Sunday, April 29, 2007
4/29 Flouner, Kings, Tautogs, Sea Bass, Grouper, and More!
Capt. Mike Taylor and I left the dock early this morning to locate some fish along the live bottoms. It was a little rough this morning but it layed down around mid-day. We caught fish everywhere we stopped and eventually ran into a massive school of 5 to 8lb Kings. After landing one on a Bucktail while flounder fishing... we decided to drop the deep diving lures behind the boat and troll. IT WAS ON! We trolled for about 45minutes and limited out then began throwing some back. It was constant double, triple, and even a quadruple hook-up. Shortly after we went back to looking for flounder and bass. We wound up keeping 11 Flounder up to 3lbs, 9 Kings from 26 to 29in., about a dozen sea-bass from 12 to 16in., a 25in. Grouper, 2 Tautogs from 2.5 to 3+lbs, and a few Grunts and Porgies. The Spring fishing is definately happening with water temps from 66 to 68 degrees from the beach out 10miles. Call for open dates... FISH'N4LIFE CHARTERS- Capt. Jeff Cronk 910-326-7512 and TAYLOR-MADE CHARTERS- Capt. Mike Taylor 252-725-2623
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Sunday/Monday - Flounders and Bottomfish
After a slow day on Saturday looking for speckled trout in the backwaters following a ton of rain, both Capt. Mike Taylor and myself decided to work the nearshore live bottoms with our Sun/Mon. trips to find some Summer Flounder. Sat. my crew and I scoured a bunch of live bottoms and found some good places holding flounder, Seabass, and more around midday. We fished these bottoms hard for a while and hooked-up with 9 flounder, a mess of Sea Bass and Grunts, and a pretty 3lb Tautog. Capt. Mike Taylor shot back out to some of these bottoms on Monday and found a better bite on the flounder and they brought back 14 pretty Summer Flounder and a mess of big Seabass and Grunts. The action along the hard bottoms and reefs is picking up quickly. Capt. Jeff Cronk- FISH'N4LIFE CHARTERS- 910-326-7512 Capt. Mike Taylor- TAYLOR-MADE CHARTERS 252-725-2623.Congrats to the Weldor's Ark and the "Wahoo Challenge"
Congratulations goes out to the crew of the Weldor's Ark as they won 1st place for the 3rd consecutive time in the Wahoo Challenge out of Morehead City this past weekend. Capt. Mike Taylor called me with the news shortly after getting back to the dock. Their 51lb Wahoo was the largest weighed in. To make it even more interesting, The fish struck and tripped the planer..... Mike quickly dropped back the line.... the fish struck a second time and missed the bait... Mike dropped back the line again and the planer reset and the big Wahoo couldn't resist as the bait dove sharply. they hooked im up and put him in the box! Sweeeet... Job Well done aboard the Weldor's Ark- Capt. Jeff Cronk
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Sat.4/14 Monster Redfish! Inshore Slams!
I had Folden L. and a friend on early this morning. We were trying to get into some redfish before the tide dropped out and the winds picked up. Within 15min. of searching a clear water shoal we found a school of Monster Reds all over 30in. There was probably 700 or more reds in the school. These fish were in 1 to 1.5ft of water and wouldn't stay in one place... we kept them in our sights for a while and were able to land a few before they managed to make it to deeper water. We moved further into the backwaters and went searching for some reds, trout, and flounder. After some scouting we found some speckled trout along some shallow shelly bottom and landed about a dozen. The largest trout was about 3lbs and struck a 4in. Berkley gulp pogie on a light jighead. As we moved on we picked up a couple of decent flounder and also found a school of big redfish working a shallow bay. One of the reds in the school had recently got the better of an angler as it was pulling a popping cork around behind him.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Friday 4/13 Seabass and Speckled Trout
I left the dock with Joel and one of his friends about 7:00am and shot out the inlet to jig some seabass before the wind picked up. We spent several hours jigging stingsilvers and tossed back over 100 seabass from 8 to 11in. and managed to put about 20 pretty ones in the box before the North wind picked up to about 20mph. We moved into the backwaters to find the tide had dropped out and there was almost no water in the bays.... we moved up river and found a few speckled trout with the largest about 2lbs. Back to the dock around 1:00pm Capt. Jeff Cronk- FISH'N4LIFE CHARTERS- 910-326-7512
Thursday 4/12 Trout/Reds/Blues
I had Ed and his friends aboard today wanting to learn the backwaters from MHC to Swansboro. The morning was tough for the rain and T-storms and shortly after they cleared out the winds picked up to about 20mph from the NW making things hard to work the shallow bays. We wound up landing about 7 trout with one nice 2lber, 3 Redfish with two large fish at the upper slot, and a mess of good sized bluefish. Great job hanging in through all the conditions today guys... Capt. Jeff Cronk- Fish'n4life Charters- 910-326-7512Tuesday, April 10, 2007
RRREEEDDD Fish!
Capt. Mike Taylor and I were fishing alongside one another for a short while today.... Check out all the redfish... all the reds any angler could dream of staring at... especially in 2ft of Gin Clear water! We caught them until our arms were wore out! Awsome... then we went off the beach and picked up a bunch of 1 to 2lb seabass and some early season Summer Flounder. check out the photo (click on it to enlarge) above carefully and you'll see the reds in the water right next to us! There was probably about 700+ reds around the boat! In the second pic you can see guys from both boats hooked up....
