From Cape Lookout’s beaches to the inshore marshes and creeks behind Morehead City and Beaufort, the water comes alive this month with the beat of a familiar drum.
The October surprise at the Crystal Coast — Morehead City, Atlantic Beach and Cape Lookout — isn’t really a surprise because it happens like clockwork each year.
The first big “mullet blow” — a nor’easter’ (storm) — comes roaring in from the Atlantic Ocean. and water temperatures, heated to sizzling during a long, hot summer, begin to fall.
“The first mullet blow starts to ‘blow’ the mullet (baitfish) out the inlets,” said Dave Dietzler, a veteran fishing guide based in Morehead City (Cape Lookout Charters, 252-240-2850). “It puts everything on the move — mullets, shrimp, even pinfish.”
And that means local inshore gamefish that have been eating those baitfish all summer get cranked up as well. It’s as if regular customers, who love ham ‘n’ egg biscuits for breakfast, see their favorite restaurant move to a new location. What do they do? How about drive to the new restaurant site?
This increased activity also may have something to do with red drum, speckled trout, flounders and bluefish indulging in one last big banquet before the water temperature drives most baitfishes out of shallow water.
In either case, the inshore bite turns on during October as if it were May.
“Oh, good gosh, the fishing is fantastic during October around here,” Dietzler said.
You might expect a little exaggeration from a guide, but if there are no hurricanes to mess up the water, Dietzler’s description is right on the money. Fish just become more active during October up and down the N.C. coast, and if you love to fish for red drum or speckled trout, the 10th month is the time to plan a trip to the central N.C. coast.
Inshore, anglers will find lots of puppy drum (8- to 15-pounders) in the creeks and marshes behind and in front of Morehead City and Beaufort. If you want bigger reds, the “old” drum that can run from 30 to 50 pounds, you can head for the beaches.
“The 4- and 5-year-old (red drum) are gonna be on the beaches, in the surf,” Dietzler said. “This’ll be the first year those fish will spend (the winter) offshore with the adult red drum, the 32- and 33-inch fish. The 25-inch fish, the slot (18 to 27 inches in length) fish will stay inshore.”
Several areas behind Morehead and Beaufort are favorite places for Dietzler to find “puppies” during October, including the Haystacks (marshes north of the Newport River), the North River and Back Sound in front of Harkers Island. Other good creeks for red drum include Adams Creek, Hoop Pole, Mill, Calico and Ward’s.
Redfish also will be in the surf at Crystal Coast beaches. Other favorite spots include nearby islands that comprise the southernmost tip of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Baitfishes, headed south, literally create a 100-mile-long parade in the surf, especially near inlets.
Because it’s not crowded with other anglers, Dietzler prefers Shackleford Banks, an island northeast of Beaufort that only can be reached by private boats. It’s the last of the Cape Lookout National Seashore islands, running east-west from the Cape’s famed Point, just across Back Sound from Harkers Island.
“On a windy day with an east or northeast wind, I like to beach my boat on the back side of Shackleford and walk across the island to fish the surf,” Dietzler said.
That’s where anglers are likely to encounter some of the whopping “old” drum.
“You can catch them in the surf and a little off the beach,” he said. “October is a great time to fish at Shackleford or at Cape Lookout (National Seashore, which includes South or North Core Banks islands) in addition to the creeks and marshes. The big adult fish will be right on the beaches through October and the better part of November, then they slide offshore. That’s when it’s not unusual to catch them (off the beaches) when we’re striper fishing.”
He said anglers can experience some outstanding fishing during October at Shackleford, and they don’t have to tie chunks of heavy lead to their leaders to reach reds.
“It’s fantastic to fish in the surf in ankle-deep water,” he said. “We’ve seen 200 to 300 fish in schools on the ocean side (of Shackleford) in the surf, and you can fish for them standing in 2 to 3 inches of water.
“In October, almost all of them will be slot size or above.”
