Friday, April 11, 2008
Thursday 4/10/08 5lb Flounder! Lots of Seabass!
Well, with my father onboard for his second day back here in the boro... we decided to take advantage of the short window of calm weather the forecasters got right. Despite the dense fog that lasted through noon, Dad, my friend Dion, and myself slid out Bogue Inlet and enjoyed some great bottom jigging. It's pretty freaky finding yourself 5 to 10 miles offshore in a fog so dense it looks as though you can spit and lose track of it... One good thing for sure, no one... absolutely no one... knew what we were catching or where we were fishing! Being the first day off the beach this season, I basically scoured a 40 mile area... spot checking each for bottomfish. We picked away a few fish here and there and then about 11:00am we found the mother load! We found a large area holding Seabass so thick they were rising the the surface around the boat each time we retreived our lines. This school of Seabass was marking 30ft thick. We picked away and landed almost 400 Seabass with most over 10 in.... We threw back a lot of fish that were exactly 12in. knowing they will shrink about an 1/8in. once they die... We kept 31 Seabass from 12 1/4in. to 15in. and were also lucky enough to land 5 Summer Flounder with the largest right at 5 lbs. Dion landed several nice grouper just under the 24in slot. They were released unharmed to grow a little. A couple sharks and ringtails to top it off and we had a great day on the ocean with seas under 2ft. We were also fortunate enough to see our 1st Sunfish for the 2008 season... we managed to get within 15ft of him before he went down...
Capt. Jeff Cronk
FISH'N4LIFE CHARTERS
252-764-2174
jcronk@ec.rr.com