Monday, April 09, 2007
Sun. 4/8/07 More Reds, Flounder, Seabass
Sun. 4/8/07 Well Sat. was a blow-out with 30+ MPH winds and very cold temps.... So, my group opted to hold out and go on Sunday instead. Wise choice as the winds were light on Sunday morning. We started out looking for redfish but the cold temps had them pushed off into deeper water early in the am. We eventually moved off the beach a little and worked some seabass and flounder. We picked up 6 Flounder with 5 keeps, two of which were almost 4lbs! It's awsome to see these fish feeding in early april, especially in water below 60 degrees. We were on our way back to the beach to look for redfish when Capt. Mike Taylor called and said he found a "Blood Red" school. We were there in minutes and anglers in both our boats were hooked up. We picked up some redfish from 26 to 31in. then the wind picked up to 15 to 20 out of the SW and stirred up the water so, we moved on to try and find some speckled trout. No specs but did manage to find a school of small grey trout willing to strike our baits and landed about 10 little'ns. Great day of fishing with two very experienced anglers.....
Capt. Jeff Cronk
FISH'N4LIFE CHARTERS
910-326-7512 OR 336-558-5697
Email jcronk@ec.rr.com
Fri. 4/6/07 Reds, Flounder, SeaBass
I had Tim Staley onboard early this morning hoping to get into the speckled trout we found Thursday... Got there at daybreak and so did about 9 other boats. We had one between 4 and 5lbs explode on the surface and it pulled off as I had to drag it out of the way of a boat that wanted to pass (with their outboard running) between me and the shore I was casting too... Seriously irritating as there was about 50yds of channel on my backside... Anyway, the bite wasn't good so we picked up and changed strategy. We moved on to fish the flats and shoals and within minutes were casting to a school of about 1000 redfish from 5 to 12lbs in 2ft of Gin Clear water. A couple hours and 50 redfish later we were bored as their was no challenge. The wind died out so we thought we might be able to find some flounder fishing the ledges and live bottoms since our water temps are several weeks ahead of schedule. We started off jigging some seabass up to 1.5lbs using stingsilvers tipped with Berkley cut baits. The second stop we made we found some flounder. We spent about an hour working this ledge with bucktails tipped with berkley gulp shrimp and landed 5 flounder and lost several more. We had several fish over 3lbs. Call FISH'N4LIFE CHARTERS/ Capt. Jeff Cronk 910-326-7512 or TAYLOR'MADE CHARTERS/ Capt. Mike Talor 252-725-2623 for open dates for targeting Flounder, Trout, Redfish, Sea-Bass, Bonito, and Bluefish throughout April.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
4/4-4/5 5 Citation Speckled Trout!!!!
4/4 My father, Tom Cronk, came into town for the week and we got out on the water and fished through 20 to 30mph winds on Wed. The morning started off good as we boated 4 speckled trout and missed several others early while fishing MHC and the Newport River. The largest Spec was 3lbs and we found a few 1.5lb bluefish to mix it up. We moved on to work some of the backwaters and land a few puppydrum and finished up in the Turning Basis with a bunch of Sea-mullet and a short flounder.
4/5 I had Dad and Capt. Mike Taylor onboard this morning. Mike and I decided to fish one of our favorite Spring BIG TROUT holes for a while this morning. Man that was a good idea today with the winds howling 15 to 20 out of the WNW. After Mike putting a woop'n on me last time we fished I took a good lead this morning with a 5lb Spec on my 3rd cast. It was back and forth until we quit for lunch but, we managed to boat 7 trout and had 3 others shake the hook out of their mouths as they tail walked across the surface shaking their heads like a mad dog with a rope in its mouth. I wound up with 3 citations, Mike got 1 and Dad got 1. We also landed 3 flounder today. Our smallest trout today was about 2lbs... gotta love that... good job dad on your citation 4.3lber.
The only morning dates I have left for 6 and 8hr April Gator Trout/ Bontio/ Redfish is April 10th, 11th, and 15th, I still have some 4hr afternoon trips available for targeting Albacore, bonito, redfish, and trout. Bookings for Summer Flounder Trips are filling fast. Call as soon as you know your vacation dates to ensure the best possible dates for your schedule.
Capt. Jeff Cronk
FISH'N4LIFE CHARTERS
910-326-7512 or 336-558-5697
email jcronk@ec.rr.com
Sunday, April 01, 2007
3/31/07 Grand SlamToday!
*** I apologize for the poor quality of the photos today... I forgot my camera and took some shots with the cellphone... that thing saved the day...Monte W. and Mitch onboard on Sat. hoping to get into the reds along the breakers.... Well, conditions weren't the best but we searched for a short while and found a school of 30 to 35in reds in a ft. of water. Mitch hooked one up, fought it a while, and boated a 32in redfish about 12 to 13lbs. meanwhile the rest of the school eased off into the deeper water and with the rough water around the shoals we decided to head into the backwaters. We fished all over Swansboro and Bogue Sound. We fished Grass Flats, Creeks, and Shell bottoms and wound up landing about 15 speckled trout, 2 grey trout, 2 flounder, another small puppy drum, and bluefish. That's 5 inshore species for a Grand Slam in late March... Awsome job guys! Capt. Jeff Cronk- FISH'N4LIFE CHARTERS- 910-326-7512 or email at JCRONK@EC.RR.COM
