Added on Thursday, December 15, 2011  Gary Hurley

The Moon’s The Limit

“Wait till the moon comes back out, lil’ feller,” Capt. Charles Brown, of Old Core Sound Guide Service, exhorted. “They’ll go to biting again.”

Well on our way to a pair of limits of speckled trout, neither Charlie nor I had had a bite in 10 minutes, a situation we hadn’t found ourselves in since beginning to hook the head-shaking fish with amazing regularity an hour before.

“This little patch will pass us by in a minute,” Charlie continued, glancing up from the weather radar he’d pulled up on his phone. A dark cloud had obscured the full moon and spat a misty drizzle on the pair of us as we cast from the front and rear decks of Charlie’s bay boat. Like many this fall, the night was shockingly mild, with temperatures in the lower 60’s, so the light rain wasn’t offensive, although I did resent the interruption to the trout bite.

After a morning call from Fish Post Publisher Gary Hurley to reluctantly bow out of the night trout trip due to a migraine, I was flying solo for this Guide Time. Gary is great company on the road and on the boat, so his absence was felt on the drive to meet Charlie at his house near the Harkers Island Bridge. Fortunately, though, the Core Sound captain is easily the most entertaining person I’ve met in the course of my career at Fisherman’s Post (no offense to the many other people who’ve regularly made me smile—if you knew Charlie, you’d understand), so I was too busy laughing after we met up to think about the boss’s missed presence.

Launching Charlie’s 23’ Venture at the Harkers Island ramp and heading for Cape Lookout was an experience in and of itself, as he boomed out his genial Downeast greeting at everyone in sight.

“What are you doing?” Charlie bellowed, the words practically conjugated into a single syllable, to boat builders, commercial fishermen, recreational anglers, and nearly everyone else in sight. All shot back wide grins and friendly words—he’s not just popular with outdoor writers—and he even swapped a little trout intel with Glen Rose (designer and builder of Intruder Boats).

“Local shortcut,” Charlie leaned over from the helm and said, carving the Venture through a narrow marsh cut that saved us some time and mileage in getting around Harkers’ eastern tip.

Headed to Lookout, he had me in stitches with talk of dit-dots and dingbatters (foolish tourists) whose inability to follow channel markers frequently leads to boats aground on the area’s many shoals (one even named “Dit-Dot Shoal”).

Tracing a wide arc behind the tip of Cape Lookout and past the diamond patterned lighthouse warning mariners of the cape’s treacherous shoals, we shot out Bardens Inlet. Our destination was the nearby rock jetty, a place so legendary for producing solid speckled trout that the crowds there in peak trout season have become as notorious as the fishing.

Surprisingly, only eight boats lined the rocky spit as we drifted back on the anchor, and Charlie explained that the bite hadn’t been that good lately—at least in the daytime.

“People don’t know about the night fishing,” he explained as the boat’s bow swung to seaward. “They just don’t know how to catch these fish.”

Around an hour of daylight remained, and as Charlie exchanged another booming “Whatareyoudoing!?” and compared trout notes with a friend on a large skiff, I took stock of the mass of rods extending from his console, leaning post, and T-top/tower rod holders. With 16 Quantum and Fin-Nor spinning sticks rigged and ready, it would be tough to mistake the man for your average weekend warrior.

“I hate tying knots on the water,” he explained with a grin when I marveled at the selection of MirrOlures and swimbaits on the business ends of the spinners’ fluorocarbon leaders.

Charlie was less than excited about our prospects for success while the sky was still light, and he took the opportunity to go over some of his finer points of working MirrOlures for speckled trout.

“We’ve got the series 52’s on these,” he explained, gesturing to the rods in the console. “And the Catches on these,” indicating a slightly lighter set of rods bristling from the leaning post.

Charlie, a firm believer in the hard plastic plugs, gave a virtual dissertation on MirrOlure color selection, including showing off some prized baits that are unavailable outside Texas (or in some cases, at all).

After listening, I chose one of the colors he seemed most fervent about, Tequila Sunrise (orange/chartreuse/yellow), and followed the Core Sounder’s instructions to cast parallel to the jetty and employ a twitch/pause retrieve.

“The 52 sinks one foot per second,” he expounded as the north breeze ferried my lure to a landing point a few yards off the exposed rocks. “And we’re in 12’ of water, so let it sink for around a 10-count. Give it a twitch and then stop—that’s when they bite.”

I followed his instructions, working the lure down the subsurface boulders, and although Charlie fished intermittently, he was more focused on waiting for the sun to go down.

“A lot of times I just sit and watch people,” he said, grinning as he did just that to some adjacent anglers. “They don’t know what to think.”

The full moon soon appeared from behind a cloud above the dunes and lighthouse. A quarter-hour later it was contributing more light to the sky than the waning sun, and Charlie flew into action.

All but two of the boats had hustled to beat the sunset home, and the captain was pleased.

“I don’t like them to see where I like to set up,” he said. Moving a few yards down the jetty to a spot where the tide had risen beyond the top of the rocks, he redeployed anchor and began fishing in earnest.

“Alright, don’t throw that Tequila Sunrise anymore,” Charlie instructed, picking up a rod with one of the Catch series MirrOlures tied on. “I’ve only got two of those, and we’re about to start casting over the jetty. The Catch is suspending, so we can fish it over the rocks.”

I mimicked Charlie’s cast, tossing the lure over the rocks and allowing it to settle for a few seconds before commencing an even slower twitch-pause retrieve than we’d been employing with the 52 series baits.

