - you just had to get the fly in front on them and give it fast strip. With the wind it just took a good cast and perfect boat maneuvering - Mike had no problem getting it in there. We did quite well on day 2 and Cathy was able to land her fish albie ever! Awesome guys!

One thing I like so much about fall is that I usually get to see some of my oldest, and best, clients - people who love to fish and love the sport in its entirety. Beth and Dave and the next generation of fishin fools, andrew, are no exception and I was so happy to be closing out my season with them. We had a crazy day. First it was calm. Then it was windy. Then rainy. Then calm again. All while 65+ degrees in November. After catching a bunch of gray trout, we found big pods of albie skimming micro bait off the surface right outside the hook. It took a little figuring out - while they would eat a maria or stingsilver fairly readily - they would absolutely crush a jumpin’ minnow surface plug. We had multiple fish skying on each bait often throwing it 2-3 feet out of the water - some of the best surface strikes you could ever hope to see. We even had one fish miss the plug and run into the side of the boat!

Not just that but we found a lost red drum and got to see a Whale! First of that Beth has ever seen!

Thanks again guys for such a wonderful closure to such a wonderful year. See ya in June!

During thanksgiving week, the humpback whales decided to show and I saw 1 at least every day I was on the water that week! Saw several off of Atlantic Beach and several on the east side of the shoals. I was hoping to see a Right Whale but didn’t lucky this year. Always an amazing site - you should have seen how excited Dr. Beth was. First whale she’s ever seen! Worth the price of admission right there!

As a quick Recap before I post a slurry of photos, I want to preface this post by saying how excellent October was for us. The weather was fair, the water clear and the marsh was doing very well with the redfish. Unlike the past couple of falls when our redfishing was really hurt by an over-abundance of gill nets (what else is new). This year, due to the fact that North Carolina commercial fishermen kill more sea turtles than every other state combined the federal government mandated a change in how NC commercial fishermen fish- and it was much to the benefit of the seaturtles and the fish. While we did witness a bunch of illegal gill netting (what else is new) and extremely unethical gill netting (the norm) like blocking 95% of some creek mouths, these new regulations have really put the hurt on some of the netters - hence why we witnessed known netters running nets in other people’s names and other such easy ways to beat the system. Hopefully more sane and reasonable restrictions will be coming down the line soon and will make 2010 eveen better than 2009! They will be banned one day and it will be to the benefit of the entire estuarine environment!

While everyone knows I purchased a new boat in August, after two solid months of running her day and day out alll I can say is how extremely happy I am with the new Pathfinder Fusion. My clients agree and the reviews have excellent - with a cruising speed of over 45 mph and top-end of 60+ we can go just about anywhere in no time!

Inside - like I said before, the redfishing was excellent. Due to the lack of nets it was easy to pattern schools of fishing without having to worry about them being netted up every single night. During the late summer and fall I was fishing several very large schools of fish several times a week - and they were always there and willing to bite. A couple of the schools I patterend were all in the 28-34″ range and we put some beasts in the boat - biggest this fall was a 35″ by Dave Wylie. Ate a DOA under a cork!

The Speckled Trout fishing was mixed - I had some very good marsh fishing around the cold fronts and the full/new moon but the size was inconsistent. We caught a lot of nice-sized trout but much of the time we were overwhelmed with 10-14″ fish that we had to weed threw to find the big guys. However, the marsh fishing for trout was very good through thanksgiving due to the warm water temps but the surf fishing never materialized for them.

Ocean - while there was a lot going on, the only thing we were concerned with was FALSE ALBACORE! This year the albies were in the hook and on the beach from late august through all of November and the month of October was nothing short of FANTASTIC. It was easily the best albacore fishing I have ever experienced, day in and day out, since I have been fishing for them. Many weeks rivaled the “glory days” of the late 90s and many folks said it was even better than the early 90s! Wow! Fish were everywhere and we had an absurd daily average of fish. I had several days of 75 fish/person. That’s not even fair.

October Albies:

Regulars John and Ed had a couple of great days despite cold temps and HOWLING winds!

Dave and Travis with a couple albies - on another day we got into them in such numbers that Dave caught them on every cast until we quit!

Jason’s amazing day. Jason, despite the fact he’s a n NYC’r, and I always have a great time together and he fishes with me a couple times a year. This time it was his day and we killed it. We started off with several over-slot reds in the marsh on topwaters and corks, a big trout on the flats all while chasing a nice school. Then we switched to trout and we crushed ‘em catching many nice 2-3lb fish for an hour or so before we decided to take advantage of the slick conditions and run 10 miles to another spot where I’d been on several large schools.