One of the bromides of Cape Lookout/Hatteras National Seashore red drum fishing is that anglers must use big surf rods to fire chunks of lead 200 yards into the ocean. But in October, Dietzler the long-casting ability isn’t absolutely necessary, although heavy-duty rods are needed.
“I like an 8- to 8 1/2-foot surf rod, but it’s not for casting really long in October,” he said. “It’s mainly for rod strength and heavier line because (red drum) are strong fish. The fish are really close to shore, sometimes in 5 inches of water, right in the surf.”
He uses an Owen Lupton bottom rig with a short leader and some cut mullet chunks on a circle hook.
One of the neater aspects of- inside-waters red drum fishing is it can be done in a variety of methods. If he’s not fishing from the surf at Shackleford Banks, Dietzler takes clients in a specially-built flat-bottom tunnel skiff he calls the “Grasshopper” that draws only 5 inches of water (for creeks and marshes). The “Grasshopper” is fitted with a 55-pounds-thrust Minn-Kota trolling motor and also has a stern platform, mostly for sight-fishing, although Dietzler sometimes poles the boat for fly-casting anglers who stand at the bow.
For deeper water, he has a 24-foot-long Buddy Harris
v-hull called the “Dirty Dave, ” but only uses that boat at inlets, beyond the breakers (when red drum are outside surf-casting range), plus nearshore reefs/wrecks for albacore, blues, bluefin tuna, bonita, cudas, grouper, jacks, kings, sharks spanish, stripers and tarpon.
“You can use live bait, mullet minnows, cut bait or artificial lures,” he said, “plus I have some clients who like to fish for red drum with a fly rod.”
Dietzler obviously fits his tackle to the fishing experience of his anglers. For novices and youngsters, a spin-rod and bottom rig with live or cut bait is pretty standard. For advanced anglers, he has fly-fishing equipment, if an angler doesn’t bring his own gear.
Dietzler’s standard rod-and-reel setup for fishing in the creeks and marshes is a 6- or 6 1/2-foot-long spinning rod with a Shimano 4000 reel spooled with 8- to 10-pound-test Power Pro line and a monofilament leader.
“I often use a popping cork I adjust to keep the baits about 6 inches off the bottom because that’s where the reds will be feeding mostly,” he said. “There’s really nothing to fishing this way.”
Dietzler calls the technique “dodo” fishing.
“I had a kid in the boat one day, and he wasn’t catching anything (with an artificial lure) so I handed him a rod with a mullet minnow and popping cork. And it doesn’t matter in the fall if it’s a live or dead minnow.
“I told him to just ‘pop’ the cork a couple of times. That sounds exactly like a shrimp ‘popping’ and pretty soon he caught a real nice fish.”
Redfish, being primarily bottom feeders, are always on the alert for sights or sounds of baitfish. When shrimp flex their tails to scoot through the water, they make a popping sound. And when a redfish hears that, he expects to see a shrimp. But if he sees a minnow, that’ll do as well. But Dietzler doesn’t like using shrimp during October that much because they attract too many bait-stealers (pinfish and bluefish).
Dietzler likes styrofoam popping corks with rattlea that imitates scampering shrimp.
Using a popping cork and baits works as well at the marsh islands behind Fort Macon State Park at Money Island Bay, particularly Goat Island. Red drum like to cruise the edges of the islands, checking out shell beds for crabs.
“Just about all the banks (of the marshes) are covered with oyster shells,” Dietzler said. “The advantage of fishing with a popping cork, as opposed to a jig or bottom rig, is you can set the cork to float your baits about 6 inches off the bottom. That way you avoid hangups. If you’re throwing topwater lures, you don’t have to worry about that.”
The water around most marsh islands often is only a few feet deep and, if there’s a stiff offshore breeze, anglers can find some relief behind the dune lines and fish in comfort.
