Hatteras, NC Fishing Report from Stormy Petrel II
This report covers all of the offshore trips we have run during the period and some of the half days. We don't just cherry pick the catches from our offshore trips and post them. Unfortunately, we just have not had as many bookings lately, but his has been the case for most boats this month. Because we have 60 feet of rail space (each side) on our boat, we can spread out along and fish the bottom with the whole group. This is a big advantage over the typical charter boats when the trolling is slow.
Sunday September 14 Gulf Stream Make Up Trip
This was our first offshore fishing trip in a month! Gulf Stream charters have been hard to come by for most of the fleet for the last several weeks, and only the bigger boats which have been in business for several years have been running trips each week. Anyhow, we have one of the biggest boats here, but it's only our second year with her. When Jim Baugh from Hampton, VA called me last week with an interest in shooting for his TV program, Jim Baugh Outdoors, I started scratching around to put together a make-up trip. It looked like we were going to have a small group, but four more anglers showed up just before we cast our lines! It was a nice day offshore; breezy, but not really rough. We caught maybe a hundred triggerfish, but it was tough going because the easterly drift was taking us off the spots fairly quickly. There were also a lot of dolphin around, even when were were drifting. Our best action was slow trolling for them though, and we caught over fifty in an hour or so. We also caught had a nice wahoo on the way in just 14 miles from the inlet. Jim Baugh has more pictures from the trip on his website: http://jimbaughoutdoors.blogspot.com/ Thanks Jim and everyone else who came with us. The whole group is not pictured here.
Saturday August 16 Gulf Stream Charter
We had excellent weather for Trish Ellis and her friends, so with just a little bit of current running, it was a great day for bottom fishing. On the way out, we caught a big King Mackerel on our high speed lure. The bottom fishing was not red-hot at any particular spot, but we scrapped out a nice catch by hitting a lot of places with one or two drifts. We also caught a nice Cobia on a cast bucktail during one of the drifts. The catch picture is a bit crude because the camera was accidentally set to "movie mode."
August 12 and 14 Half Day Trips
There are plenty of Spanish Mackerel around but it has been hard to find many keepers this week. Hopefully next week will be better.
Thursday August 7 Gulf Stream Make-up
Dolphin were non-existent today, so we quit trolling fairly early and went bottom fishing. We scrapped out a good catch of bottom fish, but I we missed getting a picture of it.
Tuesday August 5 Gulf Stream trip
We got a late start, and then a squall overtook us before we made it to the ocean. We rode it out on the soundside and were buffeted by some fierce storm force winds, but it seemed a better choice than getting fouled up trying to get back to the marina w/ near zero visibility. After that excitement, we charged offshore, but it was a tough day of fishing, as wind and current combined to make fishing hard work, and seasickness whittled down our number of anglers.
Monday August 4 Gulf Stream Charter
We headed south today to avoid the current as much as possible, and it turned out to be a good choice. Trolling was slow, so we spent a fair bit of our time bottom fishing. Triggerfish bit pretty well for us, and we also caught a wahoo fast trolling.
Thursday July 31 Gulf Stream Charter
It was a tough day, rougher than we had expected, but we had some good bottom fishing for a while. Some of our people weren't feeling well, however, so we gave that up and started trolling towards home much earlier than usual. Along the way we caught a nice wahoo.
Wednesday July 30 Gulf Stream Trip
This morning we were the southernmost boat in the fleet, and that turned out to be a big advantage because it put us at the front the line on a rip where all of the boats ended up fishing by mid morning. We had ten anglers and caught one short of a limit- 99 dolphin. After that we did some bottom fishing and vertical jigging around a wreck. We caught some amberjacks, but the current was too swift to really get on the bottom fish.
Monday July 28 Gulf Stream Charter
We always seem to do well when Larry Sidwell brings a group and today was no exception. We had a great day of bottom fishing and nice weather.
Friday July 18 Gulf Stream Combo Charter
We started a bit later than usual this morning, but fishing was good, so it didn't much matter. After being scarce for days, dolphin (mahi-mahi) were present in good numbers and it did not take long to get some bites. Our party said they had enough dolphin, so we headed away from the weedline to a bottom fishing spot. Along the way, we caught a double header of wahoo. Bottom fishing was pretty good, and in a short time we caught several snappers and triggers. No doubt we could have caught more, but I got the word to make it a short day and headed in a couple of hours early.
Thursday July 17 Half Day Fishing
Spanish Mackerel were not biting was well as yesterday, but we did scrap out a decent catch in the morning. The afternoon trip was much tougher, and we only caught about ten on that trip. Our morning catch is pictured.
Wednesday July 16 Half Day Charters
Several of the boats reported poor Spanish Mackerel fishing this morning, but we found a hotspot, I suppose, and ended up with about 40 fish. During the afternoon, we caught about as many and some other boats also did well.
Tuesday July 15 Gulf Stream Combination Charter
We started the day right by catching a Wahoo on the way out on our "high speed" rig. Then we got onto some good bottom fishing and scrapped out a good mixed bag of fish. There were not many dolphin caught off Hatteras today.
July 8- 12 Gulf Stream Charters
We did well this week with bottom fishing. We had good catches of triggerfish on days we fished to the south, and on Saturday we had a nice mixed bag of about 60 keeper Black Sea Bass, 18 or so triggers and about as many Vermillion Snappers. We have also been catching plenty of Greater Amberjacks and Almaco Jacks on Williamson "Benthos" jigs. The Almaco Jack is a generally smaller and stockier cousin of the better known Amberjack. They are also tastier but pound for pound fight just as hard. The jigs also work well for tuna and many other fish.
Friday July 4 Gulf Stream Combination Trip NO PHOTO
Current picked up and made it impossible to fish the bottom where we went today, so we spent the day trolling. We fished along a reasonable looking weedline, but only managed to catch a handful of dolphin and one wahoo.
Thursday July 3 Gulf Stream Combination Charter
We had ideal conditions today: calm weather and not much current where we go fishing offshore. Dolphin were biting today and we did well with them early so we went bottom fishing for the remainder of the day. We caught plenty of triggerfish, a few Vermillion Snappers, and couple of nice jacks.
