Crisco Kid
“I got a big fish here. Get the net,” was the command from Capt. Wayne Crisco, of Last Resort Charters out of Surf City, as he stood on the bow of his boat with a rod bent over.
His voice was a mixture of excitement and relief. Wayne, understandably, wanted to produce a nice flatfish for his Fisherman’s Post Guide Time trip and article, and I noticed he had been a little nervous waiting to get that first “real” fish in the boat.
Wayne may be new to the charter boat business, as he just got Last Resort Charters started this year, but he’s no newcomer to flounder fishing. He grew up in the Southport area, learning to fish from his father, Kenneth Crisco, as well as the Southport flounder icon Jimmy Price.
He’s also grown up fishing the Surf City waters, where his mom’s side of the family lives. For the last 12 odd years, he’s been a Surf City resident himself, and he’s found several of his biggest flounder in these waters, including a number of fish over the daunting 10 lb. mark.
“The biggest I’ve landed is 11.74 lbs.,” he tells me. “It won the flounder division of the 1st annual Top Dog Year Round Tournament.” As a person who has yet to crack the flounder citation mark, I have trouble even imagining reaching the double digit club.
Flounder fishing was our main target today (although reds and trout, he told me, would certainly be a possibility where we were going), and when Wayne met me at New River Marina he already had the livewell full of mullet minnows and live shrimp.
Wayne meets most of his charters at Soundside Park in Surf City at the base of the swing bridge, but he was having good results in some new areas he had been scoping out a little to the north. A couple of his clients earlier in the week had enjoyed solid catches of 1-3 lb. flounder, so it made sense to return.
He runs a 24′ Carolina Skiff with a 140 Suzuki on the back, and we made small talk about fatherhood (Wayne and his fiancé are expecting in December) during the short run to some structure he wanted to target that afternoon.
“The flounder are everywhere, but if you can find a hole you have a much better chance,” he tells me as we approach our site. He likes this area because of all the water that pushed through with each tide cycle. He also likes it because it has some deeper water.
When it comes to flounder fishing, Wayne’s first choice is anchoring up and targeting a certain area looking for the holes and ledges that might be holding that nice flattie. However, he also will drift certain areas, like creeks and inlets, to cover more area if he feels the bite is a little slow or he just wants to cover more territory.
We were rigged today with 6′ medium heavy rods spooled with 20 lb. mono leading to a Carolina rig using a 1 oz. egg sinker, just enough weight to keep the bait on the bottom. He uses 20 lb. fluoro to connect to a #2 kahl hook, and he likes to go with a short leader, usually about 12-14″.
Wayne tells me his use of short leaders started out of laziness. “When I was a little kid fishing the Surf City swing bridge every day, I would lose a lot of rigs, so I would just buy the packets of hooks already snelled. They had short leaders, and over time I just felt like I caught more fish on rigs with short leaders.”
While he’s caught plenty of flounder on artificials (he’s partial to Gulp shrimp), Wayne’s main method to big flounder is definitely live bait.
When I ask if he subscribes to the philosophy that you have to use a big bait to catch a big flounder, Wayne quickly replies, “No. I’ll argue with anybody over that. I’ve caught 10 and 12-pounders, and I don’t use anything over four inches. What I like to use we’re using today-nice, little, bite-size baits.”
Wayne had timed our afternoon trip to target an incoming tide, and we anchored up close enough to the structure so that we could cast a bait off the bow and let the tide slowly bounce it back to the boat. Working the front of the boat was my job, and Wayne took the stern and targeted another piece of structure.
Following Wayne’s advice, I threw out the Carolina-rigged mullet minnow several times getting as close to the structure as I could. Each time I’d slowly bump the bait along the bottom and try to find some deeper holes in the 12′ of water we were fishing.
Wayne likes targeting ledges for flounder, and he says that you can find fish both on the high and low side of the ledge. “Many are lying right on the side of the ledge, right where it drops off,” he explains using his hands to show the incline from low to high. “They look for bait swimming over the drop.”
Wayne then reels in and holds up half a mullet minnow. “There are some small blues here today,” he says. Just then I felt a tap tap, and then waited to feel a more significant resistance. The line soon felt heavy, and I gave it a pull only to feel something small struggling on the other end of the line. It was a small black bass.
