Healthy Grin Sport Fishing

Today, I took two of my office staff, Tara and Meghan, and their significant others offshore. I have a good staff. OK, they are great but I don’t want it to go to their heads. We chartered the Top Notch Sportfishing Charters . We caught dolphin. We had one billfish encounter that did not stay tight. Beautiful boat, great crew, and a good time on the water. Yesterday, I did a much shorter trip. Broke off some sheepshead and caught a black drum.

Ran out and caught a big sheepshead. Came back and ate the sheepshead. The bait got eaten also. There may have been some beer involved. Good day.

Tricia got a nice pup right at sunset.

Last Saturday, I had decided to make the run from my house down to the southern towers. It is a stupid long run. It had been awhile since I had tugged on an amberjack. I did not tell any of my regular fishing friends what I was thinking because those guys are crazy enough to jump aboard. My assistant said that she wanted to go. I asked if she had heard the part about it being a stupid idea? She said that she had a stupid boyfriend to bring along. (I made that up Zach). It was a stupid idea. They got a really long boat ride with a couple of fish thrown in.

Stan Simmerman, Wes Blow and myself fished the 4A Drydock today. The target was triggerfish. We caught a dozen or so. One was citation-sized. A few nice flounder ate our triggerfish baits. We caught a bunch of sea bass and Wes could not stand looking at the spadefish under the boat. What we did not catch were a couple of cobia that visited and followed our jigs around. We also had a big king air out and put on a show.

My assistant asked if I would take her and her father fishing. Sure, what do you want to fish for? She said sheepshead. So today, I took Meghan and Michael Wells fishing. Meghan caught a sheepshead so mission accomplished. Next time, she may want to be more specific as to the size and numbers of fish that she would like to catch. They also caught some tautog, sea bass, and croaker but what they really experienced was a world-class oyster toad bite.

I took the boat to Dare Marina during lunch for a 100-hour service hoping to have it back for the weekend. They called me a couple hours later saying it was ready. I love that place. Back to the flats I went after work. This evening the drum were larger from 20 to 30 inches long. When do we stop calling them puppies? On the tackle I was using, they were kicking my butt. I’m going to call them butt-kickers. I ended up landing nine with a number of doubles.

On the way home from work this evening, I stopped by Grafton Fishing Supply and picked up some peeler crabs. Made the short run to the flats and proceeded to tag and release puppy drum. Ended up landing seven and didn’t land some others. All of the fish were between 20 and 22 inches long.  Really fun quick trip.