It’s a bit early but the bass have made it down to the Cape Lookout area.
12/10 – On Sunday, I went out with my friend Dean Lamont to do a little scouting and perhaps look for some stripers.
We spent the first part of the morning jigging for gray trout until we found some nice pods of albacore – they stayed up and were eating big bait. In mere minutes, we both landed a mid-teens fish on the fly.
After we were done messing around with the albacore, we decided to see if we could find some stripers. Believe it or not, it didn’t take long. On the first stop we went to, we found small groups of 25-35lb fish eating menhaden on the surface. Even more incredible than that? We found many, many schools of fish in the range of 20-40+ pounds roaming the surf and shoals. Everywhere we went we saw fish – literally thousands of them.
The problem is that the sun was very bright and high and stripers, being a light-sensetive fish, were not all that hungry. We had literally dozens of fish following our baits right up to the boat. The only thing that would get us hookups was casting right into the fish busting shad. Dean was first to hookup, landing a 26lb fish on a TOPWATER PLUG. We both followed up with a couple more 25-30lb fish during the next couple of hours. Tough fishing – but it was worht it!
We rounded out the afternoon finding a GIANT SCHOOL OF DRUM – the school was probably numbering in the thousands and covered over a quarter acre. The fish were all low to mid 30″s and were very aggressive. We each landed countless fish on topwaters and on the fly rod. The whole school would follow a hooked fish to the boat and after about an hour of this, we decided to head home and end the day on a good note.
WHAT A DAY!
12/11 – Dean and I ran out again this morning to see if we could hook a few more of the stripers from the day before. Today we found even more fish but the conditions were much rougher and the fish were hard to get to. We were also handicapped by the fact that we left the majority of our striper lures in the truck – all our big poppers, big swim-shad, etc.
We broke off two BEASTS to start the day and we were then treated to an AWESOME blitz around the boat. Fish were everywhere, throwing shad out of the water…and i tossed my swim-shad just a little too far and an 18lb albacore popped up and ate it…right in the middle of the bass blitz. As it proceeded to spool my reel, in trying to run the boat Dean lost his fish in the process. 😳
It went on like this all morning and we had dozens of strikes and hundreds of follows, we ended up lossing abouty 7 and boating two (released).
A few photos – unfortunately Dean was a little handicapped when it comes to using my camera and most of the photos are missing most of the subjest (ie me and/or the fish). Hopefully I will be able to add some of his photos to the post this week.
OPEN DAYS:
Dec. 15, 17, 19-21 (and possibly the 21-23), 31
Jan 1, 2, 3
