Added on Thursday, August 12, 2010  Fish Post

Birthday Blight Made Right

A slick sea greeted the bow of Capt. Rick Croson’s 23 Tournament Onslow Bay as we nosed out Masonboro Inlet last week, and the 500hp on the boat’s transom made short work of a 35 mile run SSE.

“The beast has been awakened,” Rick said with a grin as he readied a large anchor with a formidable length of chain attached. “Something’s going to die.”

After a mildly challenging time trying to fill one of the boat’s livewells with some far-too-loosely schooled pogies in a pair of Wrightsville’s tidal creeks, Rick had the tank loaded and was ready to take his frustration out on some Cape Fear bottom dwellers.

With Fisherman’s Post Publisher Gary Hurley and his wife Leslie aboard for Gary’s annual birthday fishing trip, the mission had even more of a sense of urgency than usual, as Gary’s record has been less than stellar on birthday trips in the past.

After Gary wondered aloud whether our menhaden difficulties were the start of yet another birthday blight, Rick’s confidence never wavered. And after having fished a number of extremely successful days with the Living Waters Guide Service proprietor in the past, I too had faith we’d strike gold (or gag) by day’s end.

“Start out by dropping squid or cut baits,” Rick instructed as the boat pulled the anchor line taut. “That gets a scent into the water that will get the grouper feeding.”

We followed his mandate, and soon Gary struck first, decking a fat red porgy (or pinkie). Leslie and I followed it up with a few small members of the sea bass family, but Rick furrowed his brow, glanced at his GPS, and made the call to adjust the boat’s position.

“We’re not on it just right,” he explained. “The current’s running sideways to the wind, so we’re going to need to reset on the bottom.”

After a mild adjustment of the boat’s position and a re-anchoring, Rick again told us to drop some squid or cut Spanish sardines to the seafloor. He took the moments we used baiting up to explain the importance of precise anchoring in adding groupers to the fish box.

“I almost never drift when I’m fishing with bait,” Rick said as we again drifted back on the anchor rope. “When you do, you’re dragging that scent across the bottom, and you disperse the fish because they’re trying to chase down that smell. When you anchor up, you concentrate that smell in one place and bring the fish to you instead of going to them.”

Again, Gary’s was the first rod to bend under the strain of an unhappy bottom dweller, and this time Rick liked what he saw as the fish came over the gunwale.

Glancing behind me, I saw a fat white grunt flopping in the fish basket, and recalled the old bottom fishing adage “where there’s grunts, there’s grouper.”

While Gary and I continued dropping squid and sardines to enhance the scent cloud beneath the boat, Rick helped Leslie, on her second bottom fishing expedition ever, with a brief tutorial.

“You don’t want the weight to bounce on the bottom” he explained, one eye on an impressive display of red and green playing out on the depthfinder. “It needs to just lay there. Start cranking when you feel the taps. When they stop, your bait’s gone.”

“Guys, look at that ledge. We’re on it,” he added, gesturing at some marks hovering on the hard red bottom line. “Those are grouper.”

Leslie took the lesson to heart and was soon cranking up grunts and pinkies, and I was beginning to feel the need for a tutorial myself, as I was losing bait after bait without joining the hookup party.

In the midst of burning yet another empty hook back to the surface for a re-baiting, I received auditory confirmation that Rick’s sounder-reading skills were as on point as his anchoring—the grunts and heavy breathing of a grown man fast to an angry grouper.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw Gary struggling to put some line onto his reel before the fish found the rocks and took Gary’s rig with it. I couldn’t help but feel I played a role in the fish, as I was far and away the person who’d contributed the most baits to our undersea chum line.

“Max, you can start dropping pogies now,” Rick allowed, keeping an eye on Gary’s bent rod.

“Nice gag. Really nice gag!” I heard him say a few moments later, as a frisky pogy descended toward the seafloor 90’ below on my rig.

“Look at the AJ’s!” Rick exclaimed, and sure enough, a gang of 40 lb. class amberjacks had followed Gary’s grouper to the surface, but they quickly retreated when the fish was pulled from the water, likely not desiring the same fate.

