NC Labor Day Weekend

This one started Thur. night with me driving overnight to meet up w/ Jason near Wilmington. I got a nap after work and made it by about 8 am. Jason and I had a quick breakfast then headed South.

We had planned to fish Fla. Again but found something about the forecast 13’ waves for this weekend unappealing!!!
We made our destination and commenced to loading a ton of gear on his kayak and my canoe. The Saturn faired well with her new canoe rack and returned to Ohio with the odometer reading 199952!! If they were still in business I’m sure I could do a commercial. After navigating a serpent of inshore waterways we made the beach and got baits out in short order. The surf was nothing compared to the Fla. Forecast but it was NC all the same. We saw a mixed bag of waves, some over 4’.

I tried something new on this trip and swam a bait out once with my life vest on. It started to seem like a safer option after several dumps with dark approaching. It actually went fine, though I was just trying to get one out 75 yds. or so in hopes of a lemon. I also tried raw clams for the first time courtesy of Jason. I loved them and kindly shared the powdered sugar donuts I had brought with him, he devoured them smiling wide.

The bite was slow. We caught some blues in the surf and had a couple of cut offs on cast baits using 150# mono. leaders. Jason started us off with a nice 3 ½ to 4’ blacknose. We were running a mix of big and small baits fishing Jason’s 30s, my 14/0, 80w and 4/0 duel. Jason hooked up a heavy fish early in the trip on one of his 30s. It threw the hook to our disappointment.We had good weather for the most part and slept by our rigs in chairs. The bugs were not even too bad this time around.
Jason hit pay dirt again with a BT around 6,6”. He made short work of it on his 30W.I was wakened Sun am by a short, slow and steady run that made we wonder if the current had shifted and piled weed on my line. Then it happened once more as Jason was coming over to see what had me up so early. I tightened up and had shot tussle with this happy surprise!!!


Knowing that a number of accomplished anglers work hard at putting NC tigers on the sand I was just thrilled at my luck to have this opportunity!
The bite was slow for the rest of our trip, Jason had one more nice run on a big bait. It was dropped. We were ecstatic about the NC tiger though and called it all good. That is until we got up to leave Mon. AM to find the wind had kicked up a lot. We departed with loaded canoe and kayak to find both the wind and the water working against us. The full canoe was really tough to make headway in for me, this got really sketchy a few times trying to make our way across water that was ripping and blowing out hard.
We both got pretty nervous after a good bit of this and hit the shore to scout things a bit more. A good Samaritan on a fishing boat had observed the mess we were in and offered us a tow. We were very appreciative as we lashed the yak and canoe to either side of his more seaworthy vessel.
We were so relieved and spent from our effort at return on top of 3 days and nights on the sand. Then it happened… Some jackass in one of the biggest private boats I have ever seen came blasting right toward us, even though we were very close to the dock and others in yaks!!!! He was moving very fast and did not stop until he was very close. My canoe was swamped by this mental midget’s wake and began to sink alongside the boat with better than $2000 bucks worth of gear on board.!!!!
The ensuing melee had Jason and I grabbing gear out of the sinking canoe at a mad pace and screaming like maniacs. We managed to get my shark rods, reels and most of my gear on board the boat by hanging over the side. My packs weighed a ton, waterlogged, and were very hard to haul on board.
The boater towing us was kind enough to run us around a bit to pick up stuff that floated. I guess we saw the best and worst of boaters this time around. The guy who swamped us never even stopped. An RPG would have been a handy piece of gear at this time! All in all the situation could have been much worse and it is safe to say that a number of lessons were learned. My shark rods were safe, my packs which included an expensive .40 cal. Glock, safe. I’m gonna let Rob (Railroader) guess what the single valuable piece of gear lost was!!???

Chris