This post is alittle overdue but I still need to recap the days events. Plus I was talking to Doug over text and he reminded me that I need to do it (HI MB 🙂 )
Another early morning departure with same captain and first mate but new crew on board. My nephew Trent & cousin Logan (John’s Daughter) wanted to bring us some good luck and reel in some monsters. Glad the came along because we got into them….
All week the atmosphere had that sticky feeling and we had on and off storms which is typical in the OBX this time of the year. Friday was calling for scattered storms with a north east winds which means if a storm decided to brew up… it was coming from land. This would be a problem if the storm was big enough to do some damage because we were 30 miles + off the coast and on way home would be through those storms.
Above is photo I took of John’s radar. The red represents a storm front that was quickly making our way. We were trolling and enjoying our time catching fish that we didn’t notice the approaching front off to our west. I was just putting a fish in the ice box in the front of the boat and I hear thunder off in the distance which I mentioned to John. We were both shocked how fast it spun up on us but like I said… we were fishing. Here is photo of the approaching front that was on the radar. As you can see off to the left there is rain and not captured was some night lightning bolts.
Ya pretty nasty right? John and I debated back in forth on what to do. Well let me be honest.. we bickered on what we thought the storm would do but we came to agreement if we headed southwest we could out run it. Our plan from reading the radar that the storm came east off land then was heading south down the shores which ended up being correct. I do have to mention we tuned into radio station 1 on the CB which was the local shoreman radio station which is mostly the charter boat talking about conditions. We heard one of the bigger boats send out a warming to other boats about water spouts forming out of Hatteras and Oregon Inlet. Any plans we had to make a break for land was over, we had to head southwest to avoid this. John got out he life jackets for the kids and said we’re out of here. I made the decision that we should “troll” our way to safety (hahhah) which ended up being a good choice. We found some more fish to put in the cooler and we stopped to jig in 200ft water which was not easy. The kids had luck bottom fishing catching some trigger fish and seabass.
logan seabass
To end bring the story to a close we made our way out of the storms with breezy winds and light rain. John wanted to troll deeper since reports were coming in of Tuna, Marlin and Sailfish being caught by the boat loads. Great choice here..
We had our first hookup ever on sail fish in about 300 ft of water. We had a hit on a rig that I pulled out of the holster. The first pull we lost but I pulled the lure to the top of the surface and BAM he hit it. I knew it was a big fish because as soon as he tugged back I slid in my crocs on the boat. I quickly handed the rod over to Logan to fight which she did awesome job fighting the fish. About 10 yards from the boat he broke off and did some sea world jumps through the water laughing at us. We stood in shock… mayhem diverted…. kinda.
I honestly don’t know what we would have done to get the fish in the boat if we had the chance. We didn’t have gloves so I guess we would have gaffed it. Is that legal? Who cares… put it in the cooler!
Here’s a video of the mayhem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyteMeKl2eQ&feature=share&list=UUbyMJNBmh6Bnf7AReg6aHHA&index=2
Here is one of my better shots of Trents MahiMahi. Underwater video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohj4d0tDYwM&feature=share&list=UUbyMJNBmh6Bnf7AReg6aHHA
The whole trip and week was awesome and I can’t express how thankful I am to have the opurtunity to do this on a private boat. Thanks again to my Uncle John.
Ride home trent was TKO from fighting fish. Proof:
Trent naping
Until Next time! See you later OBX!
– Rye
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