Well, we found several large schools - and they were busting on mullet. JAson caught several on the fly (I even got to catch one on the fly!) and we watched them explode on topwaters for over 2 hours. It was shallow water fishing that was as good as it gets. Period. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to his wife for getting him back a little late (we couldnt’ leave! It was too good!).

An entire Pumpkin Patch fighting over a topwater plug.

Topwater Strikes!

My annual Fall Tribute to Dave and Sue - a couple of my best clients. We have so much fun together and we had some very memorable days (and a couple really slow days as well) this fall. Both Dave and Sue know how to fish and we always seem to make something happen.

Sue and I with a big boy red caught on the east side:

Dave with a 35″r!

Dave with another big over-slotter!

A nesting pair of Bald Eagles that we saw while up in the marsh - they constructed their nest this year and I am excited about seeing some eagle chicks next year!

One of my favorite fish of the fall - This guy was tailing in 6″ of water and Gregg jumped out of the boat, slogged through the marsh and nailed him on the flat! Awesome!

Indiana crew with a few we pulled out from the docks:

More reds from the rest of the month…

Finally - I even got to sneak out a couple of mornings and catch a few!

It’s coming down to the wire and we’re looking at another awesome October and November - our best fishing of the year. Red Drum, Speckled Trout, Flounder, False Albacore, King Mackerel - it’s all out there.

My dates are becoming VERY VERY SLIM! It’s time to get that date booked otherwise you’ll be out of luck this year.

Available: Oct, 8, 9 & 10 (SAT) - excellent redfish dates and good potential trout fishing.
Oct 13 - great trout date
Oct 25 (sun), 27-29 - PRIME TROUT DATES (oh yeah - and excellent redfish)

Nov 2, 3, 4 - Just opened back up, prime False Albacore, Trout, King MAckerel - one of the best weeks of the year!!!

Nov17-20 & 22nd - More PRIME False Albacore Dates.
….more Nov dates available during thanksgiving week for trout and albacore if they stick around.

Inshore - the red drum fishing continues to get better and better as we work in October. The fish have been chewing on topwater and on popping corks - and we’ve been finding a good number of nice speckled trout mixed in as well. Late Sept and early October are some of my favorite times to fish in the backwaters!

Nearshore - besides the loads of bluefish and NICE spanish on the beach, we have been graced by the presence of excellent numbers of false albacore. While they are small and mostly in the 4-8lb range, I will go out on a limb and say that this september has probably surpassed just about all the fall albie runs of the past 3 years. While I NEVER will rely on albies in september as a consistant/reliable target - this year is definitely an exception. They are scattered from the east side of the shoals all the way to bogue inlet - and the best fishing has been inside the hook at cape lookout. Probably the best albie fishing inside the hook in 6+ years!

Paul and Ken with some nice topwater drum and trout…we had a bunch of blowups by drum on topwaters and actually ended up hooking/landing more trout than drum today. Always a pleasant bonus!

One of the Bowden crew with two nice reds - the first being a 34″ BEAST!

I had a great time with the Dienst boys from Illinois today - great guys to fish with. We caught a boat load of spanish and then went chased some albies that were crushing bait in the hook. These guys could not believe a fish of that size could pull that hard and take that much line! That’s an albie for ya! Real cool moment though - while looking for spanish, we saw some large fish rolling - a huge school of migrating tarpon swimming south at probably close to 8 knots. Got some great pictures - beautiful fish.

Migrating tarpon…

Albies..

My wife, Katie, and I were very fortunate to be able to travel to the Turneffe Atoll this past week and experience that beautiful and wonderful paradise. We stayed at Turneffe Island Resort are were blown away by their accommodations, staff, food, their diving, the fishing guides - you name it, I have nothing but glowing compliments for the entire resort. I would recommend them to any client of mine, without a single hesitation.

For those of you not aware - Turneffe is an atoll about 35 miles off the coast of Belize. The island is ringed with coral and the entire atoll is literally a giant bonefish and permit flat interlocked by a maze of mangroves. We did a lot of diving (including a visit to the “blue hole”), and I, of course, did a lot of flats fishing.

I was also really surprised to learn a few facts about the country of Belize. First of all, ALL GILL NETS ARE BANNED! Second, Bonefish, permit and tarpon are 100% catch and release for everyone! Third, all fish caught commercially are required to retain a 1 inch by 2 inch piece of skin so that it can be identified. Gee - nice to know that Belize figured out what North Carolina and its inept (and corrupt) politicians and fishery managers cannot.

