Searching for Upper Slot Reds
When I saw Capts. Jeff Cronk and Mike Taylor walk up to the scales at the Surf City IFA Redfish Tour event with a pair of red drum averaging just over 7 lbs. each, I was reminded that Gary Hurley and I had scheduled a fishing trip with Jeff the following Wednesday afternoon. And the pudgy reds that earned them second place out of the 43 teams in the event also gave me an inkling that we’d arranged an outing with the right captain.
On the appointed Wednesday, seeing Jeff and Mike zoom up to the dock at Dudley’s Marina after their morning half-day charters aboard matching 24’ Ranger bay boats wrapped with their tournament team name, NCCharterfishing.com, and multitude of sponsors further assured me that we’d have a successful trip.
“The tide’s really low right now,” Jeff, who operates Fish’N 4 Life Charters out of Swansboro, told us after helping his morning party ashore. This was evident, as I’d never seen lower water surrounding the Hwy. 24 Bridge in many trips across it. “Why don’t we get some food and meet back here in an hour. There’s just not enough water now.”
Coincidentally, Gary and I had an errand to run at The Reel Outdoors in Emerald Isle, just across the bridge from Swansboro. We returned an hour later to find a slightly higher tide, but still not quite as much water as Jeff felt he needed to get back to his good redfish spots.
After we made two quick drifts in the channel near the Bogue Inlet Coast Guard Station looking for a flounder, Jeff liked the water level on the marsh grass.
“Wind them up. The water’s getting high enough to go looking for the reds. There an hour’s tide difference between here near the inlet and Dudley’s,” he explained as we slid the spinning rods into the holders. While pointing the boat’s bow toward the inlet, he re-rigged our rods so that we had three equipped with topwater plugs and three with jigheads we’d be tipping with Gulp baits. What ensued was the very definition of a run-and–gun search for our hoped-for adversaries—upper slot limit red drum between 25-27”, the kind that earn big checks in redfish tournaments.
By the time we went drum-hunting, Jeff had already called up his tournament partner, who was searching for the fish with another party. This team approach not only helps the captains know where the fish will be on tournament days, it greatly increases the odds of success while fishing with clients as well.
As we headed across the entrance channel to Bogue Inlet, bound for some bays behind Bear Island, Jeff noticed some anglers surf-casting from an island in the middle of the inlet. He turned to us, raising his motor on a hydraulic jackplate, and asked with a grin, “You guys aren’t afraid to get wet, are you?”
Assured that we weren’t, he took off up a shallow ditch that led past the surf-casters’ island to the inlet shoals. Slowing down when we drew even with the island, it was apparent that several people were hooked up, but Jeff wasn’t sure it was what we were looking for.
“Those could be reds or bluefish,” he said, keeping an eye on the anglers’ bent rods. A bronze-flanked fish that emerged from the suds assured us they were the former.
“Yep, reds. Nice upper-slot fish, too. They come out here on the shoals when we have these really low tides,” Jeff said, pausing to tie on some heavier jigheads better suited to the white water crashing on the shoals. Instructing us to bait up with his go-to tournament bait, a white 4” Gulp pogy, the captain ran to the bow, using his trolling motor to keep the bay boat’s nose into the waves as all three of us cast into the turbulence. It only took a few casts for Jeff to decide the fish weren’t where we were, and after another try further out on the shoals, we motored back into the inlet.
“They’re feeding right in front of the island, and I can’t get there without getting in the surf fishermen’s way,” he explained, apparently confident he could find some fish inshore.
After a quick run through some nearby creeks, we arrived at Jeff’s next spot, a bay behind Bear Island where schools of reds had recently been feeding. After we spent a few minutes casting topwaters around the bay’s grassy perimeter with no signs of life except for a few jumbo mullet we spooked, Jeff pulled the plug on the spot, idling down the only narrow ditch deep enough to take us back to the creek channel we’d come from.
We pulled into another nearby bay, and after working a few hundred yards of the shoreline, I finally had an explosion on my topwater, a MirrOlure Top Dog in the venerable 808 color (black-back, silver sides, and orange belly).
The fish hadn’t taken the hooks, however, and Jeff, Gary, and I began casting back to the small grass point where the fish struck. Two casts later, Gary had a similar blow-up, but again the fish missed the treble hooks. However, my lure was a few feet behind it, and almost immediately disappeared with a splash. This time, I reared back and heard my drag give up some line while the fish shook its head and ran.
Watching while I fought the fish, Jeff thought it was a smaller one because of the difficulty it had taking the plug. I soon realized he was right, as a red of around 18” succumbed to the pressure quickly, allowing Jeff to slide a net beneath it.
Though the red wasn’t huge, we were all glad to see it and, after a few photos, I released the young pup. As we cast around the area for several more minutes without a strike, Jeff explained that the smaller fish don’t often form the dense schools that the upper-slot reds do around Swansboro, and are generally stragglers. A few more casts convinced him that the fish had few if any companions in the confined bay, and we struck out for the next spot he wanted to check, a large flat behind Emerald Isle ringed with oysters and marsh grass.
Using the trolling motor to guide us up another narrow entry ditch just deeper than the surrounding flat, Jeff instructed us on how to address the new spot.
“Just cast straight to the grass, he said after I lobbed a first throw across his and Gary’s lines trying to cast ahead of the boat. “The fish will be feeding right up against the grass.”
Sure enough, a few casts later, something annihilated my plug just after touchdown, before I’d even had a chance to crank the slack out of the line.
Winding furiously, I finally came tight on a fish that was now 20’ or more up the grass from the white water left over from the savage strike.
