"The Bird Is The Word" lotsa pics!!!

The idea of this last trip started nearly a year ago as Spencer and I became buddies on one of the boards then spent a lot of time chatting on the phone. We had never met prior to this trip but I think we both approached it with a good level of confidence. We had tossed around the idea of a third but had some trouble pinning anyone down as we intended to fish for a good while and rough it. Enter NCsharker (Jason) who suddenly expressed interest a few weeks prior to our trip
Jason and I met at the strangest truck stop I have ever seen in South Carolina. We had never met before either. We transferred Jason’s gear to my wife’s commandeered Subaru wagon and headed out. Twenty minutes or so into the drive Jason says something like “not to be too forward but do you want to hold hands”? I said “NO” in my gruffest voice and looked over steely eyed to see him just cracking up as he observed my anxious horror. I told myself “this is going to be interesting”.

We drove overnight and met Spencer to begin the grand task of getting our gear to a location Spencer had put a lot of energy and time into scouting. We all recognized, I think, that this was a gamble. Fishing our chosen location meant a big investment of energy. It also meant that changing locations would be very impractical if not impossible. Accessing any goods or services would not be worth the time and energy involved so we would have to be equipped for any eventuality. This meant trucking a lot of gear a long ways!!!


By Thursday afternoon we had set up and baits were deployed. Jason had brought a bunch of stuff to get us started and it is lucky he did. He was the first to discover that Fla. fish have no problem with NC rays!

Jason made quick work of this beautiful 8,2” hammer on his Avet 30W. It was a good fight but the deal was sealed inside of 15-20 mins.

The heat increased, as did the surf going into our second day. We spent a lot of the afternoon trying to save our energy under the easy up. We agreed that this is one of the best pieces of gear we had. There were points in this trip when I’d have sooner parted with my duel 4/0 than the canopy, don’t think we would have survived without it. By the end of the day we were looking at breakers in the 7’ range, no BS.

We each had a few dumps out of the yak. Not being used to an 11.5’ yak I failed to get enough weight in back once and did the catapult maneuver on one trip back in. This landed me hard on a chunk of something in the wash and rendered my left foot unusable for the rest of the day. Luckily the swelling went down after several soaks in a cooler of ice and ray. I was back in the saddle in the AM. We were each injured more than once on this trip.


Spencer had what proved to be a genuine tug-of-war with a strong fish on a big tough bait. We were sure the fish was hooked as it blasted line off his 16/0 under substantial drag. The bait returned to the beach with an enormous cookie cutter type bite out of it-bummer, but encouraging at the same time.
I was next up with a strong fish hooked up on my 80W/8’ barbar combo. After a nice little fight this 7,3” lemon hit the beach quite green, always fun!!!


Spencer hooked up next and readily tamed a nice lemon. He is a huge dude and fished a 12/0 and a 16/0 on this trip. Having never watched myself fight a fish I can only guess that it is more exciting than watching Spencer fight one. He needs to hook up a monster because the guy straight up owns 7’-9’ fish, no contest.


We savored the first couple of days, during which we still had some decent food and cold drinks. I had fixed some ribs the night before departure, they were good by all accounts. We also were able to ice bait during this period. After that it was straight from the bait rod to the end of the bite leader. A buddy of mine helped us re-supply once late in the trip but we drank a lot of warm water and ate a lot of canned food and MREs. The last couple days our drinking water had become a protein drink as it was impossible to keep some bugs out of the water cooler.

Our good friend Sailor Jerry made a couple appearances at camp and got our creative juices flowing. We found a number of novel uses for some obsolete memorabilia found in one tackle kit.



( a brief disclaimer here, the three of us are well aware that there are a number of very high quality folks remaining on the “other” site. We respect those individuals. However, this report is posted by 3 guys who had contributed a good bit in the past, spoken the truth, and been jettisoned like a raft of trash. That is the context of our antics).
Now to “the day”. Jason and I took off to make bait once again. After a couple hours of casting and scavenging we returned to base and found Bauer about done leadering his very own 7, 10” tiger. We were so psyched and left a trail of valuable fresh bait in our wake as we ran to the scene. This was a beautiful fish and a sign of things to come, we hoped.

Less than an hour later my 80W goes off then slacks up. This one came for the beach and had me reeling my butt off until finally made a few points with me during the last 50 yards or so. Jason was off chasing bait again and Spencer did an awesome job landing my first tiger for me. It was 6,10” and no monster but I was really struck by the beauty of this fish.

Fast forward a few hours and Jason gets nailed while reeling in a bait, once again on an Avet 30W. This fish put on a good show in the wash and did not want to come any closer. He was eventually subdued and we were ecstatic to have landed 3 beautiful tigers in the space of a few hours. Jason’s was 7,3”.


Along the way we caught a handful of blacktip, finetooth and sharpnose, some on cast baits. These were a lot of fun and we should have gotten pics. but did not. It was really hot!!! Spencer and I each had brief encounters with 5-6’ tarpon. His spooled a medium spinning reel and rendered it inoperable for the rest of the trip, forever really, it was destroyed. Mine relieved me of an $8 rapala but was merciful and just cut me off very quickly. We also caught 20 or so gaff tops which seemed to all be better than 2’ and fought well on light gear. Oh yeah, I caught my biggest speck too, 20.5”. We fried some fish late in the trip and felt almost civilized.
Jason hooked up and landed a 6,3” bull very late one night. He was snoozing so we woke him up immediately on the run. He made good use of the “fighting cot” initially.


Spencer also landed the biggest lemon I have seen to date, his first. This thing was FAT!!!! Once again, you would not have been able to tell as he beasted the fish to the beach, really a beautiful fish.



This was an intense trip and tested metal for sure. The three of us, having just met, cooperated and got it done. We treated every beachgoer we met with friendliness and respect. We answered questions and even let one little kid help reel one in on the Duel in low gear. I like to think we increased good will toward the sport and made friends. Twice we had nice families bring us hot food so I guess we were making a good impression. I was honored to fish with these guys and look forward to doing it again ASAP.




Chris