Hurricane going to cancel our trip?

The leading into our trip to OBX was stressful.  I watched many news outlets and like most… felt our OBX trip was not going to happen. Every news outlet was predicting that OBX was going to get slammed by the Hurricane and Coastal Flooding. We were leaving Friday 9/14 when just about florence was going to make landfall.  We didn’t have much information other than what was being reported on the news outlets. Our rental company had a good idea to post updates that they could provide from the blog section on their website.  It was all over the news that they were evacuating the whole OBX 3 days ahead of landfall even though the models were showing so much skewed information.

Hurricane Florence is going to Miss Us!

We decided that the reports on where it was going to hit were so vague that we had a good chance of getting into the house by Sunday. Sure enough Flow shifted south and other than some coastal flooding… Northern OBX was fine.

Fish On!

When we arrived Sunday you could hear the ocean waves crashing from inside the house on the beach. Surf fishing was going to be a mess all week so I had to shit my game plan. I pulled up google and started looking for fishing access areas to hit on the sound side. I cam across Melvin Daniels Bridge which just a couple miles from the house. I told the guys the plans we left the house before daylight.  When we arrived we saw about a dozen anglers fishing from both sides of the bridge. The current was moving pretty good under the bridge (tide was going out) and some fish were being caught. I packed mostly all light gear for this trip and just 2 surf rods anticipating ocean fishing to be scrap. We used some inland fishing rods and tossed Berkley Gulp Baits around the bridge. We caught some Speckled Trout, White Fish and Blue Fish. Nothing was of any size to be excited about but the lines were wet with fish slime.

Wednesday & Thursday the surf was starting to settle down but still pretty murky. We tossed fresh bait from the surf out of the back of the house with zero luck. The ocean was polluted with green-brownish seaweed. To the point you could see it float as far as the eye could see. It made it extremely difficult to fish from surf so we just enjoyed some beers on the beach. Thursday morning we did a early morning trip to Oregon Inlet to fish around that area. We started fishing from the Bridge at daylight and caught small blues. The mullet bait fish feed was insane – the water was boiling with sea mullet and blues feeding on them. We tossed plastics and squid from the bridge and did pretty well. I had 3 hook rig setup and I caught a triple at once which was funny. After awhile the bridge was getting busy on the walkway and I could see the point where the ocean and bay met looked promising. I figured we could possibly catch some stuff in the surf with the bait we were using. We dropped some gear off at the truck and made our half mile hike out to the end point. Sadly on my our way out I broke the tip of my Penn fishing rod on accident. I was still able to fish with it but it made the rod tip really stiff and hard to feel hits form the speckle trout taps we were getting. Mike and my Dad did really well on light gear which was really exciting.

Friday the waters were starting to clear but the wind was still in our faces from the Surf which was blowing the SeaWeed back into shore. Again it made fishing really tough to cast in.

Next Year

Overall the trip was a success with finding new areas to fish. Next year we can dial tied timing and I will pack better gear to be prepared. I did see some guys above us at Oregon Inlet catch some Big Red’s which was exciting. I hear the Red Fish bite has been incredible this year.  I am looking forward to our trip next year already.