Tidelines – July 5, 2012
Capt. Rob Koraly, of Sandbar Safari Charters out of Emerald Isle, has some tricks up his sleeve.
About a week ago we set up a fishing trip for the Friday before July 4th, a day we both could manipulate to get free, and the plan was to go off the beach and catch some of the citation-class spanish mackerel that he had been finding with regularity. Then when that early morning bite slowed, we would bucktail for ocean flounder and be back by noon so he could attend to party plans (Rob hosts a big July 4th party every year) and I could get back to Wilmington to attend to Fisherman’s Post.
A dawn departure meant I had to leave Wilmington around 4:00 to get to Rob’s house for the 5:30 meeting time. The coffee brought me out of my morning haze around the Swansboro bridges, and a quick look over the windy water left little hope that we would be heading out Bogue Inlet in Rob’s BayRider skiff.
However, like I said, Rob Koraly has some tricks up his sleeve.
Our plans were changed, he announced, making official what I had suspected. He already had a new plan, though. We were going to go for the Bogue Sound Slam. I liked the idea, thought it made for a great backup plan, and noted (to myself) that he announced this new plan with just the right amount of confidence. Even though we still only had a half day to fish, Rob called out his intention for the boat to find a red drum, flounder, black drum, and sheepshead before being back to the dock for lunch.
His buddy Phil joined us. Rob is a charter boat captain, I own a saltwater fishing newspaper, and Phil is from Kansas. Guess who caught more and bigger fish?
The red drum was first, and Rob had us working some skinny water with Gulps on jigheads. Rob had the furthest reach with his casts, and I typically cast close but never quite as far. Phil? His casts often went half the distance, but that didn’t matter when he came tight to our first puppy drum of the day. Then a few moments later he added a flounder to the check list. Rob also contributed a flounder, and the group consoled me by complimenting the size of the pinfish I hooked as we pulled the trolling motor to move on.
So we left our first spot already two fish into the Bogue Sound Slam and headed for a place known to hold black drum. Koraly was, so far, successfully executing his plan.
At our second location, we put live shrimp on the bottom, quickly had pinfish nibbles, but then almost as quickly everyone put a black drum in the boat.
Rob Koraly was keeping to his game plan and guiding us steadily to the Bogue Sound Slam. The boat had three out of four, and Phil was working an individual slam as well.
It was low tide, so we could have caught fiddler crabs ourselves. However, it’s hot outside, and Rob has an account at Dudley’s Marina that keeps live fiddlers in a blue cooler by the front door, so we decided to just take a couple of styrofoam cup scoops and get back to the business of fishing.
Targeting sheepshead had us under a bridge putting fiddler crabs on the bottom next to a piling. The bridge was quiet and the crabs went suspiciously unmolested. We tried hanging the crabs at different depths in the water column, but nowhere could we give one away.
Just to better assess the situation, Rob put down a homemade rig with four live shrimp hanging off it, and the rig came back up with four live shrimp hanging off it. Our Bogue Sound Slam was in peril.
Eventually I got a subtle bite, and lost my fiddler crab to a suspected sheepshead. And then two minutes later Phil, the man from Kansas, had a serious bend in his rod and was struggling a little to keep the fish from wrapping around pilings. The sheepshead came over the rail, a small debate on its size ensued (Rob had it at near 4 lbs. and Phil had it at near 5 lbs.), and then the scales confirmed that we had boated a near 5 lb. sheepshead to finish the morning and the slam.
Capt. Rob Koraly, of Sandbar safari Charters out of Emerald Isle, has lots of tricks up his sleeve, and on this day his best trick was perhaps putting Phil on the boat.
