The Bottom of Things

One Atlantic Beach captain goes really deep to find groupers and snappers where the feds say they don’t swim.

Don’t bother trying to convince Capt. Robert Freeman, owner of the Sunrise II, an offshore bottom-fishing boat based at Atlantic Beach, that groupers and snappers are in trouble. He has hauled red snappers, porgies, bee-liners, silver snappers, pink porgies, snowy groupers and tilefish from extreme depths beyond the Big Rock since 1972. Although he said fewer snappers and groupers swim these days at shallower reefs off the central N.C. coast, he said far offshore fish aren’t threatened nor endangered. It’s just a matter of knowing where to go to find them.

“I love bottom fishing,” said Freeman, who estimated he’d made more than 2,000 offshore fishing trips. “You never know what your (anglers) will pull up. We’ve caught misty groupers and even a ‘fireback’ grouper (a reddish-colored fish with red dots on its body).”

He started finding and catching bottomfish before most of his clients — and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries scientists who set ocean-fishing policies — were born.

Not only that, he first recorded these fishes’ deepest haunts with a unique technique — he used a float, a weight, a spool of wire and a flag attached to a cane pole.

“I started (bottom fishing) with a dear friend, Lewis ‘Bullethead’ White, who worked with me at the New Bern Weyerhauser pulp mill back in ’72,” Freeman said.

Born and raised at Rock Hill, S.C., Freeman said since high school he wanted to find a way to make a living at the coast. Although he had a good job with Weyerhauser (power-plant control operator, then later maintenance/utilities coordinator), a stroke of serendipity allowed him to become a bottom-fishing guide.

“(White) also worked (as a mate) on a headboat (bottom-fishing boat),” Freeman said. “We watched (anglers) bring in dolphins after fishing the grass (sargassum) lines. Lewis said the headboats didn’t fish out any farther than 25 miles (offshore). He said, ‘I bet we can catch bottomfish (farther) out.’ ”

Freeman and White began with a 25-foot boat equipped with a single engine, no radio, a compass and a flasher-type depth-finder. Freeman’s 13-year-old daughter accompanied him and White during their first offshore grouper/snapper trip.

“The flasher unit would show the bottom down to 240 feet, but it wouldn’t show (individual) fish,” Freeman said.

Yet they filled the boat with snappers and tilefish during that first trip.

“We had two 19-pound American red snappers, two tilefish, silver snappers, bee-liners and snowies,” he said. “We brought back seven fish that weighed more than 19 pounds each.

“By the grace of God we made it back (to shore) in those days. We’d catch maybe a half-dozen (fish) in a day, if the weather was good.”

Freeman said a few years later, after he installed a marine radio, he’d be so far offshore the only other voices he could hear would be a couple of captains who worked aboard the Dolphin I.

The early problem was returning to hot spots that held groupers, snappers and other bottom-dwellers. Freeman and White eventually devised a deep-water marker-buoy system.

During trips they’d take a cane pole with a flag tied to its narrow end. With the butt end of the pole secured through a float, they also had a long piece of wire tied to a heavy weight to send to the bottom at spots where they caught fish.

“We’d feed out the line (to the bottom), then tie it to the pole,” Freeman said.

Following selected compass headings out of Beaufort Inlet, Freeman and White could return close enough to their spots to see the flags marking their hot spots. Of course, Loran-C and GPS systems later made obsolete the need for flag markers.

“When we started, we didn’t have electric reels and no sinkers bigger than 6 ounces (to get baits down to the bottom),” he said. “Sometimes we’d tie two or three (sinkers) together.

“The hardest thing would be crankin’ a big fish to the top. You’d lose body salt in the heat and get cramps in your hands and arms.”

Bottom fishing then and now requires heavy sinkers because Freeman fishes in 75 to 80 fathoms of water, where the Continental Shelf starts its steep descent toward the Atlantic abyss.

“Now we use 2-pound sinkers, sometimes heavier, and (50-pound-test) Dacron line to get baits to the bottom quickly,” he said. “We often fish 450- to 500-feet-plus deep.”

Electric reels now take the strength-sapping work out of hauling fish to the top from extreme depths.

“(Electric reels) don’t take any of the sport out of it (for clients),” Freeman said. “When we caught a 65-pound grouper (during the mid 1970s and his biggest fish to date), if we
hadn’t had somebody to help, we couldn’t have gotten that fish in the boat.”

His best fishing day back then, Freeman said, was a trip with Weyerhauser co-workers Pete Maxey and Charlie Bailey.

“The three of us caught 385 pounds (of bottomfish),” he said. “We were wore out at the end of that day.”

When Freeman takes anglers aboard the Sunrise II for current offshore excursions, it’s usually a “six-pack” (six-angler maxiumum) trip. Most of his fishing areas are southeast of the Big Rock, southeast from Cape Lookout. It’s usually a 2-hour, 45-minute trip, depending upon weather and sea conditions.

“I’ve got probably 1,000 places marked (that hold groupers and snappers),” he said. “I couldn’t fish all of ’em if I fished every day the rest of my life.”

A few years after he started taking friends offshore and hauling big catches of bottomfish back to Atlantic Beach (today the Sunrise II docks at the Capt. Stacy Fishing Center on the Causeway), Freeman said someone at Weyerhauser suggested he become a full-time charter/commercial angler. He obtained his commercial licenses in 1983.

