The only way to describe saturday was TOUGH. Blowing 20-25knots from the Northeast, the waters were bumpy and the albies should have been showing. With a blow like that and water temps dropping, we were expecting some albies to start balling up. I had George II and George IIV aboard – and they were true fly-fisherman. Absolutely great casters and veterans of the cape lookout blitzes, it was a pleasure to fish with them. We traveled over 80 miles trying to find a bite but the fish were very scattered – we had some good shots during the afternoon and had a few takes but it was a rough day for the fly-casters! However, they were true gentleman and a pleasure to be around – i hope we can get George IIV his first albie on the fly next year!

Sunday was a different story – I had the pleasure of taking out Scott, his wife Vicki, their son Hunter and his friend Blake. It as operation entetain the boys, teach scott about the local waters and get vicki even more excited about fishing than she already is. The trip was a present to the boys for keeping their grades up – and boy did they earn it. We started out the day working the pods of albies near the shipping channel – we hung many of the fish and brought several to the boat. The problem was that the fish were all 17+lbs and they were spooling reels, breaking hooks and finding every way possible to ruin my gear. Pictured below is the fish we finally got to the boat – Blake and Hunter had a great time fighting those fish for over 20 minutes at a time.

After albies we tried to find a king bite – we had several short strikes, lost a good kind and brought in a bunch of atlantic sharpnose sharks – vicki and the boys had a blast pulling them in and by the end of the day, they were “Givin’ them the heat” like professional anglers. To round off the day, without being able to find a king bite, we motored over to one of the ARs and trying to bring flounder to the boat, we couldnt get our baits past some of the biggest blues i’ve ever brought in outside of the may hatteras blues – most were 3-6lbs. Simply great fights. The boys also had a great time playing with sabiki rigs – it’s a pretty instant hook up with all the bait in the water.

Unfortunately, at the wreck we witness an angler catch and kill what i estimate to be a 40lb red drum. After trying to gaff the fish (i let him know that i would radio marine fisheries if he did), he gaffed it poorly in the mouth, put his hands in the gills to pull it aboard and kept the fish out of the water for at least 10 minutes. It was basically dead when it went back in the drink – many of our recreational anglers simply need to learn the limits and learn how to treat some of the fish with manners.

We rounded off the day tying some knots and i gave scott some cast net lessons – he was throwing the menhaden net better than me at the end!

Again, I want to thank Scott (skimshady on NCW) for his kind words – it was a pleasure fishing with his family – those boys are hilarious and by the end they were ragging on me like i was an older brother 😉 I wish i had kids on all my charters! Also, scott – i think vicki wants one of those penn slammer reels for christmas. 😉