Added on Thursday, August 27, 2009  Fish Post

A Citation For The Salesman

“Make sure you bring the little feller with you,” Capt. Charles Brown, of Old Core Sound Guide Service, repeatedly told me on the phone as we planned a late August “old” red drum trip. “We’re gonna put him on one of these great big ones.”

Despite Charlie’s propensity to refer to just about anyone by that diminutive moniker regardless of size (including the 6’8” author), I knew the “little feller” he was currently referring to was Fisherman’s Post Sales Manager Eddie Hardgrove, at 5’9”, the actual little fellow of the Fish Post crew.

When Eddie learned of his invitation, he was ecstatic. He’d never caught a citation-class (40”+) red drum, and as the salesman, his duties often take precedence over Guide Time trips.

Electing to shirk our Sunday tasks in favor of going fishing with Charlie was an easy decision, as every fishing trip I’ve been on with the man has been an absolute pleasure. Our trio piled into Gary’s Honda Passport early Sunday afternoon for the trip to Charlie’s house just shy of the Harkers Island bridge, where we hopped into Charlie’s pickup, his 23’ Venture bay boat in tow, for a much shorter drive to Cedar Island, our jump-off point into the Pamlico Sound and, hopefully, some action with the venerable old reds.

As a lifelong resident of the Down East region (basically the area between Beaufort and Cedar Island), any trip with Charlie is a learning experience, whether on the water or in the truck, and our 40 mile jaunt Down East was a great way to start the evening.

“I’m taking you boys on a tour of God’s Country,” Charlie said as we cruised through the community of Straits, demonstrating the endemic pride Down Easters seem to have for the area.

As we whizzed down Highway 12, the blacktop artery that serves as the only terrestrial route through towns separated by marsh and water like Davis, Stacy, Atlantic, and Smyrna, Charlie gestured at landmarks from both his personal history and the region’s.

We passed spots like “Milk Truck Curve” (where years ago a milk truck on its side in the marsh reminded travelers to take it easy on the winding road), the Thoroughfare (esteemed for its puppy drum and speckled trout fishing), and the Down East Public Library (“I think they carry Playboy and fishing books,” Charlie jokingly guessed). As we traversed the final few miles of the journey, Charlie solved a mystery for me.

“A buddy from Beaufort was always telling me about some kind of lift truck festival on Cedar Island. You know anything about that?” I queried, confident that, of course, Charlie did.

“Boom Trucks!” the captain fairly boomed out himself. “Some of the nets these guys use weigh a thousand pounds, so they have to use boom trucks to get the nets into the boats.”

“Look! Boom Truck!” he shouted pointing beside a house to a rusting Chevy with an electric winch attached to an A-frame jutting from the bed.

Aha, Boom Trucks. “OK, so what’s the deal with the festival?” I asked.

“Oh they decorate the trucks: paint the things up like crazy, Rasta colors, you name it, and have themselves a parade,” Charlie explained, pausing to excitedly shout out the location of another boom truck. “They have a time out here.”

I now know that one of the unaccomplished things on my mandatory life list is attending, at least once, the Cedar Island Boom Truck Festival.

As a youth, my family took a trip to Ocracoke Island once a year, riding the Cedar Island Ferry; consequently, I’ve made this drive dozens of times, but in the hour it took to get from Charlie’s to Cedar Island I felt like I was finally getting a legitimate tour of the area.

The history lesson changed over from land to sea as we eased the Venture into the water at the public ramp adjacent to the ferry docks and headed out into Pamlico Sound.

“Some serious speckled trout right there,” Charlie explained as we rounded the rock jetty guarding the ferry harbor. He pinned the Suzuki 250’s throttle for a brief run into the Sound, pulling back on the stick just a mile from where we’d put in.

After sinking his anchor in the sound’s muddy bottom atop a lump that rose a foot or two from the surrounding seabed in 21’ of water, Charlie opened one of the Venture’s cavernous rear hatches to reveal 50 lbs. of extremely fresh mullet, looking as though they might have leapt from the water into the ice-filled box moments before.

“Just let me get the sacrificial knife and sacrificial board out here, and we’re going to sacrifice some mullets,” Charlie said, slicing three of the big mullet into massive steaks atop a well-worn square of plywood.

“We’re going to fish seven lines tonight, boys,” he continued, finishing up his knife work and demonstrating how to hook the easily quarter-pound baits on the 10/0 Owner circle hooks he prefers. Charlie’s rigs were tied to heavy Fin-Nor saltwater spinners, and the captain repeatedly emphasized the need to use heavy tackle and boat these fish fast to minimize the stress put on them.

Following Charlie’s lead, we baited the specialized rigs that are now a requirement in the Pamlico Sound/Neuse River trophy red drum fishery. Then we fan-casted them around the boat, fishing three rods out of the leaning post and two out of the back gunwale holders in a spread behind the boat, and two out of the aluminum holders welded to the console grab rail at 45 degree angles off the bow.

