Hey, Crew, I'm Back!

[STEVE IN MASS]

Well, after two weeks at Cape Hatteras, it's back to the old grind. While the weather was great and I had a fantastic time, the fishing could have been better, even for mid-summer.

The speckled trout fishing was nearly non-existent, 20 to 25 hours on the sound with only 1 speckled and a bunch of bitten off tails to show for it. Seems every day at about 11 am a school of blues would come thru and eat the tails, amazing how they can get within a fraction of a millimeter of the hook. The few I did hook up took another gulp and went trhu the 6 lb test like butter.

On the ocean side, only managed a couple blue fish and a ton of croakers (as usual). The wind and weed would not cooperate, when the wind was good and the water clear, the weed would blow in. Then the wind would change, the weed would go, but the sand made the water murky, effectively shutting down the blue and spanish bite.

Did hear of 1 - 14lb cobia caught on the beach where I was, and a 59 lber caught at the point.

First day out, I had some bunker (pogie) on my heaver for the cobia. Not much doing, and I saw a school of spanish and blues go by, so I spiked the bunker pole and threw some metal at the spanish for a few minutes. No hook ups, was just quitting and about to pick up the heaver, when the sand spike goes down and the pole heads east. (This was with free spool!) I just grabbed the butt end before it was gone into the surf. Now I got two rods in my hands, one reel full of sand, and line peeling off so fast it was unbelievable. Tighten down the drag a notch, start to reel, and gone.....30 lb florocarbon leader broken (or bitten?) off at the hook and at the sinker. Will never know...cobia...ray...shark?

I suppose the highlight of the trip was the make up charter I went on. Between six guys, we got about 150lbs of dolphin (Mahi-Mahi), one of which was a cition (36 lbs) and another pretty close (34 lbs.) and spanish mackeral. We had a sailfish on, but the guy who touted himself as Joe-Pro all day managed to lose it after about thirty seconds. Gotta take up the slack before you start pumping the rod, Mr. Expert. Had fun, though. Those dolphin fish are really colorful, they almost look fake. The flying fish were also pretty neat to watch.

All in all, a great trip.....too much fishing (okay, not TOO much, what's that?), a lot of blue crabs, good food, great swimming, is it next June yet?

Well, gotta catch up on all the posts (work, what's that?). Hope you had fun at the Rhody leg of the tourney, and when is the next one?