Regardless, commercial fishermen abounded on the atoll fishing in small pangas - free diving for conch and lobster, chumming and cast netting for shrimp and hand-lining the reefs for snapper, grouper and king mackerel. While the coral and tropical fish was, hands down, the healthiest I have ever seen - anywhere - it was really obvious that the larger grouper and snapper were scarce. When we visited the Marine Reserve (zero fishing - period) around the Blue Hole - we saw monster grouper, big hogfish and big snappers all over the place.

However, the bonefish were unbelievably numerous and I can honestly saw I never went more than 10 minutes at any time not being able to see a school of bones. The average school was easily 100 fish and we saw many over 500. They were still wary and difficult but the numbers were breathtaking. I caught countless bones and katie caught her first bonefish on fly! The permit were also around in mesmerizing numbers - all over the reefs and scattered across the flats. I managed to catch 6 on the fly.

My guide, Fabian, grew up in the Atoll - commercial fishing his entire life and told me many stories about the price trends and the realities of their fishery. He also, hands down, had the best eyes of any fishermen I have ever been around. He could spot individual bonefish from hundreds of yards away. Amazing. He had me in bonefish at all times, showed me tailing permit, huge schools of permit and even though it was a really poor time of the year for tarpon - got me hooked up, on fly, with a very big ‘poon. I, however, wasn’t able to seal the deal and the grandslam eluded me this trip as the tarpon threw the fly on a jump. I will be back and I hope to accomplish the slam (bonefish, tarpon and permit) on my next trip.

The real highlight were the permit - I was able to land 6 on fly (all in the 10-15lb range) and lost just as many. On the last day, we got on a school of about a dozen 30lb+ fish - i had three follow my fly and a big boy rushed it, inhaling my crab and ran right at me…unable to get tight, he spat the hook. Wow! I still get a rush thinking about it!

A few pics…

PERMIT!!!

Tailing Bonefish - school of about 150.

SMALL school of Bones cruising a sand flat

Mudding Bones…

More Bones…

Katie and I at Half-Moon Caye - Marine Reserve. INCREDIBLE diving.

Red-footed Booby

A couple of Antillean Manatees that came to check us out while we were looking for permit - poor picture but pretty big deal to see these guys!!!

It was about time for me to get a new inshore boat - our fishery and market has changed a lot in the past few years…and it’s a great time to buy a boat! To make this story short - I got an offer I couldn’t refuse on a boat that is perfect for my style of fishing.

The 19′ Fusion is so new it’s not get on the Pathfinder/MAverick website. What they did was took the 18′ redfisher, removed the seating and some of the hatches to open up the interior deck space and added a stand-up consol and leaning post. It’s also considerably lighter than the redfisher - and my preliminary tests have shown it to draft between 9 and 10 inches (a couple inches improvement over my skiff)! Not only that - with a 150 four-stroke my top-end speed is 60 mph and I can easily cruise between 30 and 40 mph!

With this boat, while I have lost a little bit of room compared to my wonderfully roomy skiff, it is a hardcore backwater fishing machine. I will have range that I could only dream of before and we will be able to fish many different areas during the course of the day. Furthermore, I have a great live-well system - a standard 22 gallon and a 25 gallon that also doubles as a release-well. I have it rigged with an remote-controlled minn-kota, power pole XL and will be putting a poling platform on shortly.

This powerful hull not only thunders right through chop but is quite dry….and drafts about as little as you can hope for from any v-hulled bay/flats boat. Time to ride in style folks!

A few preliminary pictures - I have since swapped out the trolling motor and am waiting on my GPS and poling platform. I’ll post more pics as I finish rigging it to my liking!

How about the fishing? Inshore is rocking right now - just like it should be in August and September…and hopefully leading into an incredible October! The red drum are numerous and they are hungry - we can thank a great year-class of fish as well as the new sea-turtle regulations reigning in some of the out-of-control gill netters and allowing a few of the fish to make it through! We started to see the benefits of these new regulations almost immediately!

Katie and I had a great day yesterday. We eased into a very shallow bay on the incoming tide and snuck up on several marshes that have been holding good numbers of fish. Today there were several large schools and the incoming low-pressure had them chewing…in fact they were slamming schools of silversides so regularly that there were OIL SLICKS coming off a couple of oyster bars.

Before we even cast - we saw their orange backs patrolling the bar while they slammed unfortunate baitfish. Our first two casts resulted in a 32′ fish for myself and katie breaking off a BEAST. She quickly followed up with her own 33′ NO SPOTTER. We played with them throwing big topwaters - often they would hit it before we could even flip the bail.

We ended the day chasing a school of about 200 fish around an oyster bar - and i was fortunate to land a couple on the fly.

What an awesome way for my wife and I to fish together, for the first time, on the new boat!

