Colt Bass slipped a hook through the nose of a gizzard shad, and with a flick of his wrist, flipped the baitfish into the water. He started paying out line from the level-wind reel, with help from a planer board that was sliding to the side, away from the stern of his center-console boat, engaging the reel handle when the board was at the proper distance.
Webster’s dictionary defines “idyllic” as “charmingly simple or picturesque.” If any place in the world meets that definition, it is the Northeast Cape Fear River. With banks shaded by cypress, gum, oak, hickory and pine trees wearing wigs of Spanish moss that waft in the gentlest breeze, it is one of the one of the most-beautiful blackwater rivers in North Carolina. […]
As the days grow longer and warmer as May gets ready to give way to June, flounder fishing along the Brunswick County coast from Holden Beach west to the South Carolina state line gets tough to beat.
That’s when finger mullet and menhaden, favorite meals of flounder, begin to stream through Mad, Tubbs, Lockwood Folly and Shallotte inlets into rivers and creeks and then spread across the marsh.
When Amanda King arrived in Wilmington a while back to attend college, she knew the Cape Fear coast was a special place and that she would probably be staying. She wound up working at the N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher running their surf-fishing seminars and similar projects, and doubling as a fishing guide who specializes in leading ladies and kids on trips exploring the Cape Fear River downstream from Wilmington to Southport from her Carolina Beach home.
Short flounder got you down? Tired of busting your hump to catch a keeper? You may need a change of scenery.
A good GPS and reliable coordinates for the artificial reefs and live bottoms off New Topsail and New River inlets will steer you in the right direction — to flounder that are more likely to be keepers and possibly the biggest you’ve ever caught.
June is busting out all over North Carolina’s coastline, with nice flounder making their first big appearance of the year.
Call it trick-or-treat fishing. No Halloween connection here, but popping cork rigs are definitely designed to trick fish into finding a treat — one that’s actually more of a trick itself. […]
Warm breezes, sunny skies, reasonable temperatures; everybody loves floating the creeks, inlets and bays around Beaufort and Hilton Head in June.
Cobia, speckled trout and spot-tail bass — aka redfish — are all actively feeding right now, but for those people who love the taste of flaky, white fillets, there is hardly a better piscatorial target than the feisty southern or summer flounder.
After a battle with largemouth bass virus that infected about 40 percent of its population before running its course, John H. Kerr Reservoir’s largemouth bass have recovered, as fishermen discovered the past couple of years. And while the spawn ends for most North Carolina chub chasers on most lakes by the end of April, there’s still plenty of reason to visit John H. Kerr Reservoir, aka Buggs Island, in May.
It’s a warm, early morning in the middle of spring, with a slight breeze out of the southwest. Stephen Hunter keeps his Cape Horn center console in Holden Beach, but he often chooses to use the Cape Fear River channel when leaving before dawn, for no other reason than the reliability of its water. Picking his way behind Oak Island and Southport, he makes a starboard turn into the channel, slips into the ocean, then pushes the throttle down and heads offshore.
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