I can most easily characterize our recent fishing on the Pamlico as saying we are catching a ton of fish and enjoying some exciting rod-bending action. Since May, we’ve consistently been catching on slower days 20-30 fish and on better days 50+ fish. Today was one of those better days. We caught lots of stripers, flounder, and puppy drum. While we have been getting our fair share of keeper flounder lately, the last few trips have yielded huge catches with no keepers. Today, we ended up catching over 50 fish, none of which we could legally keep. 25-30 undersized flounder, 10 or so small puppy drum and small stripers, and about 20-25 18-25″ stripers….all while wading. Lee, Garrison, and John had an absolute blast, and guess what our cooler looked like at the end? Empty! I love those kind of days and love those kind of clients……folks who are into the experience instead of the harvest. Garrison caught his first ever flounder and striper, and John caught his first ever striper as well. Lee caught two striper on one bait…..a true double. That’s pretty rare.
The only thing we didn’t catch was trout. Frankly, I don’t do alot of trout fishing in the summer. Most of the ones we catch in the summer are bycatch while flounder fishing. My charter clients just don’t really enjoy catching them unless they are big and plentiful. In fact, I can’t remember the last time someone called me about doing a summer trip and even mentioned anything about speckled trout. I do most of my trout fishing in the fall when they are thick and easy to catch. The effort vs. reward is just not there for myself and most of my clients. So if you want trout, call me up for a late Sept, Oct, of Nov. trip, and we’ll do our best to put you in the meat.
If you want to CATCH fish and want to have lots of fun while enjoying a really pretty day in a pristine area of the state, we’ll hook you up with some excellent saltwater light tackle variety here on the Pamlico.
Here are the pictures from today’s trip:
