Navigating the ever-changing inlet may be more difficult than filling your limit
Jeff Cronk has used his summers, weekends and time away from his full-time job as a middle-school math teacher to amass a wealth of fishing knowledge on the Bogue Sound and Bogue Inlet. One thing he knows very well is in the heat of the summer, flounder move to the nearshore ocean hard bottoms and artificial reefs.
A little knowledge obviously goes a long way, because Cronk, who guides during his offseason from teaching, has developed a technique just for those situations and has made a history of returning to the dock with limits of flounder for most of the people in his parties and plenty of filets for dinner.
On the short run from Dudley’s Marina in Swansboro to the channel approaching Bogue Inlet, Cronk, who runs N.C. Charter Fishing, said not to be surprised if he chose a path other than the one marked by the buoys. Bogue Inlet is narrow, he said, and it changes faster than the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can keep up. There are times, he said, when it’s obvious deeper water is where a sand bar was only a few weeks before. Navigating the inlet is the toughest part of the trip to and from the rocks and reefs where the flounder liked to gather, but on any day it is calm enough to fish, there is a channel for passage through the inlet.
Slipping through the hole in the waves breaking on each side of the channel, Cronk headed for a section of bottom with a rocky outcropping, just a few miles beyond the sea buoy. He decided there was enough of a chop to drift and let his outboard hold the boat in position instead of anchoring. After passing rods and reels to everyone, he positioned the boat over a section of the rocks gave the command to drop the baits to the bottom.
Cronk had passed out 7-foot medium-weight spinning and baitcasting outfits with a 2-ounce bucktail — Spro Prime and Betts Flounder Fanatics — and soft-plastic Gulp! bait as a trailer for terminal tackle. Cronk said a heavier jig would get the baits down to the 40-foot bottom more quickly, but it wouldn’t work as naturally when jigged, and he’d found that part of fishing was more important than saving a couple of seconds while the lure dropped.
“When you hit the bottom, put your reel back in gear and take up any slack,” Cronk said. “After the bait sits on the bottom for a couple of seconds, lightly jig it straight up. You don’t want to jig too hard and move it too fast. It only needs to move a foot or so. This is braided line, and it doesn’t have any stretch, so the lure will move as fast and as far as you move the rod tip.”
Cronk explained most strikes will come as the lure drops, and to let the rod tip drop at the same speed as the lure so you can feel the strike immediately. While demonstrating, his drop stopped abruptly, and the half-second or so it took him to react was just right as the line came taut when he jerked the rod upward to set the hook.
The rod tip stayed bent and was pulsing as the flounder fought to stay down. It gave a good representation of itself, but in a couple of minutes was visible below the boat. With the rod in one hand, Cronk grabbed the landing net and scooped it up, grinning widely. The actual fishing was merely a few minutes old, and someone’s supper was about to be slipped into the livewell.
Cronk straighted out the Gulp! shrimp and ran his fingers over the knot and up the leader a foot or so, checking for the damage that a flounder’s teeth can do. Cronk likes a 2-foot leader of heavy fluorocarbon to prevent bite-offs and chafing and remembers to check for nicks after every fish.
“Fluorocarbon is ideal to use for this leader,” Cronk said. “Even in the 50- and 60-pound strengths that I use for tooth and rock protection, it is almost invisible. If I used the same strength in mono, the fish would see it, and we would only get about half of the strikes. It is a little more abrasion-resistant than mono, too, and it is rare to have a flounder break off.”
Cronk changed the boat’s drifting track several times after consulting his GPS, making it clear he was intimately familiar with the rock. The flounder bite was steady, and black sea bass just under the size minimum made a pure nuisance of themselves, along a grouper just under the minimum size and an octopus. Cronk said there are times when schools of Spanish mackerel and occasionally kings will move past the boat, and he keeps a few rods rigged to cast to them.
With the flounder adding up and starting to look crowded in the livewell, Cronk took a count to make sure his party’s catch was still legal. The number of fish matched his running count, and when he moved the boat for another drift, a 19-inch flounder that rounded out the limit made for a good fish on which to end the day.
With the tide having risen over the course of the morning’s fishing, the inlet had calmed a bit, enough that only a few small waves were breaking on the shallowest bars — one of those different looks Cronk had talked about. Maybe the calm inlet was a bit of respect for all the flounder in the livewell. Even better, the flounder were still hungry and would be biting for the next fishermen who fished Cronk’s Rock.
DESTINATION INFORMATION:
HOW TO GET THERE — Swansboro is the jumping off point for most trips through Bogue Inlet. It’s on NC 24 about 20 miles east of Jacksonville and 25 miles west of Morehead City. I-40, US 70, US 17 and NC 58 are good access roads to reach the area. Three public ramps service the area well: at Cedar Point just east of Swansboro on NC 24, at Shell Rock Landing of Queens Creek Rd., which intersects with NC 24 at Swansboro High School, and on Emerald Isle a few miles east of the US 58 bridge. Dudley’s Marina in Swansboro offers a pay ramp. There is a local warning for strong tidal currents and wakes from heavy traffic on the ICW at the Cedar Point Ramp.
WHEN TO GO — Flounder are found on the artificial reefs and rocky bottom areas near Bogue Inlet from June through September. According to Jeff Cronk, the best combination of big numbers of fish and good average sizes is from mid-July through August.
TACKLE/BAITS/LURES — For bouncing jigs off the bottom, heavier tackle is needed than for flounder inside the inlets and in the backwaters. Jeff Cronk uses primarily medium-action Ugly Stik Tiger Light Rods mated with Pen Squall conventional reels or Penn Battle and Spinfisher V spinning reels spooled with 40- to 50-pound Spiderwire Invisibraid or Berkley Fireline. He adds a 2-foot piece of 50- or 60-pound Berkley Pro-Spec Fluorocarbon leader between the braid and the 2-ounce Betts Flounder Fanatic or Spro Prime jigs he prefers. For trailers, he goes with white, pearl or glow in Gulp! and Gulp! Alive baits — preferable 4-inch shrimp, jerkbaits or paddletails.
REGULATIONS — The minimum size is 15 inches and the daily creel limit is six per person. Flounder will shrink a little when put on ice, so it’s wise not to keep any that barely make the 15-inch mark.
ACCOMMODATIONS — Swansboro Chamber of Commerce, 910-326-1174 or www.swansborochamber.org.
GUIDES/FISHING INFO — Capt. Jeff Cronk, N.C. Charter Fishing, 910-325-8194 or www.nccharterfishing.com, Dudley’s Marina, 252-393-2204 or www.dudleysmarina.net; Nancy Lee Fishing Center, 252-354-3474 or www.nancyleefishingcharters.com; The Reel Outdoors, Emerald Isle, 252-354-6692 or www.thereeloutdoors.com. See also Guides and Charters in Classifieds.
MAPS — Capt. Segull’s Nautical Charts, 888-473-4855 or www.captainsegullcharts.com; SeaLake Fishing Guides, 800-411-0185 or www.thegoodspots.com; Grease Chart, 800-326-3567 or www.greasechart.com; Maps Unique, 910-458-9923 or www.mapsunique.com; GMCO’s Chartbook of North Carolina, 888-420-6277 or www.gmcomaps.com.
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