Hatteras, NC Fishing Report from Stormy Petrel II
Summer 2010
We had a good summer, but my camera quit working early on. Most of the catches consisted of triggerfish and dolphin offshore and bluefish and Spanish mackerel on the inshore trips.
Spring 2010
I apologize for some omissions in this report. I did not get photos of all the catches. Many of the half day trips are missing as is one offshore trip. I would like to thank everyone who went fishing with us.
June 19, 2010
A beautiful day offshore. Bottom fishing was hit or miss, but we had better luck with dolphin. We caught most of these fish out of one big school.
June 16, 2010
A good day for bottom fishing. We found some dolphin late in the day, but they didn't stay with us very long. Scattered Sargasso Weed made for scattered dolphin.
June 15, 2010
We started out bottom fishing and it was not as good as we hoped, so we went looking for dolphin, and did quite well with that.
June 13, 2010
We had a big group today and the caught a LOT of fish. After some good bottom fishing, we went looking for dolphin and found a big school right away. We caught all we wanted and left the rest.
June 7, 2010
The Gulf Stream has been doing strange things this spring, such that the current edge has been 40 miles or more out on some days. Greg and Larry are used to catching dolphin and bottom fish on the boat and always seem to have good luck. Today the dolphin were out of reach if we wanted to do any bottom fishing. The cooler than usual water, however, was just right for Yellowfin Tuna, and we tried that first. We caught nine before the sun came out and shut down the bite. Trolling to the south, we had almost no bites until we switched to bottom fishing. It was a weird drift, but the triggers were snapping.
May 7, 2010
The water has been cool and Spanish Mackerel are scarce, but we did find plenty of blues and some tackle busting False Albacore on our half day trip near Hatteras Inlet.
May 6, 2010
Good bottom fish continues, although it was mostly a morning bite today. A small Mako Shark could not resist a Boston Mackerel filet. Fortunately it came aboard without too much of a struggle. Two year ago, these guys caught a Blue Marlin with us in May.
May 5, 2010
We fished a couple of areas today and both were productive.
May 1, 2010
We struggled today, but so did a lot of boats. We fished the same areas that had been very hot two days before.
April 29, 2010
Today was our first offshore fishing trip for 2010 and it went quite well, especially considering I fished some spots that I hadn't really caught much at for a couple of years.
April 29, 2010
The National Marine Fisheries Service has decided to close the Red Snapper Fishery for an undetermined amount of time. There have been more Reds up here for the last couple of years than I can remember since I started in the mid 1990's. Red Snappers are hard to release in good condition, so this Draconian closure means many of these beautiful fish are wasted. Reds are widespread on ledges and wrecks here; it's hard to avoid catching them. We can avoid catching some species by not fishing certain spots, but not Reds.
