Topsail Beach

Well after 3 weeks of rigging the new boat and getting trips cancelled the weather finally cooperated and we got to fish and dirty up the new boat!

Fished with my regular client Art, went to the 10 mile boxcars to look for some kings, my buddy Rick had a few the day before and 2 sails so we started there. Trolled cigar minnows on Hank Browns for a few hours with just a few short strikes. Around 10am heard a little chatter about the spanish showing up inshore so we picked up and started to run towards John’s Creek. When we got about 2 miles away in 50′ of water they were going off! Art threw 21gram Maria jigs to the breaking schools for about 2 hours catching fish on every other cast! These were solid fish from 18″-24″, saw many in the water following the lure, slower retrieve caught the bigger fish.

Friday and Saturday we fished the Eddie Hanneman Sailfish Tournament out of Wrightsville Beach with Billy, Anthony, and Brian. Friday we fished the 10 and 12 mile rock areas, saw the first fish of the tournament caught and released right next to us. Our tally for the first day was a barracuda that gave us a thrill for the first run but them came to the boat pretty easily. Saturday we decided to fish south towards the 30/30. We started in the weeds a little short of the Schoolhouse and started to work out to the fleet about 3 miles past us. We hooked a nice mahi right away and heard the fleet chattering about a few releases so far so we worked into the area the fish were being taken in. The rest of the day we worked around the fleet watching the other boats fight fish while we washed a bunch of ballyhoo! Alot of fun, already have interest from some guys to fish it next year, had good food……Quick note to Billy: Sushi is not as palatable after rigging ballyhoo……..lots of laughs, just no sails.

Sunday had Tim and Billy from Pennsylvania on board fishing out of Topsail. We started out heading to the 2nd set off Topsail but the 15kt  winds were starting to stack the seas so we put lines in around the 1st set. Did not have to wait long and started to pick at the schoolie kings on both yo-zuri deep divers and dead cigars on Hank Brown rigs and Pirate plugs. Around 11am saw a squall to the south and the wind freshened up to about 17-20 and we decided to troll towards the hill in the now “cotton patch” seas. The 1st set was loaded with bait and nice blue water, we saw flying fish all morning constantly. A great day on the water with 2 really nice fisherman!