Two Scoops Offshore

For a veteran Atlantic Beach captain, nothing’s more fun than a double dip of bottomfishing and trolling.

The previous night never really cooled off and, as Capt. Mike Webb eased the Pelagic Too into the calm waters of the Intracoastal Waterway underneath the Atlantic Beach Bridge, the haze obscured the lights at the Morehead City and Money Island Bay waterfronts.

The high humidity added to the haze, and our shirts clung to us after normal activity.

“I can’t do much about the heat and humidity,” Webb said, as an apology for the conditions. “However, if the fish bite like they have my past couple of trips, you’ll probably forget all about it until you stop for a break.”

Webb said the dolphin bite had been excellent all summer and several times he needed to have fishermen take turns dropping for the grouper and rotating for light-line watching duties.

Summer and early fall Pelagic Too (www.pelagicsportfishing.com, 252-904-3361) trips are combination outings with ocean bottom fishing and light-tackle trolling each taking about half of the day, but that wasn’t always exactly what happened.

“We head out with grouper being one of our primary targets and trolling dead baits for kings, dolphin and whatever else bites being the other primary objective,” Webb said. “When a school of dolphin appear out of nowhere while you’re anchored, the bottom bite might be red hot, too. But everyone wants to catch those dolphin.

“Lots of times we’ve been staying busy with them for most of the day. Most people like grouper, but there’s just something about dolphin that mesmerizes them; they lose all interest in the grouper until the dolphin are all caught or disappear.”

As we passed through Beaufort Inlet, a small leftover swell was aggravated by the strong falling tide, and Webb slowed to avoid rough bounces. The sun was barely peeking over the eastern horizon, but a faint hint of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse beam regularly pierced the haze.

The wind was nearly nonexistent when Webb slowed for the inlet. Only bringing the boat back up to speed would provide some relief from the overpowering heat and humidity.

With anticipation growing, the hour ride into the light head sea seemed to take forever. Finally Webb slowed the boat and maneuvered at an area until a ledge, marked by an X on the Furuno NavNet GPS screen, showed directly beneath us.

“Anchoring the first time is always the most difficult,” Webb said as he eased the Yamaha four-stroke outboards into neutral. “I’m checking the drift to see how to set the anchor so we’re positioned over the ledge. There isn’t much wind right now, so we’ll probably set with the current.

“Sometimes getting anchored just right can be a real booger bear, especially when the wind and current are moving in different directions.”

Webb didn’t realize how prophetic he would be. The problem wasn’t winds and current, but that there wasn’t enough of either to set the boat on a steady anchor course.

We weren’t drifting significantly enough for Webb to easily determine the correct anchoring position, so it took a couple of attempts to get us set up as he wanted. No one, Webb included, wanted any part of pulling the 45-pound custom anchor and 30 feet of 3/4-inch chain attached to it. He used the boat and motors to pull the anchor then maneuvered into position for re-anchoring while it was being towed, much like trolling a huge planer. This procedure was almost worth the price of the trip, just to see how easily it could done and how precisely Webb could maneuver the boat to drop anchor so the boat would swing into place over the fish-holding ledge.

Finally we baited with chunks of menhaden and dropped lines to the waiting fish. As the lines were going down approximately 100 feet to the bottom, Webb cautioned us that machine-gun bites would be bait thieves and smaller fish (a reason he likes large chunks of bait — to have enough on the hook when a grouper comes calling). He wanted us to wait for a serious bite.

Sure enough, the 20-ounce sinkers at the bottom of the heavy-duty double-drop rigs (see diagram) had barely bumped the bottom when the rat-a-tat-tat pecks began.

After a while, the nibbles ceased. Webb said that usually meant one of two things — the smaller fish had gotten all of our bait or a grouper had seen the commotion and was easing over to investigate the commotion and the little fish had moved out of his way. He said to wait a minute or so, but if we didn’t have any more bites to reel in and check the baits.

Bringing the rigs to the surface is an easy task. Webb uses Precision Auto Reels electric power-assist motors mounted to Penn 114 6/0 Senator reels. For a customer, it’s a simple matter of pushing a button and holding it while the motor turns the reel and rewinds line.

The cautionary task is to pay attention and release the button as the swivel clears the water so the reel stops without jamming the swivel into the rod tip.

After rebaiting, we dropped rigs back to the ocean floor and endured another round of rapid-fire bites from bait thieves, while having our hooks picked clean.

Webb cautioned us not to get concerned and that sometimes he makes several drops before grouper are intrigued enough to bite. He also said sometimes he and his clients don’t catch fish at every stop.