John was the 2nd client to fish aboard the fusion - and we found several large schools of reds using a shallow bay. John had a ton of hook-ups using a cork and a halo-shrimp - while we had a bunch of LDRs he managed to land a couple great fish before we had to go in. What a great half-day!

Ol’ Philip and Lila - I’ve been fishing with Phil a long time. In fact, I believe he was the 1rst or 2nd client who fished aboard my brand new PArker 21SE probably 6 years ago. Well - he and his lovely “I will out-fish dad anyday” daughter, Lila, got to be the first clients of mine to ever fish aboard the fusion!

We stank it up on the incoming not finding much in the muddy newport river, so we cruised an easy 40 mph to a new area and found clean water and several schools of reds. Dad lost a couple, as did Lila, before Lila brought in a 30 incher to break out drought.

As the tide dropped down, we hit the docks - and again, Lila beat out dad landing another slot fish and a 17′ flounder. Way to go girl!

Always great to see you guys!

While I had already picked up the new boat - I had not had time to finish the break-in period and did not want to throw-things together for a client so Larry, Mike and I fished together on the skiff. We had a decent morning, finding several slot fish in the newport along with a few good strikes. Docks were rather dead but we did hook up a couple reds and an under-sized flounder or two. Good job guys!

On the third day of wacking the Jacks on the fly - John, Ed and I got to witness an incredible animal.

When John was bringing a big Jack to the boat - it’s behavior was off and the fish shot to the surface early. While I tailed the unharmed fish - I quickly saw what was making it act uneasy…a huge tiger shark was following it.

We estimated the fish at about 12′ and probably over 400lbs. She circled the boat several times, keeping a careful distance….and then I remembered that I had a 12lb false albacore in my bait cooler. In one motion, I grabbed it, tied a dock line around it’s tail while Ed put several big slashes in it with his knife.

We dropped it over-board and the big shark was very cautious…she did slow figure 8s around the boat for about 10-15 minutes coming closer and closer to the albie before she finally (and very slowly) came up behind it, grabbed it and easily bit it in half. As the shark was biting it andI was holding the rope as the shark thrashed, John grabbed onto my belt, look at me and said “I dont know the way home!”

She came and finished off the albie on the next pass - biting it just a foot from the outboard.

What an incredible experience - I will remember this for the rest of my life.

John, who is an excellent fly angler, and his friend Ed came down to hopefully get after a few AJs on the fly. Ideally, we were hoping for one nice day to hit the ocean as we had good “redfish tailing tides” as a backup option.

Well, they had about the best luck you can ever have with weather. Ever. It was slick-as-glass calm for three straight days (Actually, 5 days in total). The ride out was so simple and easy it was mesmerizing.

We found the jacks busting on bait. We chummed them with live bait - and had them all over our poppers for three straight days. The water was so calm you could look down and see all sorts of marine life - including many, many large sand tigers, a big 8′+ sandbar shark that followed us around for a while and a 12′ REAL TIGER shark that i will get into in another post. At point we we also had leatherback turtles all around the boat (we saw 5 or 6) and even managed to pull a cobia off of one..but he was uninterested in the fly.

After three days John and Ed’s arms were tired, they were bruised and our gear was battered. But it was so worth it.

We also finished two evenings by chasing after a few tailing redfish in the marsh - we saw some (and had a few good shots the first night) but my guys figured it out the second night and john landed two nice reds.

Three of the best days of fishing you can ever, ever hope to have.

The ocean for THREE STRAIGHT DAYS:

We found the jacks doing this several times…

They like the popper…

Hooked up!

The Results (we declined to take pictures of many):

The biggest fish of the trip - about 50lbs? 60?

We even went in early two days to go look for these guys right before dark - John’s best fish although the lighting was poor for the shot.

I had a very calm day and a client who was very ready to get offshore and try to raise a sailfish. Jason was ready to sit back and be ready for a couple of good bites - and that’s just what we did.

It was slick calm, and while a lot of people had the same thing in mind that we did, we managed to put some good fish in the boat. We boated 4 nice-sized “tosser” mahi, a an 8lb blackfin tuna, and we got two wahoo boatside (one bit through the mono - another shook the hook loose).

However, we got what we were looking for. We had 2 suspected sailfish hits, lost one that hit a bait bhind the dredge as i was putting it out….and another that successfully ate a bait that i dumped past the dredge. The last gal we hooked up and she put on an incredible show. Stayed close to the boat and probably jumped 30+ times, and I got some great shots of her airborne.

Jason did a great job getting her boat side, and when I billed her she was hooked very lightly and still very green - so Jason made the executive decision to let her go without bringing her aboard for a glory photo (can’t argue with healthy conservation decisions like that). She swam off like a champ.