Tidelines – September 1, 2011
Though the Fisherman’s Post office fared well throughout Hurricane Irene (only losing power for about 30-ish hours), and though all of our staff only suffered minor property damage (Eddie had a tree on his property fall lightly on a neighbor’s house, Max lost a sapling in the backyard, and I lost about a day and half of my life doing cleanup work in our yard), we feel as though Hurricane Irene affected us rather strongly via our relationships and bonds with others in North Carolina that didn’t fare as well.
This is only our first year distributing to the Outer Banks, but Fisherman’s Post has already developed numerous friendships in the region. And as of this print date, we have only been able to contact one of those Hatteras Island friends since Irene passed our coast. We couldn’t get last week’s issue out (by Thursday morning of last week the mandatory evacuation had already been ordered). Now we can get to the area north of Oregon Inlet, but we aren’t sure when we will be able to deliver issues down Hatteras Island again. Many of you have seen photos and video on the news and online, so you know already that NC 12 is impassable, and I think that people are hopeful that NCDOT can have it reopened in a couple of months.
A couple of months is a long time. Here in the office we’re more than ready after only a few days to put Hurricane Irene behind us and focus on fishing and the business of fishing. We, like most everyone, want to get back to work, and for us that means gathering fishing reports, collecting fishing photos, and covering fishing tournaments. However, we also recognize that many in our coverage area have a ways to go before they can put the hurricane behind them and return to a state of normal.
So while we want to talk fishing and not hurricanes, we understand that others just aren’t in the position yet to talk about spanish hitting Clarkspoons and flounder liking live and Gulp baits.
Most people on our report list were happy to hear from us. They readily talked about what they had seen and heard since Irene, or they predicted what to expect in the coming weeks. Even the crowd from the Pamlico region, who we expected to be somewhat out of commission (we heard reports of house after house having ruined carpets and furniture stacked up in front yards), were eager and gave an optimistic report, noting that the big red drum were still in area waters and they weren’t terribly shaken from the hurricane.
Our friends on Hatteras Island, though, weren’t able to give us an optimistic fishing report. They, unfortunately, haven’t been able to give us any report at all. Max, our Editor who talks to them on a weekly basis gathering the latest fishing news, has had (as of print time) one phone call and no emails returned. They’re simply cutoff and isolated until power and cell phones are back to normal, and the highway can be repaired.
In light of minimal communication with our Hatteras regulars, we weren’t quite sure how to handle the Hatteras report pages in this issue. Finally, we decided on sharing with our readers what we know about Hurricane Irene’s effects on the fishing and the fishing-related businesses of the area (is there any business on that island that isn’t fishing-related in some way, though?).
Our post-hurricane Hatteras synopsis seems appropriate for this issue, but hopefully real soon we will be talking white marlin and tuna and the incredible fall surf fishing for red drum.
Yes, hopefully communication will be restored by our next print date of Sept. 15 (the Labor Day issue marks the end of our summer weekly print schedule and the start of our fall bi-weekly print schedule).
If you find yourself wanting to focus on the future, then visit our centerfold where we have all the fall fishing tournaments listed. There’s a lot of fun (and money) in those fall events, so why not give one or two a try?
I’ll finish by saying that I look forward to Hatteras Island’s tether being reconnected and our coverage and distribution area being whole again. Fisherman’s Post is open for business, but we’re only as strong as the NC fishing community we serve. We look forward to great fall fishing up and down all of our coast.
