Tidelines – March 6, 2014
Publisher Gary Hurley, fishing with Capt. Stu Caulder of Gold Leader Guide Service, with one of the stripers he caught in the 2014 Cape Fear River Watch Striperfest. This 28″ fish struck a 5″ pink MirrOlure Provoker using a 5/0 Moaner twist lock weedless hook.
Since I refuse to complain about the Polar Vortex and this ongoing, miserably cold, North Carolina winter (my apologies here to Michigan and Wisconsin transplants that are rolling their eyes at my definition of “miserably cold”), and since the winter months at Fisherman’s Post keep us incredibly busy despite being in a printing hiatus (attending boat shows, hosting fishing schools, creating new events, etc.), too busy in fact to get much fishing in, my Tidelines article will instead test my memory by forcing me to recall my last fishing trip—participating in the Cape Fear River Watch’s Striperfest.
I say my “last” fishing trip of 2014, but unfortunately I could also call it my “first” or my “only” fishing trip of 2014. As I write this column in early March, it’s been since Saturday, January 18, that I’ve wet a line, fishing the tournament with Capt. Stu Caulder and Capt. Jerry Dilsaver.
Fishing Striperfest is something that I look forward to every year. They host an impressive banquet on Friday night where they raise both awareness and a lot of money for their cause, making free drinks and good food available so that everyone is merry enough to buy raffle tickets and bid on silent and live auction items.
Then on Saturday morning the fishing begins at a very friendly, sleep-in-a-little-after-the-banquet time of 9:00 am, with the Cape Fear River Watch crew welcoming anglers and captains with blueberry pancakes, thick cut bacon, venison sausage, and Port City Java coffee. With a full belly and fresh cup of coffee in hand, we head to the docks in front of Coastline Inn and the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce for a Wilmington Fire Department Fire Boat send-off, complete with fire hoses shooting water hundreds of feet in the air, as Stu idles Jerry and me across the river for maybe five minutes before we start casting to a significant drop off around some structure on the river bank.
The day was cold and windy, so most of our fishing took place on the leeward side of the Cape Fear. It was also a typical striper day on the Cape Fear: many fish were caught leading up to that Saturday, but then there were no fish on Saturday where there had been fish feeding all week.
I also found myself in another typical position for me—everyone on the boat was a better angler than me. Stu and Jerry have fishing resumes that dwarf my collection of experiences and knowledge, so while they spent the day trying to deduce where we should go next and what soft plastic to use and whether to troll or cast, I kept quiet and let the experts make the decisions.
Their instincts and powers of reason produced for us (I think I could also say they merely guessed right, but I want to give them the benefit of the doubt), as we landed four stripers by early afternoon. Plenty of anglers have caught more than four Cape Fear stripers on any given day, but on this Saturday in January with a dozen or so guided boats on the water, the best anyone else could do was five fish.
And while it was a great day on the water on many different levels (mine and Stu’s friendship started back in 2003 with the first issues of Fisherman’s Post, but somehow the years have gone by without us making a point to ever fish together), one day in mid-January is not enough to hold a man until March.
To give you better insight into my mental “fishing” condition, at the Morehead Saltwater Fishing School I found myself being extremely jealous of and looking longingly at the wind-burned faces of the Pamlico/Neuse captains that have clearly been spending plenty of time on the water, wind chill or no wind chill.
Maybe this week will offer up a bluefin opportunity, or even a black sea bass or red drum trip. I fear, though, that yet another week will be spent preparing for our upcoming Greenville school on March 15, or the Topsail Island Surf Fishing Challenge the first weekend in May.
And if those two events alone weren’t enough, there’s also the 2014 Kids Summer Fishing Camps that Fisherman’s Post will be offering to kids age 7-11 this summer in the Wrightsville and Carolina Beach area. We’re already working on sponsors for these kids camps—anyone have a connection at Skittles?
