Jacks are Wild

Anglers can’t pull more thrilling battlers from fishing’s deck of cards than crevalles or amberjacks.

The water above the Pocohontas was calm except for a gentle rolling swell and the noise created by big Tsunami Popper lures. “Man, these conditions are excellent for this,” said Capt. Stuart Caulder (www.GoldLeaderFishing.com, 910-264-2674) as he worked a noisy lure above the sunken ship. “If they’re here, they’ll have to hear all this noise and see these smoke trails. We should get some action pretty quick.”

Caulder’s words were prophetic and a few casts later we attracted a pair of lookers. The amberjacks rose underneath Caulder’s lure and almost seemed to be battling each other to see which fish would attack first.

Suddenly one of the jacks dipped, then shot up to strike the lure. Unfortunately its timing was off and it missed, but it was close enough to knock the lure into the air and send it splashing across the water.

“Get your lure right in there right now,” Caulder said urgently, pointing with his rod tip beyond one of the curious jacks.

After a quick flip and a pop of the lure, the second jack, obviously miffed about not getting to strike Caulder’s lure, quickly spun and came wheeling after the second offering.

“Slow it down a little,” Caulder said. “I believe that first one missed because of the speed my lure was moving.”

Unfortunately, slowing down the lure’s retrieval wasn’t the solution. The jack darted behind the lure and followed, matching its speed. Just before the lure was retrieved to the boat, the amberjack swam to the lure and bumped it — but didn’t attack. Then, as suddenly as they’d appeared, the two jacks were gone.

“Wow, I wish we could have gotten those two to eat,” Caulder said, still excited obviously disappointed. “They were right around 25 pounds, which is just about perfect for what we’re doing here. They’ll run you around and wear you out, but you can usually put enough pressure on them to keep them out of the wreck and from cutting you off.”

As he was talking, Caulder was continuing to cast and work the area above the Pocohontas, a 105-foot tug that’s part of AR 382, also known as the “Dredge Wreck,” off Wrightsville and Carolina beaches.

It was an extremely calm morning, but with a little twang of cool in the air, as sometimes happens during August. The early-morning cool air temperatures were welcomed, as correctly working the big plugs takes considerable effort and quickly becomes like work as a day warms.

“For those folks who are looking for a fun fishing experience and want to do serious battle, this is almost tailor made,” Caulder said. “The amberjacks move in here as the water warms in June and may stay around as late as early October. They stay pretty close to the structure and are usually easy to find. In fact, king mackerel fishermen often get aggravated with them and say they’re a nuisance.

“Jack crevalle aren’t quite as predictable. They also arrive as the water warms into the high 70s during June and stay about as long, but they aren’t quite as seriously attracted to the wrecks and move around a whole lot more.

“Structure like (the Pocahontas) is a good place to try, but amberjacks may be mixed with some kings or Spanish, following a school of bait across a live-bottom area or up in the tide line at the inlet.”

Suddenly Caulder interrupted himself.

“There he is again,” he said, pointing. “Come on, big boy, and take a bite outta this.”

The amberjack seriously had decided to attack Caulder’s lure. Turning to see the strike after the stalk, the big fish was lighted in the water, the dark bars above its eyes glowing like black lights as it charged the lure with abandon.

Suddenly there was only fish and no lure where the lure had been. Caulder leaned back and tugged on the rod several times to bury the point of the hook.

Caulder’s setting of the hook spurred the big fish into overdrive. Suddenly it realized its quarry wasn’t food, and it was seriously agitated. Turning back toward the bottom, it ripped more than 100 yards of Power Pro braided line from the Quantum Cabo spinning reel and through the guides of the deeply-bowed Cabo rod.

“Alright,” Caulder said with excitement. “Now let’s see if I can keep him out of the wreck and get him in.”

The battle was give and take, with the amberjack having the initial edge, but Caulder held on and gained as the fight progressed. After about 10 minutes and several trips around Caulder’s Suzuki-powered Triton Bay Boat, the jack tired enough to allow Caulder to lead it away from the wreck and out into clear water — at least that’s what we thought.

Unknown to us, there was an even bigger predator luring in the depths between the boat and the wreck. We didn’t see it take the amberjack, but the action was pretty much exactly like every other time a shark has taken a tired fish.

