Anyway this whole thing started Monday early afternoon, out of Rudee Inlet, then about 35 miles dead south to Corolla, NC near the light. Some VA Beach party boats joined the ruckus as did some private boats, birds were working, and the bite was on. Everyone that came, limited, we had multiple 3 hook-ups on stripers 32-38 in. I fly fished, Tom and Mike jigged. Larger fish, 40-44 in fish were caught several days prior. I guess it's the old adage, should have been here yesterday, but who's complaining about catching 36 in fish.
I decided to go ahead and throw a sinking line rather then a floater, because the fish were constantly moving, I mean fast, and the sinker could cover lots of ground. As it turned out the set/drift, allowed the line to stay close to the stripers which we saw on Tom's dynamite large screen DF. I was able to test our latest baitfish pattern, an offshoot of the Goddard glass minnow and it caught the largest fish, 22 pounder. I used 10 wt tackle, 500 grain line, as well as dropper fly setups. I had one bite that literally stripped out a hundred yards of backing, when we got the 22 pound striper up, the other fly was gone. We think that another striper, possibly a 20 pounder was hooked and had broke off pulling against the other line, talk about a sore arm. But the dropper fly setup gave me feedback as to colors, etc. The bunker appeared small, therefore, smaller flies were the order of the day. Tom and Mike caught nearly all of their fish on Hopkins lures. I released all stripers unharmed, cold air-water really keeps them alive and fighting hard.
The next day, we got a little greedy and decided to go back in a strong North blow, 15-20 mph, 3-5 ft seas. The bite didn't materialize possibly because of bad thunder storms the night before. Anyway the big boats were mainly trolling, no little boats out, guess that tells you something. Mike jigged up one nice fish. The last boat to leave besides us was Brincefield's Jill Carrie. Tom's Twin Vee cat handled the big on coming seas back with ease, albeit a 2 hour plus run.
Yesterday, we fished the CBBT with 6-12 ft rollers, 3-5 ft seas. It was an unbelievable sight waves crashing nearly at the top of the bridge on the East shore shoals. Anyone ever fish the CBBT with you as the only boat, well that kind of tells you something. We caught lots of smaller fish, 18-24 in., however, they were scattered and moving. No top water action. You really need good fish finder equipment to get over these moving fish in small pockets. Again many kudos to Tom for inviting me, he works hard to put you on big fish.
Big Blow from the north at Corrolla
Big waves crashing on the CBBT shoals
