Sonlite Specks

Jacksonville’s Charles Howard spreads the good news of great inshore trout fishing at the New River, among other topics.

Jacksonville residents once knew Charles Howard as “the flower man.”After giving up tobacco, soybeans and corn farming in the 1970s, he switched to growing and selling tomatos, then later sold just tomato plants.

“I had 29 green houses,” he said. “They covered 48,000 square feet.”

After burning out on tomatoes, Howard started growing and selling flowers and potted plants he marketed through his company, SonLite Greenhouses.

“The logo was an orange circle, for the sun, and a white dove in the center,” he said. “The dove represented the Son of God joining the business.”

Howard is a practicing Christian, which he tells anyone who will listen.

If anybody needed God as a co-pilot during what he laughingly calls his early “flower-child days,” Howard did — he had three trucks delivering plants to flower shops and funeral homes all the way to South Carolina.

“We ran seven routes a week,” he said. “We had three trucks. My route ran to Wilmington to Calabash to Elizabethtown to Goldsboro and up to Bayboro, then back home.”

Howard and his wife, Helen, supervised the growing, sale and delivery of 600 potted mums per week, 300 gloxinias every two weeks, uncounted hydrangeas, 15,000 pointsettias at Christmas, 3,000 Easter lillies and 20,000 geraniums in spring. His trucks delivered flowers to businesses Fridays and Saturdays.

If nothing else, surrounded by all those flowers, Howard has led a colorful life. Perhaps he needed it, too, as he worked six days a week for 30 years, stopping only for Sunday, his day of rest.

Now 61, Howard doesn’t grow or pick flowers. But he sure knows where to pick the best spots for trophy speckled trout — the New River’s tributary creeks near Jacksonville and the Camp LeJeune
Marine Base.

“I started fishing in 1997 after I lost my greenhouses (to a hurricane) in ’96,” Howard said.

Although he rebuilt some of the greenhouses, Howard kept growing and selling flowers until Dec. 19, 2001. But fishing kept him sane and helped him relieve the stress of his business.

“On Dec. 20, 2001, I got my boat; I’ve been fishing ever since,” he said with a laugh.

“But I’m also a fisher of men. I love to talk about the Gospel. Jesus hung out with anglers (the disciples).

“Every morning, the first thing I pray for is protection for myself and everyone else fishing out there, then I pray for a big fish.”

Howard doesn’t keep many of his trophy trout.

“I’d say 99 percent of the fish I keep, I take ’em home, take a picture or two, clean and fillet ’em, then I give ’em away,” he said. “I ‘bless’ people with ’em. I release most of them (back into the water).”

Like everyone else, Howard said he noticed bigger spotted seatrout showing up in the New River’s tributaries the last few years, probably because of N.C.’s mild winters during that time. Extreme cold that freezes the surface of shallow creeks can stun bigger trout, and they sink to the bottom. Why they don’t escape to warmer water is anyone’s guess. Smaller fish seem to be hardier in surviving cold snaps, then they grow quickly and become “gator” sizes in a couple years until they get whacked by freezing temps.

However, North Carolina hasn’t had a really tough winter in about five years.

But Howard said the New River — and maybe smarter or “conditioned-to-withstand-cold” specks — have managed to survive for periods when other areas only had small fish.

“I think it may have something to do with what these trout do normally each winter,” he said. “They leave the creeks and go out into the river, where the water’s deeper and warmer. So if it gets real cold around here, all they have to do is move a little and get to warmer water.

“If you want to catch big trout in January and February, you usually gotta go fish deep in the river. They leave these small creeks. Maybe that has something to do with (New River speckled trout survival).”

Whatever the case, by March, waters in the New’s tributaries usually have warmed to the 50-degree range, even climbing toward 60 degrees during sunny spells. And speckled trout migrate to the “flats” in the creeks because baitfish, shrimp, small crabs and other critters they eat are stirring in the shallows.

But Howard said not all the New’s tributaries hold enough water to allow good trout fishing.

“The best creeks are Southwest, Northeast, French, Duck and Wallace,” Howard said. “There are other creeks, but they’re not fishable.”

One of the bonuses of fishing for specks in the New River’s creeks is anglers are likely to latch onto red drum as well.

“The reds are mostly up in the shallow heads of the creeks,” Howard said, “while the specks are usually nearer to the mouths of the creeks.”

Fishing for spotted seatrout and redfish in the New River’s creeks is extremely entertaining because both species will hit artificial lures. And anglers don’t need special sea-going crafts to reach good fishing grounds; if you’ve to a flat-bottom skiff (john boat) or even a bass-fishing platform fitted with a trolling motor, you’re in business.

In fact, fishing for specks in the New River creeks highly resembles how spring-time bass anglers work the banks at any number of N.C. lakes when bass go shallow to spawn each spring or later in the fall when they fatten up before winter.

The basic technique is to cruise the boat slowly about 50 feet from and parallel to the shoreline, using a trolling motor, the big engine tilted a little to avoid hitting stumps. Cast toward the bank and works lures back to the boat.

“I have a 21-foot Nautic Star bay boat,” Howard said. “They used to call me ‘Bucket Man’ because I had a yellow bucket with a seat cushion I sat on at the front of the boat. I used the bucket until I figured out how to fix a seat up front.”