The amberjack was tiring and had begun moving in wide circles under the boat as Caulder began to regain line. At about the point where we would have begun looking down to spot the fish, it began a wild frantic run which was totally unexpected and out of character for an amberjack.

“I believe it’s being chased,” Caulder said. “I don’t know what might scare something of this size, but there are occasionally some big sharks at this wreck.

“Whatever it is just grabbed it. Now it’s just pulsing.”

Caulder’s rod pulsed extra deeply a couple of times as he struggled to maintain an upward pressure then the rod tip popped up and the line went limp. He reeled in his line only to find a ragged end where it had been bitten. After studying his line for a few seconds, Caulder answered an obvious question.

“It must have been one of the sharks,” he said with a resigned voice. “Whatever it was, it was big enough to swallow a 30-pound amberjack. How big do you think it had to be to eat that jack?”

After trimming a little more line to be sure to get past any nicks, Caulder added a 3-foot length of fluorocarbon leader to his line and tied on another Tsunami Popper.

“Maybe whatever ate that last fish is full now, and we can get one all the way in,” Caulder said. “Hopefully, (the predatory fish) didn’t scare (the amberjacks) enough to turn the bite off completely.”

After a while and several more casts, another amberjack rocketed from the wreck and grabbed Caulder’s lure. The large fish would have no part of being led away from the refuge of the wreck. After about 10 minutes, it got inside deep enough to chafe and break the line.

While Caulder was tying a new leader and lure to his main line, a large shark, possibly the one that feasted on his earlier fish, appeared about 100 yards out and slowly swam a lap around the boat before silently sliding into the depths.

“Let’s get out of here and go try to find some jack crevalle,” Caulder said. “If that big fellow is patrolling here, we probably won’t get many bites and might not get anything in — and that would be just a waste of fish and tackle.”

Before moving, Caulder made a few radio and telephone calls to see if guides or friends had seen jack crevalle that day. The reports were negative, so he opted to move a little farther inshore to a spot that had lots of bait and where he’d caught amberjacks previously.

The area looked good as plenty of bait showed on his fish-finder. But despite chunking several lures, we couldn’t entice any jack crevalles from the depths. Caulder said jack crevalle were a little harder to target as their feeding habits made them more unpredictable than amberjack.

“I had really hoped we could find some crevalle,” Caulder said. “Their strike is often more explosive, as they blow up on the lure and send water flying everywhere. They are just as determined as any amberjack not to give up and come to the boat.

“The difference is jack crevalle use blistering speed, sharp turns and long runs in their fight, rather than going deep and struggling for every inch like an AJ.”

Caulder said he really enjoyed fishing for the jacks because they are great fighters.

“This is the fishing many local folks recommend to their inland friends and family who want to tackle a big, hard fighting fish but can’t afford or don’t want to charter a big boat,” he said.

“If it’s calm enough for these plugs to be effective, we can easily run to the nearshore reefs in bay boats and center consoles.”

Caulder said the Dredge Wreck (AR 382) is his favorite place for jacks, but he also sometimes fishes the Schoolhouse (AR 386), 5-Mile Boxcars (AR 372), Liberty Ship (AR 370), the tide line off Masonboro Inlet and several nearshore patches of live bottom. He noted the Dredge Wreck actually was three wrecks near the AR 382 buoy.

The Pocohontas, sunk in 1985, has the highest vertical structure of N.C.’s inshore wrecks, and Caulder said that feature helps attract jacks. Other wrecks include the Dredge, which is the oldest, going down in the early 1940s, and serving as the base for this artificial reef and the R.R. Stone. The Stone is an 86-foot tug that was added to the reef in 1985.

For more information on the artificial reefs, visit http://www.ncdmf.net/reefs/index.html.

Caulder has developed a unique technique for catching jacks off Wrightsville and Carolina beaches.

The amberjack are reliable and the jack crevalle are a great addition to any fishing excursion. For the big-game fly fisherman, he said it was possible to get amberjack stirred up and chasing hookless plugs, then cast a fly into them.

If an angler’s idea of fun is battling big, hard-running fish with relatively light tackle, these fish usually are ready, and always willing and able.

They are indeed a pair of jacks ready to stretch an angler’s string, bring a smile to his face and help his muscles remember he’s been fishing.

It also might be wise to invest in a tube of Ben-Gay in addition to the sunscreen if “jacks” are in the fishing cards.