As of this year, the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission has mandated the use of a very specific rig in these waters during the July1-September 30 window when the big reds spawn in the area. The new regulations are designed to keep post-release mortality in the 100% catch and release fishery to a minimum.

The requirements stipulate that anglers fishing in the Pamlico and its tributaries with natural baits between 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. with hooks larger than 4/0 must use barbless circle hooks with leaders of no more than 6” separating the hooks from a fixed weight of no less than 2 oz.

Charlie’s rigs go a bit further, keeping the leader down to 4” and using 4-5 oz. sinkers, modifications he feels both increase the hookup ratio of the rig and cut the odds of gut-hooking one of the breeding fish to near-zero.

“I like a 4-inch leader,” Charlie had explained on the ride up, “and a 4 or 5 oz. barrel weight. With the shorter leader, when he grabs it, he feels that weight and turns off, and that Owner is right in the corner of his mouth. The Owner’s a heavy hook, and the gap’s just right to get them right in the corner. The rig hooks 98% of these fish in the corner of the mouth or the lower jaw, right where you want it. When he takes it, you just let that rod bow up and he’s on.”

Charlie prefers the mullet we’d pinned to the rigs over baits like cut spot and pogies for a simple reason—the fat content.

“That oil gets in the water and draws them in. Look at the fat in here,” he explained, pointing out a yellow layer in one of the mullet chunks. “And look at the balloons coming up out there.”

Sure enough, glancing behind the boat we could pinpoint the location of every rig on the bottom by the round oil slick greasing up the surface directly above it.

A few sharp taps on the rods indicated that the bluefish had found our mullet’s oil trails appealing. They kept us changing out the baits regularly, but none of Charlie’s 30 lb. class Fin-Nor spinning outfits took on the deep bow we were looking for. Charlie quickly made the call to try a shallower spot.

Hauling anchor, we moved a short distance to a slight gully on the bottom in 13’ of water where Charlie said the reds would begin funneling through around dark. Again we set the seven-line spread, and again we waited, changing out baits after relentless assaults from pinfish and bluefish.

Shortly thereafter, Charlie got a call on the radio from Capt. George Beckwith, of Down East Guide Service, an Oriental-based guide he works closely with when hunting for the big reds.

“George takes care of me, he does,” Charlie explained.

“You getting what you need down there?” Beckwith queried.

The answer was negative, and Beckwith revealed that he’d tallied a couple releases a few miles northwest of our location. Charlie thanked him and decided to make the run.

“Wind ‘em up, boys. We’re going over to George,” he said, firing up the Suzuki.

The Venture made quick work of the run, even in a very steep 1-2’ Pamlico Sound chop, and we were soon settling back on the anchor line a few hundred yards off Beckwith’s bow as the sun began to settle down for the evening as well.

Again, we were treated to a lesson as Charlie explained more about the area.

“See those lights over there? That’s the bombing range, and the ship’s their target,” he said after we’d reset our seven lines.

“Some nights it’s the best show you can imagine, helicopters lighting the thing up, tracers, missiles, you name it,” he said gesturing to a ship silhouetted by the falling sun.

As the sun dropped, we kept an eye on Beckwith’s boat, noting that despite his earlier success he seemed to be experiencing the same lack of action that we were.

The bite had died, and the few other people we heard on the radio seemed to be having the same luck.

After an hour, Beckwith was calling it a night, and Charlie made the call to head back to our last spot to try and eke a few fish out before we did the same.

We picked up, ran back to the subsurface gully in the dark, and reset the boat and the spread.

Charlie dialed in the nighttime mode on his new Lowrance depthfinder/chartplotter combo unit and pointed to a kink in one of the track lines crisscrossing the screen next to our current one.

“We’re 15’ away from where we caught five last night,” he said. “They should be here.”

We went through a few more bait-change cycles courtesy of the ever-present blues and pins before the rod in the port console holder took on the deep bow we’d been waiting for all evening.

“There he is, Eddie. Grab it!” Charley boomed out. With a grin somehow visible in the darkness, Eddie did as told. The fish made a hard run, but it was stopped short after 15 seconds by the heavy drags that Charlie and the other captains in this fishery believe in.

Eddie gained a few yards of line before the fish turned and made the reel squeal yet again, the heavy spinner bent double by what was obviously a substantial fish.

As readers of previous Guide Time articles that Eddie’s been a part of no doubt know, the “little feller” bears the brunt of some serious trash talk, particularly when struggling with a large piscine adversary, but Gary and I were mostly silent for this battle, both fervently hoping that the salesman would be able to fill out his first red drum citation paperwork this night.

