Tidelines – April 14, 2011
One of the ongoing joys of working with Fisherman’s Post is spending a day on the water with guys like Capt. Ricky Kellum of Speckled Specialist Charters out of Jacksonville.
Ricky took Max and I out one afternoon last week on a “searching” trip, as he hadn’t been on the water in several days and wasn’t sure what the bite would be like in the New River. He made no grand promises to us, but a day on the water with Ricky is entertaining in more ways than just catching fish. We were quick to accept.
The three of us hit a number of Ricky’s haunts, but all we were able to produce in our short afternoon together was a couple of small reds and one smaller speckled trout. Though the bite was slow to non-existent that day, Max and I still, as expected, came home smiling with stories to tell.
Ricky is arguably the best speckled trout fisherman in our area, and a lot of our chatter that day understandably centered on trout. And the New River has been his backyard since a boy, so we never traveled too far in any direction without Ricky having a story to tell.
We passed one point that Ricky had named “”Price’s Point.” Southport’s Jimmy Price, while searching for flounder during his brief stint opening up a tackle shop in Sneads Ferry, had found that the point held trout. While flounder are always considered bycatch for Ricky, a new trout hole gets his attention.
Then a short ride away we were on a partially exposed shell bed right next to a deep channel. Ricky gave credit for this spot to a commercial fisherman who one day just happened to ask him if he ever fished that spot. Ricky hadn’t, but thanks to the old man’s question he knew it would be a spot that he fished from then on.
Minutes later as we approached the 172 Bridge, Ricky talked about how the bridge was not only the favorite of his late father (who had held the NC record for speckled trout), but it was the only place his father would fish for big specks.
Ricky’s dad, he told us, didn’t even own a tackle box. All he fished with at the bridge were green grubs on red heads, so he carried all the tackle he needed in a brown paper bag.
On further up the river we were flagged down by JP McCann of Riverworks and Sturgeon City of Jacksonville. JP had been consulting and working with Ricky on the new artifical reef (AR-398) in the area (hopefully a future Ricky trout site), and he wanted a photo of us fishing by one of the new buoys to help promote the AR in an upcoming issue of NC Sea Grant’s publication Coastwatch.
Later yet we found our way up a creek, and Ricky’s talk went to stories of the 1980s when that stretch of water was a regular producer of specks so big and wide they were called “stovepipe” trout.
And in between casts we caught up with Ricky on his efforts to promote the Coastal Gamefish Bill (NC HB 353), his ongoing work with the trout tagging program, and the regular travels he had to NCDMF Speckled Trout Advisory Board meetings.
Our trip back to the marina, though, was not spent talking about trout, but rather red drum. Ricky and a bunch of his friends have put together a red drum tournament to help the Powell family (Power Marine Outfitters and New River Marina) meet some of the medical costs they have amassed as their son Eric battles with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
You’d be hard pressed to find a guy better liked than Eric, and testament to that love for Eric can be seen in the fishing community’s rally behind this fundraiser.
So Ricky had Max and I laughing and intrigued all day with stories of trout, trout fishermen, and trout waters, but he ended that day on a softer note. Dale Powell, he told us, had asked Ricky to fish the Eric Powell Redfish Tournament in Eric’s Maverick, and we could tell that the Speckled Specialist (who already told us that any money he wins in the tournament will go right back to Eric) was already putting pressure on himself to win the tournament.
The afternoon may have only presented us with a couple of small fish, but even though the fish didn’t cooperate, I became an even bigger fan of Ricky Kellum.
