Tidelines – August 28, 2014
Capt. Damien James, of Elite Marine Charters out of the Topsail area, poses around midnight with Owen (left) and James (right) Hurley at the public boat ramp in Surf City. They gigged five flounder in some clean water near the inlet. No alligators were stabbed.
This time it was the boys’ turn for a summer last hoorah before starting back at school, so Capt. Damien James’ invitation for a night of flounder gigging (and staying up way past bedtime) had Owen and James excited. And while I was thinking that the boys would love being able to see everything under water illuminated at night, their interests proved to be a little more primitive. It turns out they really just wanted to stab stuff.
Capt. Damien James, of Elite Marine Charters, runs gigging trips from Sneads Ferry down to Wrightsville Beach, so this past Friday’s registration for the Topsail Inshore Challenge seemed like a convenient enough night to meet at the public boat ramp in Surf City.
Damien has gigging spots that can produce on any tide cycle, so instead of meeting at 3:00 am, when the tide would be optimal for flounder gigging, he had us meet at a much more convenient 9:00 pm so that we could get in a few hours on the water before the boys (ages 7 and 9) got tired and either started complaining about wanting to go home or passed out on the boat.
We targeted an area close to the inlet that was offering some cleaner water (especially on the lee sides of land). Damien uses a homemade lighting system, a makeshift pvc frame in the shape of an extended “V” loaded with LED lights that run silently off a battery system. The trolling motor moved us from the 4’ of water where we had trimmed up the outboard to the shallows of our first grass bank, and here the boys’ eyes were first opened to the cool world you can see at night under the lights.
Owen quickly identified a blue crab, and then James spotted some mullet minnows scattering. Damien, with a trained gigger’s eye, was the first to locate a flounder (undersized) half buried in the sand. It took a second for my eyes to see the shadowy outline, and a few more seconds before the boys were able to focus on the broken outline of a small flounder resting on the bottom.
The sight of a flounder apparently awoke the gigging beast in my boys, as their focus was no longer on identifying sea life. Now all they wanted to know was (1) why they couldn’t stab that flounder and (2) what can they stab.
Damien explained the legal size requirements of flounder to the boys, and he also addressed the reasoning behind size limits and other restrictions in general—to protect the resource and ensure future generations have fish to catch and eat. I’m not sure the boys really heard him, though.
Owen: I’m going to run for Mayor so I can change the flounder size to 10 inches. Then I could have stabbed that last flounder.
James: I’m going to run for Mayor and change it to 8 inches. Then more people will vote for me than you because they can stab more flounder.
Owen: They’re not going to vote for you because I’m also going to change the size of sea bass. There were way too many small sea bass when we went shark fishing.
James (to Damien): Can we stab any sea bass tonight?
Owen (to Damien): How about sharks? Can we stab any sharks?
James: And hermit crabs? Can we stab those?
Damien (hoping to change the subject): Look over here. A ray.
James: Can we stab the ray?
Owen: What if we see an alligator? Can we stab an alligator? Or does the Mayor have a rule about that, too?
Luckily at this time we passed over our first legal-sized flounder. Damien turned the boat, put Owen into position, and coached him to see the front of the fish and then aim the gig right behind the eyes. Owen, with a little guidance, then gigged his first flounder.
The boys each got a couple of fish before the late hours caught up to them and we needed to head back to the ramp. A 24-hour McDonald’s drive thru sold us some vanilla ice cream cones, and the talk on the way back to Wilmington ultimately got away from stabbing and back to all the cool sea life they saw.
Damien has invited the Hurleys to join him again in October, when the water will be a little cleaner and the fish a little fatter. You don’t have to wait until October, though, to give Damien a call and start planning your own gigging trip, either with or without kids. You can best reach him at (910) 329-9923.
Or you can wait until one of my sons becomes Mayor, and then you can go out and stab everything (and keep all those 12” sea bass you’ve been hooking).