“That’s a better fish,” Jeff said while the red took line. Indeed. This one put up a much better account of itself than the previous drum had, and although it took at least twice as long, I again managed to pressure a red into Jeff’s waiting net. The fish taped out to 24.5”, not quite a tournament-winner, but definitely a step in the right direction.
Though my hookset was delayed by the slack line left over from my cast, a look into the red’s mouth made it clear that it wasn’t getting away. The fish had engulfed the entire 4” topwater plug, and had at least three of the six hook points on the lure embedded into its tough jaws.
“These bigger fish hit a lot harder, and they’re much more aggressive with the topwaters on a rising tide,” Jeff said, producing a pair of needle nose pliers to unhook the fish. Though well-hooked, the trebles came out easily, and the red swam off strong after another quick photo session.
Since this fish was closer to the tournament-class fish that tend to form large schools on the flats, we again cast for a few more minutes with out any action, although we noted several suspicious wakes moving along the grass line.
Just as at the inlet, bays, and several creek areas we’d searched out in between, Jeff was quick to make the call to check out some more water after determining that there weren’t any of the big schools he was seeking in the area.
By this time, the tide had begun to come out, and Jeff decided to make the run under the Hwy. 24 Bridge at Swansboro and explore some of his productive areas in the White Oak River.
Soon after he dropped the trolling motor and began guiding us along the concave shoreline of a bay off the White Oak, something took a pass at my topwater without even submerging the plug.
“Gary, quick, grab that Gulp bait,” Jeff said as Gary scrambled to ready the rod rigged with a 1/8 oz. jighead and a white Gulp pogy. “Now cast right behind Max’s bait.”
This technique of following up a missed topwater strike with a Gulp presentation is one of the principle ways Jeff and Taylor fish during the tournaments, and the results of Gary’s well-placed cast proved why. After following the captain’s advice to twitch the lure once, then let it sit, Gary got a strike and a boil on the surface soon confirmed he had a red on. This fish turned out to be slightly larger than my first—around 20”—and Gary was able to subdue it after a quick fight. Although this fish was smaller, Jeff assured us that the Gulp and light jighead are equally effective on the upper-slot reds.
“A lot of guys say ‘I can find the fish but they won’t bite anything. I’ve tried everything’,” Jeff explained showing me several of his jigs. “But you look at their rods and they just have topwaters, spinnerbaits, and 1/4 oz. jigheads tied on. They need to try a Gulp on 1/8 or 1/16 oz. jighead.”
After another textbook photo session/release, we continued fishing the area for a few more minutes, then threw topwaters and Gulps in the next bay over without results. Again, we left within 10 minutes as Jeff decided the fish weren’t there, and headed to another spot he’s had success in the past, a small creek mouth in the White Oak marsh with oyster rock points extending from each side.
Within 10 casts here, we’d had several blow-ups on the surface plugs, and Gary and I soon hooked up with solid-feeling drum, although both managed to wallow on the other side of the oyster rocks until they managed to shake the hooks. After guiding the boat to the other side of the rocks with his trolling motor, Jeff hooked up on another drum, and seeing telltale wakes cruising along the marsh grass, urged me to flip the switch on his console that lowers the Power Pole mounted on the boat’s transom to keep the boat in place. With a fish on, he pointed to several wakes and encouraged Gary and I to cast to them while fighting his drum.
As our casts landed, it became apparent that this was a much larger school of fish than we’d originally thought, as wakes suddenly appeared to the left, right, and in front of the boat.
“This is a school of 100 or more,” Jeff said animatedly, at least as excited as Gary and I to have found a large body of fish. Both of us hooked up again, and though the fish again pulled the hooks on the topwaters, the number of fish around us made it apparent we’d have more chances. The fish broke up into several smaller pods, and Jeff raised the Power Pole and began tracking the fish with the trolling motor while fighting a red of his own.
“I wish they were like dolphin, and we could keep the school here by leaving one in the water,” Jeff said, leading a topwater-hooked red (that taped out as a tournament-perfect 27”) around with his rod as we followed the pods of reds.
For the next 20 minutes, one of us was hooked up nearly constantly, and at one point we briefly had a triple-header on, with two fish hooked on topwaters and one on a Gulp bait. On the topwater plugs, we pulled the hooks on a number more fish, but the pain was tempered by hooking up again a few casts later. The flurry of activity was so intense I lost count, but I believe I landed three more reds (and probably would have landed several more had I switched from a topwater to a Gulp bait due the much higher percentage of solid hookups).
The school eventually broke up, but it couldn’t have been better timing as we were losing daylight pretty quickly. We made a few more casts to another oyster rock, and then called it an evening, with Gary and I thrilled to have experienced the schooling reds, and Jeff with some fresh tournament reconnaissance complete.
Access from the White Oak’s channel to our last spot was virtually blocked by a flounder net, meaning that reds would have a very difficult time getting to their feeding grounds without getting tangled in the mesh. According to Jeff, the Swansboro backwaters are netted more intensively than nearly any area in the state, and the nets have a definite impact on the fishing.
“Down in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, when you find a school of reds feeding somewhere, they’ll probably be there on that tide until there’s a drastic weather change. Up here, they’ll feed in the same spot until someone sets a net on it,” he explained. While not all the reds end up trapped in the mesh, those fish that get past the net won’t feed in the area again until it is moved.
If fishing with a captain whose tournament successes speak for themselves (look at the tournament resume at his site www.nccharterfishing.com/fishn4life.html for an idea) sounds like a good time to you, give Jeff a call at (336) 558-5697 to schedule a trip or get more information. He targets reds in the area virtually year round, and also specializes in targeting speckled trout, flounder, sheepshead, king, spanish mackerel, and other hard-fighting inshore and nearshore species during the summer months.