The heavy, 30 lb. gear was clearly taking a toll on the fish, as Eddie was able to gain more line between each successive run, but the fish soon decided to throw a curveball, swimming under the anchor line when the drag prevented it from taking off on a vector directly away from the boat.

“Go under the anchor, little feller,” Charlie said, lifting the rode for Eddie to duck under.

“See how I have that set up,” Charlie explained, holding up an anchor line with an eye-spliced branch line off of it and attaching to the cleat. The setup allows him to raise the rode for an angler to pass beneath easily without having to untie it from a cleat.

The red’s runs continued to get shorter, and soon the drum was visible a few yards off the starboard bow, easily a citation-class fish.

After another minute, Eddie was able to bring the fish to Charlie’s waiting hands, and the captain cradled the fish and brought it aboard, gently setting the drum on the Venture’s deck to measure it.

“It’s 47 inches,” he determined, and passed the 40 lb. class fish to Eddie for a photo op. I’m not sure whether the salesman’s grin had left his face from the time he picked up the rod, but if so, it had returned in full force as he accepted Charlie’s somewhat unwieldy gift.

“Hold it in your arms like you hold a baby—hold the weight,” Charlie instructed as Eddie took over the fish. I snapped a few quick shots of Eddie, Charlie, and the drum before the captain took back the fish and revived it gently before sending it back on its way to the feeding and breeding routine that brings the fish to Pamlico every year.

The entire fight took less than five minutes, and the fish was on her way less than a minute after Charlie put his hands on it.

“That’s how you have to do it,” Charlie explained. “This isn’t a light-tackle fishery. You can’t fight these fish for an hour. The [lactic] acid builds up inside them, and this water’s 85 degrees. That’s like bathtub water. They can’t get rid of the acid in that water, and they literally cook from the inside out. You’ve got to get the fish in fast, get a measurement, get your picture, and get her back overboard.”

After a slow start, everyone aboard was ecstatic that Eddie had his citation fish. And we were hopeful that the bite was just getting started. Unfortunately, the next hour proved that the fish just weren’t feeding hard that night, and with the drive back to Harkers Island and then back to Wilmington preceding us (and those Sunday obligations we’d shirked looming on Monday’s horizon), it was time to call it a night.

“Wind ‘em up, boys,” Charlie called out for the final time, and we went to work. Just as I was reaching for the next to last line out, the rod in front of Gary doubled over, and line poured off the reel at an even more frantic pace than Eddie’s fish had accomplished.

Gary grabbed the rod, and he was instantly feeling the power of our second fish of the evening. This fish seemed determined to show the first one up, and it made a substantial run even against the heavy drag setting.

All of us were laughing in amazement at the fish’s poor sense of timing. Another 15 seconds and the red could have been happily gobbling the hookless chunks of bait we removed from the rigs and tossed overboard before blasting back towards Cedar Island. Instead, the fish had picked up one of the two hooked baits remaining in the water and was now making its displeasure at the situation clear.

Gary had to follow the fish to the bow of the boat, and again Charlie lifted the anchor rope in gentlemanly fashion, holding it well clear of Gary’s head while the publisher ambled by, powerless at first to do anything but follow the fish’s lead.

Like Eddie’s red, however, the drag pressure soon wore down the red’s resolve, and Gary began gaining line steadily, occasionally interrupted by powerful, but short runs.

I spent most of Gary’s battle looking through the camera’s viewfinder, trying in vain to capture a few action shots despite the SLR’s apparent unwillingness to focus on a moving target in the dark.

“Come on, big girl, let’s go, go, go!” Gary was chanting for some reason, but when I raised my eye from the stubborn camera, I figured it out. The fish was on the surface near the boat, and indeed it was a big girl, instantly distinguishable from Eddie’s fish by the massive shoulders and head that Gary was guiding towards Charlie’s open arms. The landing/measurement/photo/release session went as smoothly as Eddie’s fish had, and Gary’s drum was sent back to its own devices well under 10 minutes after the hookup. The red taped out at a bulky 51” and was truly an impressive animal.

With the fish on her way, hopefully slurping down a few of those hookless chunks we’d left on the bottom to compensate her for the inconvenience of being caught, we made our way back to the ramp and headed home. Spending the evening on the Pamlico Sound with a character as entertaining and likeable as Charlie with a few giant red drum releases to boot was worth the 5:00 a.m. bedtime, and I look forward to our next trip with the man, as it’s something Gary and I intend to make a yearly (or hopefully even more frequent) tradition.

The “old” drum bite on the Pamlico and Neuse will only get better as summer turns to fall, and anglers can look forward to solid drum fishing well into October. Capt. Charles Brown could make a tour of a box factory entertaining, so spending a day or evening with him on his native waters is not an experience to be missed.

Give him a call at (252) 728-2422 to talk about a trip, or visit Charlie’s website at www.oldcoresound.com for more information.