Topsail Angler's Fishing Blog
Fishing Trip - Dec 19, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
I had the pleasure of fishing with a buddy of mine from Raleigh this past week. Randy owns and operates the web site, NCAngler.com He pulled his 21’ Triumph and brought along a friend of his, Richard.
We headed out about 7:30 on Wed. morning. It was an absolutely calm and virtually windless day. There wasn’t even 6” swells and not a ripple on the water. We headed out of Topsail Inlet aiming for a set of ledges about 13 miles offshore. We fished there for a few hours. It was slow catching but we managed a few black bass.
We headed about another 9 miles out to another series of ledges. As soon as we arrived I knew it was going to be a good stop, the fish finder shown lots of fish through out the water column. We even saw some bait fish breaking the surface of the water.
We dropped our lines down and immediately began catching fish. We caught some very large black bass, a couple of gag grouper, a few pinkies, grunts and tow dogfish (which went back). Then after about two hours and a fish box almost full, the bite just stopped. We fished for an hour or so longer then about 3:30 headed for a reef on the way back where I have good luck catching flounder this time of year. We only had 30 minutes to fish wanting to hit the inlet by sunset. We did manage to catch 2, on was a little short but the other was a nice 3 pounder.
Once again, I fished exclusively with the Shimnao Butterfly system, the other two guys used traditional bottom gear with dead bait. I added a new species to my lengthy list of species caught on the butterfly jigs, a nice size Octopus!
Great day of catching, friendship and boating!
Fishing Trip - 12-8-2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Left the dock about 8:15 this morning and headed out to a spot about 13 miles out of the inlet. Brad, the Associate Pastor at my church went with me. The seas were flat and the wind was calm - awesome weather, and on a Saturday to boot. Brad hadn’t been out on the ocean in a long time and sure picked a great day for his return to the big blue!
Today I decided to exclusively use Shimano Butterfly jigs on a Shimano Trevala rod with the Avet reel. Man those jigs are awesome. I boated a 9 pound grouper, two 18 inch flounders and a hand full of nice sized black sea bass and one white grunt (go figure). Threw back quite a few smaller ones including some smallish but legal BSB.
Nice day & now some good eating!
Gotta LOVE this place!