After several fruitless drops and just about when I was preparing to reel in what I thought was another pair of empty hooks, my rod and reel jumped. I don’t know exactly how to describe the bite, except that it was a serious chomp that felt much bigger than the earlier bites — and my line got real heavy.

Without any further need for coaching, instincts took over and I paused, dropping the rod tip slightly for a moment, and then struck hard. As I reared back on the rod, I could feel the resistance and thumbed the button to start the reel. The surge upwards must have triggered a reflex in the grouper and it countered my lift with a strength most fishermen never have the good fortune to feel.

About 10 to 15 feet off the bottom, the electric motor began struggling to lift the fish and Webb became a coach again.

“I believe you’ve got him past the rocks, so you can start fishing like you would with a hand-crank reel,” Webb said. “Let the motor rest while you pump him up, then use it to crank the reel when you lower the rod tip. It’s just like any other fishing, except you’re using the electric motor, not your hand, to crank the reel.”

About halfway to the surface, the fish relaxed, and I was able to gain line quickly. Webb cautioned me to expect another surge before I got the fish to the top — it came seconds later. Fortunately everything, including me, held. Less than a minute later, a nice grouper began to materialize in the depths.

Once Webb slipped the gaff around its lower jaw and hoisted the fish into the boat, I relaxed enough to breathe again.

“Good job,” Webb said. “Wipe the sweat off your face and grab a sip of water, while I get this guy in the fish box and get you some fresh bait,” he said. “This is what we came for; it feels good, doesn’t it?“

The grouper weren’t cooperating the best, but with a couple of moves, we filled our limits for the gags, released a few undersize individuals, caught a few bee-liners (vermilion snapper), pinkies (silver snapper, red porgy), black sea bass and assorted grunts.

Several times “reef donkeys” (amberjacks) attacked our baits; we released about a dozen of these hard-fighting roughnecks. Several small sharks also got too close to our baits and one big bruiser of about 150 to 200 pounds kept Webb busy.

Meanwhile the light line did its job well. Webb began with what he called a standard hook-up rig (see accompanying diagram) and attached a medium ballyhoo. A small, partially filled balloon was tied to the line a few feet above the rig and with enough flotation to hold the bait near the surface. The outfit was placed in an overhead rod-holder and remained out of the way until a fish came calling.

The light-line bait was in the water just a few minutes when the rod bent double and the reel began squealing. Webb climbed on the gunwale to remove the heavily-bowed rod from the holder and found himself fighting a small but spunky, king mackerel.

Several minutes later he brought the tired king along side and grabbed it by the tail rather than gaffing it. The fish was exhausted to the point it never thrashed as he lowered it into the transom fish box.

The next strike on the light line was a gaffer dolphin that couldn’t resist a mid-morning snack of ballyhoo. Then came an amberjack that took a lot more time to subdue on the lighter tackle than those on the heavy-duty electric outfits.

The action was continuous, except for about an hour when we were huddled under the T-top waiting for a sudden squall to pass. The radar showed the squall starting to break up then reforming several times right over us, but we were on a good rock and didn’t want to leave.

Finally the squall passed and we got back to catching fish. Well, it didn’t happen quite that quickly. The wind shifted during the squall and moved us off the good rock, so we decided to leave those fish and try one more spot where Webb had caught a few species of grouper during the past few weeks.

The fish at his final rock were more aggressive than anywhere else we’d stopped, so we decided to stay a little longer and see if we could add a red grouper to our catch. That didn’t happen, but a few more snappers and grunts came to the bottom baits. Webb finally said we wouldn’t have much trolling time if we didn’t get started soon.

After stowing the grouper outfits, Webb pointed the bow inshore and began putting out trolling rigs. We were moving at 3 to 4 knots and trolling medium ballyhoo with hookup rigs. As Webb dropped the third bait into the spread, we had our first strike.

It was a small dolphin with a single following fish. We wasted some time trying to tease the second mahi into biting.

But as soon as we boated the first dolphin and returned to to trolling speed, a dolphin of similar size hit one of the long lines. This mahi also had another with it and we unsuccessfully tried to entice it as well.

A final strike was a nice gaffer dolphin. After feeling the sting of the hook, it departed for somewhere else and took most of a spool of line with it.

Landing this mahi was a chore as it had become foul-hooked and had leverage. By the time it was coaxed near the boat and Webb gaffed it and slung it into the fish box, the day was near a grateful end.

Our trip back in wasn’t quite as filled with chatter as the ride out that morning. We had reeled in a bunch of fish and were tired. We also knew we would be busy for a while at the fish-cleaning table.

However, if you don’t know from personal experience, it’s still a nice kind of tired.