Two casts in, the Catch met an abrupt halt, but my attempt at a hookset failed to connect.

“Is he there?” Charlie asked, to my negative response.

“Yep, you jerked it away from him,” he continued. “You don’t have to set the hook on a MirrOlure—he’s going to get it.”

Endeavoring to follow this wisdom, I hooked up a few casts later, and the head-shaking response on the end of the line let me know I’d connected with what we came for.

The fish tugged for the rocks at first, then broke the surface, thrashing splashily in the silver light of the now-high full moon.

After this protest, the fish came obligingly towards the boat, making a few final surges before Charlie was able to slide his landing net beneath it. At 18”, the fish was a solid keeper, and after a quick photo, into the livewell it went.

Two more casts later, the scenario repeated itself, except this fish was pushing the 20” mark, an excellent start to the evening. My personal trout fishing has been recently marked by an abundance of fish under and around the 14” minimum size limit, so a pair of fish that didn’t require measurement was a very refreshing sight.

Charlie was quick to put his own fish on the board, but this one was slightly smaller, though still a clear keeper.

“I’m going to turn him loose,” the captain said, unhooking the 16” fish and returning it to the dark water. “We’re going to catch plenty bigger than he is.”

As Charlie unhooked the speck, I noticed he was no longer casting the Catch and inquired about the change of lure.

“The Jelly Belly!” he exclaimed excitedly—his name for a secret soft plastic swimbait that accounts for most of his non-MirrOlure specks. “Try one!”

I’d earlier noticed that, in addition to his quiver of MirrOlure rods, he had three lighter Fin-Nor spinners pre-rigged with the soft baits, and he traded out my MirrOlure rod for one of the Jelly Belly setups.

“Fish that one even slower,” Charlie said, zinging another cast over the submerged rocks. “Let it sink a bit, twitch, and then let the waves work it.”

I only had a chance to offer one twitch before a trout smacked the swimbait, this one, like Charlie’s earlier fish, a clear keeper that we let go to wait for a bigger bite.

Responding to the only brief lull in activity we had before the moon went hiding, Charlie moved us beachward down the rocks to another spot where the climbing tide had overwashed a section of rocks.

Our first casts were both rewarded with strikes, and though my fish shook off a few seconds into the fight, Charlie’s put up a better account of itself. After tossing some serious water into the moonlight, the speck dove, putting a solid bend in the spinner and making the drag squeal before the battle started swinging in the angler’s favor.

A few brief bursts made for some last minute drama, as I tried to net the fish and it attempted to foul the line on the trim tabs and outboard lower unit.

Finally I was able to get the thrashing trout into the net, and Charlie was soon mugging with a 4 lb. speck.

We added this one to the livewell, and then continued casting, nailing a few more specks over 3 lbs. that met Charlie’s criteria for keepers. We had six 2-4 lb. fish in the well and more legal fish than I could keep track of caught and released by the time the weather moved in. The Venture’s deck which, until now, had been practically aglow in the moonlight, darkened considerably as the mist moved in, and the bite shut down as fast as it had begun.

“You can still catch them on a dark moon, right?” I asked Charlie, wondering about the abrupt end to the action.

“Yep, but we want that moon out when it’s bright like this,” he responded, grabbing his phone to check the weather.

True to Charlie’s word (and his iPhone) the rain stopped a few minutes after it began and, though the clouds didn’t dissipate, they thinned enough to allow the bright moon to shine through.

Again confirming the captain’s pontification, light equaled bite, and we resumed the catching.

After a few more catch and releases, I slid the net under another 4 pounder for the captain, and he returned the favor, netting a 3 lb. class speck for me a few moments later.

With the final touches put on our trout limit, Charlie and I released a few more specks (including more quality fish that would’ve met the captain’s personal size limit). The moon disappeared again shortly thereafter, and we each made a series of biteless casts before Charlie dialed up the weatherman again.

“I think it’s about over for tonight,” he said, indicating another green and blue patch of precipitation about to overtake the cape.

No worries on my end, as I had a solo 2.5 hour drive to knock out before I made my bed. As we ran back to Harkers, I thought again of Dit-Dot Shoal.

“I’ve got a spotlight,” Charlie said, “but I don’t think we need it.”

Need it we didn’t, as Charlie announced the presence and vector of every channel marker between the cape and the boat ramp a few moments before the boat’s running lights faintly illuminated their reflective tops. The man’s been plying these waters his entire life, and getting home in the dark comes as easily to him as putting people on quality speckled trout.

I bid Charlie and his wife, Sandy, goodbye at their house before pointing my truck to Wilmington and settling for a cup of coffee in lieu of Gary’s company. The evening was absolutely the best action with quality trout I’ve ever seen, and Charlie has the fish dialed in so well it almost seems as though they turn on and off at his command.

The nighttime speck action at the Cape Lookout jetty lasts into February most years, with the only change being that the average fish size increases the colder it gets (with citation specks common after the New Year). With fat and willing trout, nonexistent crowds, and the watchful eye of the Cape Lookout Light sweeping over every 15 seconds, a night trip to the jetty is an unforgettable experience. However, just getting to the inlet in the dark is a challenge, and the danger of boating around submerged rocks in the dark shouldn’t even need to be stated, so traveling with Charlie is the wise way to go about it.

Learn more about Old Core Sound Guide Service at www.oldcoresound.com, or give the Core Sounder himself a call to talk a trip over at (252) 725-7070.