With daytime heat indices soaring into the triple digits across North Carolina, the Tar Heel coast is one of the hottest places to be — except in the early morning hours before the sun rises and ocean breezes keep things cool. That’s when inshore fishing is at its best at the marshes and creeks behind Oak Island. On Wednesday, Holden Beach guide Keith Logan (Feedin’ Frenzy Charters (843-907-0064, www.feedinfrenzycharters.com) met two clients in his 21 1/2-foot Kenner Bay boat at Oak Island’s Bluewater Point Marina. It’s only a 5-minute run up the ICW from Holden Beach.
“We’re going to fish the canals just down from the marina,” Logan said. “There should be plenty of flounder and red drum along the edges of the marsh and between the boat docks.”
Logan quickly was joined by several other boats full of anglers, but he had a prime spot.
“We caught eight flounder and several red drum here yesterday,” Logan said.
Having a guide such as Logan is an obvious advantage because he’s on the water enough to know which docks hold fish and which ones don’t.
“You’ll get reds hanging out around certain docks while they leave others alone,” he said. “I don’t know why; that’s just the way it is.”
His basic fishing rigs included 6 1/2- to 8-foot Shimano rods along with Shimano Stradic open-face spinning reels and Shimano Corolla bait-caster reels fitted with 20-pound braid and 2 to 3 feet of 20-pound-test fluorocarbon leader with a 3/4- to 1-ounce lead barrel weight sinker and Kahle flounder hooks.
“I’ll also throw a Gulp shrimp on a 3/4-ounce Bass Assassin jighead,” said Logan, 40, a native of Ocean Isle Beach. “I caught more flounder on the Gulp shrimp yesterday than with live finger mullets.”
A half dozen throws of a cast net by Logan’s friend, Chris Critz, a retired Midway Airlines pilot, had filled the livewell of his boat with mud minnows and finger mullet. The foursome fishing party spent the rest of the morning drifting or using the trolling motor on Logan’s boat to scour prime spots. Mostly the anglers cast toward the marsh grass and pulled finger mullet back to the boat as if fishing a Carolina-rigged plastic worm for largemouth bass — long, slow sweeps to retrieve line while feeling for a flounder’s thump or a red’s jolting hit, then regaining line by reeling, then another long slow sweep.
“Oddly enough, most people catch more flounder and more reds with the Gulps than they do with live baits because they don’t have the patience to wait when a flounder first sucks in a minnow, scales it, then turns it around in his mouth to swallow it head first,” Logan said. “They feel that first tap and jerk the rod too soon. But a Gulp bait, a flounder just inhales that one and a red will hit it hard, too.”
During the course of a half-day trip, Logan and his party caught about a dozen “puppy” (slot-size, 18 to 27 inches) red drum and three flounder, one of which was 18-inches and large enough to keep. First-time angler Herbie Holmes of Snow Camp was pleased to take home a drum and flounder to prepare a grilled-fillet dinner for his wife Iris and granddaughter Peyton.
“One thing you need to do this time of year, if you go with a guide or not, is bring plenty of liquids to drink and sunscreen,” Logan said. “No sense in getting a bad sun burn and it can happen.”
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