“But then they created a moratorium on commercial permits in 1996,” he said. “In order to keep your commercial catch-and-sell license for grouper, you had to sell $20,000 worth of fish a year or half your income had to come from your boat, so I didn’t qualify anymore.”

Freeman retains his N.C. charterboat license, but he doesn’t sell his catches.

“The party (of anglers) gets to keep what they catch,” he said. “That’s been a good thing for me because it’s cultivated repeat business over the years. Advertisements in your magazine and a fishing report I write for a Virginia outdoors magazine about Atlantic Beach and Morehead City also helped build a customer base in North Carolina, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area.”

The ultimate compliment, Freeman said, is the captain and crew of a for-hire bottom-fishing boat based at Solomon, Md., visit Atlantic Beach each year to fish with him.

“(That captain) brings his crew and others,” Freeman said. “That’s a pretty big compliment, when another charter captain wants to fish with you.”

Freeman, who had 77 charter trips during 2005 but usually averages 100 trips per year (last year’s opportunities were cut short by hurricanes), drifts for bottomfish in deep water, an art with few practicioners.

Using a powerful 1,000-watt Furuno colorscope, he can see every detail of the bottom. Freeman’s years of experience and knowledge also let him know when he’s at a prime bottom-fishing area. He said he believes the steep drop-off east of the Big Rock, marked by shelves and rocks, is where the Atlantic coast one existed during the Ice Age.

“I don’t know what’s down there exactly, but just about any firm bottom will hold fish,” he said. “You don’t find fish in the desert (sand-only bottoms). They’re at some kind of rough, rocky bottom.”

Snowy grouper and tilefish are his “bread and butter,” Freeman said.

Today, with a five-fish-in-the-aggregate daily limit mandated by the National Marine Fisheries Service, six anglers, Freeman and his mate (currently Martin Johnston, an Arkansas University college student), are allowed 40 bottomfish per trip.

“Often that’ll be 240 pounds of fish,” he said.

The catches usually include bee-liners, pink and silver snappers, snowy groupers and tilefish.

“Pinkies (silver snappers) are excellent eating and bite hard,” he said.

As a bonus, Freeman said dolphins sometimes swim near the boat, likely attracted by the pieces of bait (squid) shaken free by hooked and struggling bottomfish.

“We always keep a spinning rod ready with a piece of squid on a bare hook,” Freeman said. “You just pitch a bait (to dolphin) and have some fun.”

Freeman said he sometimes trolls jigs beside tide lines during trips to his fishing grounds to entice dolphins hiding underneath the sargassum.

“We’ll usually try (trolling) for 15 minutes,” he said. “If the dolphins aren’t there, we’ll veer off and go to deep water.”

Freeman said sunken wrecks also usually hold fish, but wreck fishing is risky because of lost terminal tackle (he supplies tackle, bait and ice while anglers bring their own food and drink).

“Wrecks are good, but they’ve usually got amberjacks (infamous for darting into jagged holes and cutting lines),” Freeman said. “You’ll hang up and lose a lot of tackle at wrecks.”

Still, in a pinch, Freeman will fish the edges of newly-discovered wrecks because they often hold fish that haven’t been targeted by other anglers.

Terry Leonard of Discovery Dives in Beaufort found a new wreck a few years ago, Freeman said, and made a CD the Sunrise II captain viewed. Freeman was so impressed he quickly set a course to the wreck.

“It was a rusted-out barge,” he said. “We lost tackle, but we caught fish. Then we began fishing the edges of (the barge), still caught fish and didn’t lose as much tackle.”

During his first trip to the wreck, Freeman said his anglers caught a 25-pound scamp grouper, a 27-pound American red snapper and vermilion snappers, totaling 180 pounds of fish.

Freeman’s Sunrise II is a custom-built 37 1/2-foot-long Desert Isle lobster-boat hull with a 12-foot-long cockpit that local boat-builder Keith Otis converted into a bottom-fishing craft.

“It’s got a full keel of solid fiberglass,” Freeman said, “and it’s tough as nails and well-braced. A cockpit that long is big for a 37-foot boat, but I needed it to be 12-feet-long to accommodate four people to a side.”

The rod-holders are hinged to allow his mate to bait a hook, then swing the terminal tackle over the side and lower it to the bottom. After a fish is hooked and reeled topside, Freeman said the mate usually grabs the leader beneath the swivel and hoists the fish over the side. Gaffs are used for extra-large fish.

“There’s not much danger of losing a fish once you get him to the top,” Freeman said. “Most of the time a grouper will swell up enough (expand because of reduced pressure) that if the line breaks, the air won’t let him sink. Then we can gaff him.”

Bottomfishing is best done during calm weather.

“If a party’s ‘salty,’ they can be successful in 10-knot winds and 4- to 6-foot seas,” he said. “But we have caught fish with 30 knots of wind and 10-foot seas.”

The Sunrise II docks at the south-most slip at the Capt. Stacy Fishing Center at Atlantic Beach. Fishing party departure time is 6 a.m. Freeman tries to return each day by 5 p.m.

But the boat is comfortable enough that sometimes this veteran captain remains offshore all night, the boat gently rolling on the ocean underneath the stars while happy clients pull fish from the depths.