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!

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

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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…
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Albies..
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