“The best thing to do there, like in the creeks, is to move along and fish the shoreline for a while with popping corks,” Dietzler said. “You can use artificial lures with popping corks, too, absolutely. But a live or dead mullet minnow seems to work best.”
When he gets a strike and catches a red, Dietzler eases back out, away from the island, then uses his trolling motor to move upwind, then drifts back to the spot where a fish was landed. It’s the same technique he uses in the creeks.
“I ease the anchor over the side and fish for a while because where you find one red, there’s likely to be a school,” he said. “You might stay at one spot and catch fish until you get tired of it.
“You also might land a big speckled trout or a flounder.”
Red drum schools often set up shop at the same general vicinity for few days. Dietzler said they might move a few hundred yards during two or three days and not be at the exact same spot where they were earlier, but a little work often can discover the same school. Not only that, other fish — such as gator trout or flounder — seem to hang around the puppy schools during October.
During June a Dietzler client-angler, fishing for reds with a popping cork and minnow, had his world blow up when an 8 1/2-pound speckled trout attacked a mullet bait.
The more sporting approach to red drum in the creeks and marshes is to wait until high tide, then ease toward the marsh in the Grasshopper and look for “tailing” redfish — drum with their snouts grubbing on the bottom for food while their tails are in the air.
“You can use spin-casting reels and throw soft plastics at them, but you normally have to be really quiet or you’ll spook the fish,” Dietzler said. “I’ve been standing on the poling platform, looking for fish and just put my foot down on the gunwale, making no sound, and that spooked ’em.
“But some days, the (red drum) are more friendly. They’ll let you get away with a little noise and not go away.”
The idea, while fishing with lures and spinning rods and reels from the Grasshopper, is to make a “soft” cast of a jig fitted with a soft-plastic artificial tail (a Fin-S, Zoom or Fluke lure that’s been threaded with a hook to make it weedless) a few feet in front of the red drum, then lightly twitch it.
“Sometimes I put a split shot, 1/4 to 1/8 ounce, on the line above a Fin-S or Fluke that’s just been threaded onto a hook weedless (to make it light so it won’t splash much when it hits the water),” Dietzler said. “It depends on the tide how you fish your lures; it depends on how deep the fish are during that tide cycle.”
The higher the tide, the shallower the reds will be.
“We see some tailing fish at high water when fish move in to marsh grass,” he said. “A lot of times you’ll hear them before you seem them.”
That’s the time that the most exciting fishing for red drum occurs, when Dietzler and his clients cast topwater lures. Few fishing thrills compare to a red drum taking a lure on the surface.
“I use Top Dogs and Pop-Rs for surface fishing,” Dietzler said. “Sometimes I like to use spinnerbaits (normally a largemouth bass lure) in the grass. When reds are in a biting mood, they’ll hit just about anything.”
An even more sporting proposition is using a fly rod to cast artificial flies at shallow-water tailing reds in the grass.
“Clousers and Deceivers (flies) with intermediate line and 8- or 9-weight rods are good to use,” Dietzler said.
The major problem while fishing creeks and inside marsh grass at flats will be porpoises. During high-tide periods, porpoises will move into the creeks, looking for mullets. If red drum are feeding at the same places, the porpoises will target them, scattering the schools.
“A porpoise can gobble up a 24-inch red drum like it’s a PopTart,” Dietzler said. “If they come into a creek where you’re fishing, you might as well reel ’em up.”
However, the great thing about fishing for red drum at the Crystal Coast during October, even if the porpoises invade, is there’s always another hot spot just around the bend.
“All you have to find are grass flats, mud bottoms or places with oysters or oyster shells along the bank,” Dietzler said. “And that’s just about every place around here.
“A lot of times, I’ll have guys who want to catch (false) albacore (near the Cape Lookout Shoals), and they’re notoriously finicky eaters. But when the albie bite slows down or disappears or if the weather’s too bad to go out the inlet, red drum are the perfect alternative.
“There’s always some drum to be caught here in October.”
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