The major difference in bass fishing is if an angler finds a hot spot and catches one trout, sometimes he can sit there and catch dozens of fish. Speck schools apparently orient themselves at favorite pieces of structure, either because the current’s favorable, there’s good ambush spots, or baitfish are plentiful.

“Trout move in and out of the creeks,” Howard said. “If you can find a school, they’ll be at the same place for two or three days, then they’ll move some place else.”

By the end of April the creeks’ water temps heat up so much, the specks move out into the river or near the mouths of the New River creeks.

“When the water gets to 75 or 80 degrees in the creeks, they move,” he said. “That’s when you catch them with crankbaits.”

Howard’s favorite way to fish for specks is to cast MirrOlures, the 52 M26, the 52 M23, and the 52 MHP models.

“I’ve also used the 52 8M,” he said. “It works a little better in the winter.”

He also likes to cast and retrieve the small Yo-Zuri Walking Dog lures.

“I put two No. 1 Gamakatsu (treble) hooks on them and use split rings (to tie the lure to his line),” he said. “I caught my biggest topwater speck with that lure, a 7.2-pound fish.

“I also caught 18 specks sitting at one place with that lure one day. That’s my best topwater day.”

“Sometimes I use Little Fishie (soft-plastic) lures.”

In 2005 Howard discovered Berkley Power Shrimps, the 4-inch-long soft-plastic lures. He likes pearl color, threading them on a 1/16-ounce jighead.

“My best speck weighed 7.3 pounds,” he said. “I caught it with a Berkley shrimp during the spring of 2005.”

During the summer when baitfish are plentiful and easy to catch, he likes to use small mullet minnows and “I also use a lot of live shrimp,” he said.

“(Specks) come into the creeks to spawn; that’s when you can really work on them with shrimp.”

The optimum depths in the creeks are 3- to 5-feet deep, Howard said.

Spotted seatrout fishing success (and fish sizes) at the New River creeks is, as at other places along the N.C. coast, dependent upon weather conditions.

“Cold winters are hard are ’em,” Howard said. “In 2003 we had some small fish kills. Usually it happens if we have a big snow and long stretches of cold weather. We had a big snow in 2003, 10 or 15 inches worth. It plummeted the water temperature and that will kill specks. In 2002 we had a lot of freezing weather and (people) picked up some (dead) trout in Southwest Creek.

“But we haven’t had (a big snow and cold weather) in several years.”

Howard said from mid-to-late March the specks leave the creeks and move into the deeper channels of the river.

“You can catch ’em with crankbaits then — X-Raps or a black-and-gold Rapala,” he said. “Gold also is a real good color.”

The good thing about fishing the New River creeks during early spring is if the speck bite fades, all an angler has to do is motor a little deeper toward the headwaters and cast soft-plastics or use live bait to catch red drum.

Even fly-casters can get in on the fun.

“There’s a lot of puppy drum in the creeks this time of year, but they’re scattered,” Howard said.

Last year one of his friends landed a 39-inch-long redfish that hit a Mr. Twister tail threaded onto a spinnerbait. That fish weighed almost 50 pounds.

“I caught six (reds) last February (2006) with a fly rod,” Howard said. “The smallest weighed 5 pounds and the largest 12 pounds. I was casting a Clouser minnow in 3 feet of water.

“Most red drum in the creeks run to those sizes. The 39-incher was unusual, so you can’t expect to catch big ones here regularly.”

One of Howard’s fishing buddies, Ricky Kellum of Jacksonville, a local guide, benefited from Howard’s redfish explorations in 2006.

“The first time I caught a red in French Creek, I saw a bull red near the shoreline,” Howard said. “I only had 10- or 12-pound-test monofilament, and I cast in there, and he kept breaking me off. So I called Ricky, and he and Rex Lanier with the Division of Marine Fisheries came to where I was. They caught 20 drum each, including one that went 32 inches.”

Of course, they released all those redfish. Most sport anglers release reds and N.C. regulations allow keeping just one “slot” red between 18 and 27 inches in length per day.

“January through March are the best times to catch red drum here,” Howard said. “When the water starts to warm, they come into the real shallow water. If tere’s a cold snap, it can create some funny sights. I’ve seen reds running underneath the (skim) ice (in January and February) in these creeks.”

Howard said the best times to load up a boat with gator trout occur during April, October and November.

“A couple times I caught 10 specks that totaled 48 pounds,” he said.

Best places to fish, Howard said, are points and narrows where the water flow is constricted.

The nice thing about fishing the New River creeks is the fish are mostly unpressured, Howard said. That may be because of limited access.

The best and easiest way to get to the New River’s creeks is through the U.S. Marines base at Camp LeJeune, but civilians will need a special pass to access LeJeune these days. The closest public launch ramp — the USO ramp at Jacksonville off U.S. 17 — for the north end of the New River is a couple miles away. Other ramps exist at the southern end of the river — Fulcher’s Landing, Swan Point Marina and New River Marina — each one at Sneads Ferry.

“A lot of people are out here during weekends, military people and some riding in boats,” Howard said, “but only a handful are serious fishermen.

“Right now (March) you don’t catch a lot of specks, but the ones you do catch are usually good ones.”