Tidelines – July 31, 2014
Gary Hurley with a solo topwater red drum caught on an oyster bar in Buzzards Bay during a morning exploration run with Mark Johnson.
Traveling to fish new waters is one of the great joys of Fisherman’s Post, so when my buddy Mark Johnson called to recruit me for his first trip exploring Buzzards Bay, in the spirit of adventure I quickly signed on.
Mark had his boat on trailer and was geared up to drive the 30-ish miles from Wilmington to the Wildlife boat ramp on Fish Factory Road. He had done some preliminary scouting on Google Earth and had gathered a few Buzzards Bay stories from friends who had fished those waters, but his basic approach was not to overthink the trip and just start fishing when he saw something he liked.
Worried that I had been invited to help guide him through the infamous skinny waters of Buzzards Bay, I let him know on our first phone call that my knowledge/memory of the area was little to none. Though I had fished the area a few times prior with guides that knew the waters better than most, I was guilty of lazy cognizance.
On all of my previous Buzzards Bay ventures, I had approached the trips with living in the moment—enjoying the solitude and natural landscapes (and great fishing) without making the mental notes of how to replicate the trip on my own at a later time.
Mark assured me that I was not invited to be a “ringer”—I think my best criteria was that most of his other buddies had “real” jobs and couldn’t get away on a Wednesday morning—and we met at his house around 5:30 am to get a relatively early start as low tide in the Buzzards Bay area would come around 12:00 noon and we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be in the wrong shallows at the wrong time.
The drive was quiet and easy. The boat ramp, too, was quiet and easy, and soon we turned the boat left and headed past Southport to cross the Cape Fear River. We weren’t sure of the channel beyond Battery Island, taking it a bit slow through and around some shoals as we approached the first creek mouth that we wanted to target.
A strong oyster bar on the backside of a grass island was just starting to show through the outgoing tide, and the rip pouring over seemed like perfect red drum habitat, so we pulled off plane and grabbed a couple of topwater rods. We both assured the other that after this brief stop we would push up all the way into Buzzards Bay before letting every “fishy” spot keep us from the intended destination, but then the beauty of these new waters took over.
Though the sight was unmistakable, still I needed a second look to confirm. Yes, a tail was working. Then a couple of tails were working. Then even more tails. On our first stop Mark and I had found a school of tailing reds, a rare sight for a couple of Wrightsville Beach-centered inshore fishermen.
Traveling to fish can be a little intimidating, but now we were brimming with confidence as we let fly our topwaters. And this would be the perfect story if I now told you that we caught topwater red after topwater red until the tide got too low and the fish moved on, but this isn’t that story.
The reds wanted little to do with our topwaters. We managed a couple of half-hearted boils, but none with commitment. I went to Gulp on a jighead, and Mark tried a gold spoon. Nothing. Not even a bump.
The reds continued to put on a show, tailing at different times on both sides of the oyster bar before moving down current to an area just off of a grass point on their way to deeper water. Ultimately no reds for us, just the memory of tails, and the tide was falling stronger now so we moved on to Buzzards Bay before water depth and navigation became an issue.
I guess it’s debatable if the rest of our scouting trip that morning was eventful, or even successful, or not. On the fish count, Mark and I managed a couple of reds, including one loner on topwater off of an oyster bed, and we caught flounder but no keepers.
On the adventure side, every direction we looked was a postcard photo. We barely saw another boat but were kept company by an otter, a host of birds, and schools and more schools of bait flushing out with the tide. We found plenty of water allowing access to Buzzards Bay throughout the tide cycle, giving us both confidence and motivation to make the trip again soon.
On the return, the mid-day traffic at the Wildlife boat ramp was still quiet and easy, as was the drive back into Wilmington, and soon Mark and I had rinsed off our rods and reels and were preparing to start the second half of our day.
The highlight of the entire trip, by far, for both of us hadn’t been the fish we brought to the boat. The school of tailing reds working an oyster bar is what we kept talking about on the drive home, and those tails will be what gets Mark’s boat back on trailer for another Buzzards Bay adventure.
Yes, traveling to fish new waters is one of the great joys of Fisherman’s Post.
