Tidelines – June 26, 2014
Korel (center) with a bluefish that he caught trolling a Clarspoon near the sea buoy outside Masonboro Inlet. He was fishing with ambassadors James (left) and Owen (right).
My boys have seemingly graduated to fishing ambassadors this summer.
As noted in several previous Tidelines, I have been trying to acclimate my boys to a love and appreciation of saltwater fishing with mixed results, but this past weekend I enjoyed watching them be great hosts to Karel, a long-time friend’s 10-year-old son who was in town visiting and very much wanted to (1) catch a fish, (2) clean the fish, and (3) eat the fish.
Basically, Karel didn’t need acclimating or nurturing—he already had a self-generated fishing fever.
Patrick (the father) and Dylan (mutual friend) called earlier in the week to feel out the Hurleys’ availability, and the timing wasn’t great. Our one open window was Saturday morning, but even those few hours had to be squeezed in before I packed up to drive to Southport Marina for the 1:00 start of weigh-in at our Southport Inshore Challenge.
Karel, Patrick, and Dylan courteously asked us what they could bring for our fishing trip. What drinks did we like? Should they pick up more bait shrimp? We didn’t need drinks or bait. There was one request (requirement), though, and that too has been often documented here in my column—they had to bring donuts.
So on Saturday morning we packed up the gear and crew and headed south for the Masonboro jetties, keeping the kids off of the donuts until we hit the no wake zone near the bridge. My kids took their perch up front, laying down with their faces into the wind. Karel liked the comfort of sitting lower within the gunnels, until a big boat’s wake bounced him a couple of times and he decided (on his own) that standing and holding on to the T-top was preferred.
We started with the lee side of the north jetty, using the GPS trolling motor to hold our position near the rocks, and then I quickly discovered that while I fish often with captains and guides, I very much lack their talents, not just at catching fish but also at managing the chaos of multiple people fishing from one side of a 22’ bay boat.
I first put Karel out with some cut bait on the bottom, and then had my boys start bouncing metal jigs to see what else was at home. By the time I put a Gulp bait on a jighead in Patrick’s hand and a live mullet minnow on a Carolina rig in Dylan’s, Karel’s braided line had already found the trolling motor.
The braid had miserably wrapped the prop, and I was already a little overwhelmed at the prospect of keeping 4-5 lines in the water in different people’s hands, so we went with a quick change of plans, approved and encouraged by my boys. They wanted Karel to catch a spanish.
Spinners were put up, and the trollers, planers, and Clarkspoons came out. Patrick put us at six-ish knots and headed for the sea buoy, while Karel hung out with me in the back of the boat wanting to see how these spanish were to meet their fate.
The trolling action, like our quick bottom fishing session at the jetty, was slow, but the boys took it upon themselves to help Karel out. They told him about looking for birds and bait and jumping fish. They showed him the fish finder (basically a video game screen) and how it identified fish in the water column and on the bottom. And they told Karel about watching the bend in the planer rod and when the bend “unbends” then you check the line for a fish.
Karel was a sponge, taking in as many details about the process as possible, and Karel was the first one to identify that the rod had “unbended” and there was a fish on the back left line. We had him reel in the fish to the planer, grab the rod out of the rod holder with two hands and hand it to his Dad, and then hand line in the fish to the boat.
Not a spanish, but the bluefish brought a big smile.
“Can we keep it?” Yes.
“Can we eat it?” Yes, you and Patrick and Dylan can eat it.
The morning hours were getting away from us, so we grabbed another round of donuts and headed in. Karel had his fish. My boys enjoyed helping Karel catch his fish. Patrick and Dylan, admittedly not fishermen themselves, had supported Karel’s fishing interest. And I was back in time to make our Southport weigh-in by 3:00 (fishing or not, there was never really any chance I would be there at 1:00 to meet Max when the scales opened).
