Offshore bottomfishing out of Little River Inlet has been great

Black sea bass, scamps, beeliners and other popular seasons are on the feed

Bottom-fishing off Little River Inlet has been excellent over the past couple of weeks, and Capt. Larry Horowitz has been able to enjoy it aboard the largest headboat in his fleet, the Super Voyager III.

Horowitz runs the 100-foot vessel out of Calabash, having moved there a year ago from North Myrtle Beach. No matter where the trip starts, he heads out of Little River and makes a 50-mile run to his fishing grounds, just inshore of the continental break.

“If you want to catch the nicer bottomfish, it’s worth the extra time to head offshore to 110 feet of water,” Horowitz said. “I leave at 7 a.m. and return to the dock at 8 p.m. We’ve been loading the boxes with big sea bass, beeliners and grouper.”

Horowitz doesn’t expect a lot of competition when he reaches spots like the Twin Cities Wreck, where he started a recent trip. He found a spot with a cloud of fish showing just off the bottom on his color scope and dropped anchor. Beeliners and sea bass started biting immediately, hitting squid, frozen cigar minnows and mackerel chunks.

The 66 fishermen on the recent trip found scamps to be the main grouper species, with black sea bass, red porgy, jolthead porgy, vermilion snapper, scamp and rock hind the other main bottomfish. Fishermen also boated dolphin, cobia, amberjack, a couple of African pompano and several sharks were boated. Among the most unusual fish landed were a bright orange spinycheek scorpionfish, a blue spotted coronetfish, a Cuban hogfish and a brilliant red Toro.

Few anglers brought their own rods and tackle, preferring to fish with the tackle supplied in the ticket price. Horowitz supplies Penn 4/0 Senator or Jigmaster reels spooled with 50-pound monofilament and a heavy action, 6-foot boat rod, all the rig an angler needs to catch a cooler full.

For more information, visit www.supervoyagerdeepseafishing.com.