Sidebars Archives - Page 68 of 194

Have plenty of backups for wind

If deer couldn’t smell, they would have been hunted to extinction thousands of years ago. They rely on a keen sense of smell to find food, communicate with other deer and avoid dangerous situations. […]

Diving gulls and other birds can disclose the location of feeding schools of trout that are pushing bait and shrimp to the surface.

For the birds

Jeff Burleson

Fall is a bad time to be a shrimp or a baitfish, but the bait buffet feeds more than just finned predators lurking below the surface. […]

A hopper-dropper right with a big topwater plug and soft-plastic trailer fished on a short leader is a killer fall rig for speckled trout.

Fish a dropper

Jeff Burleson

The hopper-dropper rig is a very popular technique used across the nation to catch trout, but it is usually for the freshwater version swimming in the fast-flowing streams in the mountains. […]

Fishermen have literally thousands of places to fish for trout in the waters around Georgetown, but guide Jordan Pate concentrates on shorelines with plenty of oyster shells close to deep water.

Watch out for October winter blast

Jeff Burleson

A lot of things can happen in October, but the most-drastic game changer is the weather; it can be hot like summer or bone chilling the next day. […]

The horizontal orientation of the hook on Betts’ Flounder Fanatic jig heads allows the fish to get the hook in its mouth more easily.

Fanatic is flounder unfriendly

Phillip Gentry

The correct bait for flounder fishing is, well, a live mud minnow, mullet, menhaden or even larger baitfish, or any one of a number of soft-plastic baits that can be threaded onto a jighead or a swimbait hook. […]

If a flounder is coming to the boat but isn’t hooked well, a second upward pull of the rod tip can often seal the deal.

Looking for a better hookup

Phillip Gentry

Guide Justin Carter doesn’t get caught up in counting, waiting or pausing before setting the hook when he’s targeting flounder. […]

Coastal piers offer great king mackerel fishing

Jerry Dilsaver

Fishermen try their luck for king mackerel from almost every pier along the North Carolina coast. On Oak Island, the meat of the pier king season runs from roughly the first of May to the end of October. […]

Proper planting equipment can produce better crop yields in food plots because of the machinery’s effectiveness.

Specialized planting equipment equals more-productive stands

Jeff Burleson

Deer hunters looking for a way to increase the availability of food on their land without spending enormous amounts of time and money on corn and sweet potatoes can start a food- plot program, and it doesn’t have to be real expensive, either. […]

The author shows off the kind of king mackerel that fishermen expect to catch off Oak Island in the fall.

Fall kings make U.S. Open wide open

Jerry Dilsaver

North Carolina has two migratory groups of king mackerel, scomberomorus cavalla, one considered an offshore group that moves to the warm waters near the beach in spring, summer and fall and then retreats to warmer offshore waters near the Gulf Stream during the winter, and the coastal migrators that migrate up an down the coast, from Florida to Virginia related to water temperature and abundance and absence of forage fish for food. […]