October is my favorite month to fish.  The weather is usually very pretty with light winds and comfortable temps.  The drop in water temp usually fires off the fall bite.  Striped Bass and Speckled Trout with some scattered puppy drum usually make up our fall catch. The giant reds are pretty much gone except for a few stragglers hanging around.  Yesterday, we caught about 60 speckled trout, providing lots of action for my client Brant, from Virginia.  We had 3 nice keepers to round out a few for supper.  We have plenty of trout, but a lot of them are small due to last winter’s trout kill.  This is very typical of the fall following a winter kill.  Not all the big fish were killed, leaving some of the larger fish behind to spawn.  It seems like the fish we are catching are either very young 10-14″ fish or the two-year older larger 20+ inchers, so they are either small or pretty big.  Since the hurricane(s), the striper fishing has been kinda spotty to say the least.  They seem very scattered.  I suspect lots of them are feeding on the dying menhaden in the river, which happened as a result of Hurricane Florence from all the low-oxygen runoff.  When they get in the mode, they can be hard to catch; however, I positive that they’ll emerge in full force really soon and we’ll be there to capitalize on it for some amazing fall striper fishing.

Next openings on my boat:  Nov. 20, 21, 24, 26-29  Dec. 1, 3, 5-8    Let’s go fishing!  The fishing in Nov. and Dec. is really good.  If you must have a date not listed above, I can most likely get you out with Capt. Scott, Joe, Kent, or Bryan.  Capt. Bryan Branton of Time Off Charters has been helping my out some this year and has done an excellent job.  He’s a hard worker, which is what it takes to be consistently successful.

Happy Fall to everyone!

Capt. Richard Andrews