We had only been anchored a few minutes and already had some fish action, albeit just a blue and a bass, but Wayne was anxious to get something photo worthy. When you have the newspaper guy on the boat to do a feature, it can add a little pressure to the day’s fishing.
On each cast we noted that there was less grass to contend with the closer we stayed to the structure. Many times we would be reeling in and feel the line get just a little heavy and knew the mullet was dragging grass. It’s really important, says Wayne, for baits to have a natural presentation, and grass certainly works against you. He also stresses the importance of keeping fresh baits on the hook. If your mullet isn’t swimming well, then it’s time to change it out.
Just then my bait got thumped. It seemed like the telltale tap tap of a flounder mouthing the bait, but the talk of blues must have been in my mind and I pulled the bait too quickly. When I brought up my rig, the mullet minnow had been scaled clean on both sides. Wayne confirmed that it had definitely been worked on by a flounder.
As I toss out another mullet, I ask Wayne about his philosophy on how to play the bite and set the hook on a flounder. Another common belief when it comes to flounder fishing is that you have to let the flounder have the bait for a really long time before you try to set the hook, but this is another area where Wayne politely disagrees.
“I don’t sit and count to 60 or sing the Birthday song 15 times,” he says as he’s clearing the grass from a mullet he just bounced back to the boat. “The longer it sits there, the longer, I think, you have to lose the fish.”
On setting the hook, Wayne suggests, “Watch your rod tip, and it will look and feel like he’s inching away from you little by little. Let that rod tip go down two or three times, and then just lift up on him.”
Wayne says that flounder will stay in the same area where you get and miss a strike. He had me continue to pull my bait across that same little hole, but several casts and retrieves later I had nothing to show. It seemed I had lost my flounder.
After about 10 minutes and a few more blues, sea bass, and a lizard fish, Wayne came up to the front of the skiff and put a line in the water. He put the rod in the rod holder and then went to the livewell to get a live shrimp on a float rig he wanted to send on a drift with the current. Before he could get the hook between the two black spots, his rod tip in the front was showing more of the tap tap we were wanting.
He picked up the rod, and the flounder very slowly started moving away with the bait. “As soon as you put enough pressure on him, he’s going to start doing this,” said Wayne using his hand to mock a flounder’s quick and short movements away from the pull of the line.
“A flounder will actually start to move away from you,” he tells me as we watch his rod tip display some more quick tugs. “When he starts moving away, you lift up on him, and 90% of the time you got him. You either got him in his throat or right in the corner of the mouth. It don’t take them long.”
He lifted up on the rod, and it bent over. Wayne was hooked up. When I ask him where his bait had been sitting before the strike, he gives me a sheepish smile and replies, “Right over there where you had your strike.”
Wayne had hooked my flounder.
As Wayne brought the fish to the boat, he talked about how he likes to fight a flounder. “Don’t try to break his jaw or anything,” advises Wayne. “Just keep steady, constant pressure. You do that and you’ll hang with the best of them.”
I looked over the bow down at what appeared to be a 26-27″ fish swimming beside the boat. Wayne got the fish to turn and brought it head first into the net. Not only had Wayne put the first “real” fish in the boat, but he had brought in a hefty 4 lb. flatfish, a more than respectable fish.
Wayne had caught my flounder.
Often fishing can be a mental exercise, and as my ego came to turns with both losing a fish and watching someone else then catch it, I was thankfully pulled back to living in th emoment by a good tug on my line. This time I had been working a live shrimp on my Carolina rig, and it had found a sheepshead hanging out at the base of a piling.
It was no 4 lb. flounder, but a sheepshead was starting to help my healing process.
Wayne starts finding keeper flounders with regularity in May, and he’ll continue to find flatties into the early part of November. As for big flounder, his favorite months are September and October.
If catching keeper flounder sounds like a trip you’d enjoy, then give Capt. Wayne Crisco, of Last Resort Charters out of Surf City, a call at (910) 465-0611. His specialty may be flounder, but he can also put you on plenty of reds and trout.