As the captain swung the 14 lb. gag aboard, we all noticed something at the same time—a modest black sea bass sliding on Gary’s leader, a rather unlucky bass that must have caught the grouper’s eye as it left the safety of the bottom structure below.

“That was a bit misleading,” the publisher said. “It was a pretty insignificant bite. Apparently I first caught a sea bass, and then the sea bass caught a grouper. I’ll take that luck any day.”

The grouper was soon telegraphing its displeasure at the situation with a series of thumps against an orange fish basket barely large enough to contain it, and the three of us dropped baits with renewed fervor, searching for the gag’s relatives.

I was next to strike, and after a modest battle (not quite the stalemate Gary had been in) I added a smaller but easily legal gag in the 8 lb. range to the basket.

My fish had fallen for a pogie, and Gary grabbed one from the well for himself, with a quick question to Rick about the best way to hook the wriggling baitfish.

“Go from the bottom to the top of the head,” he explained, unhooking yet another fat grunt Leslie had cranked up. “If you hook them like you’re king fishing, the hooks will get back into their bodies and don’t set well. You’ll be trying to get a grouper up and then they just come off, over and over again.”

Hurley followed the advice, but his bait wasn’t the next to meet an unpleasant destiny in a grouper’s maw.

“Crank! Crank!” I heard Rick’s voice grow excited and saw Leslie’s rod in a deep, thumping arc to the water’s surface. “Don’t give up! Crank down!”

Gary added some words of spousal encouragement/teasing while Leslie focused on the task at hand, grinding the conventional reel’s handle in a laborious circle against the fervent protests of the fish below.

A few moments later, Rick peered into the water and looked back up with a satisfied grin.

“Well, look at that,” he said reaching behind him to pluck a gaff from the leaning post rod holder. “Pretty gag.”

Leslie wound the final few yards of line onto the reel, and Rick planted the gaff in the chin of a virtual twin of Gary’s gag.

After some photos of our three fish, we slid them amidst some bags of ice in the Onslow’s starboard cockpit fish box.

“Where’s your birthday curse now?” Rick asked, beaming as he shut the lid. “Dead in the box, that’s where it is!”

Scarcely mid-morning and three of our four grouper limit boxed up, we all wondered who’d be the angler to fill it out.

“Try butterflying one of the pogies,” Rick suggested to me, apparently deciding that he might need to be the one to put our final fish in the boat as he baited up a bottom outfit and sent it down.

I did, and my next drop resulted in a crippling hookup.

“Rick,” I huffed, “I think it’s a pretty nice gag.”

Indeed, and Rick soon planted the gaff in our largest fish of the morning, an 18 pounder.

With our limit of gags in the boat before noon, we pondered what to do next.

“It’s your birthday, that’s up to you,” the captain told Gary. “We could go offshore and try for some reds and other bottomfish, troll for a while, whatever you want.”

Gary thought for a moment before replying.

“Well you got Leslie her first gag,” he said. “And she’s never caught a king or a dolphin before, so why don’t we troll? We’ve got plenty of grouper.” No argument there.

I took the gleam in the captain’s eye as an acceptance of the mission.

We’d marked a good bit of midwater bait while moving around the area looking at bottom on the sounder, and seen several schools being harassed by gamefish on the surface while we fished, so I don’t think anyone was doubting Rick’s ability to produce some fish on the troll.

After hauling the anchor, Rick instructed me on helping him set a simple slow-trolling spread of pogies, a downrigger bait 40’ deep, a long naked bait, a shorter line wearing a blue/Mylar Blue Water Candy skirt, and a double pogie rig in the propwash.

With the lines set and the pogies swimming seductively in the boat’s wake, he pointed the bow at the spot we come off plane that morning, where a series of ledges had the baitfish concentrated and the color scope looking like radar marking series of thunderstorms.

We hadn’t come close to making it back to the spot, however, when the downrigger line popped from the clip and reel began shrieking as something took off against the light drag.

“There’s your king mackerel,” Rick announced, summoning Leslie. “Here, take the rod.”

Leslie did, and she held on while a teenager king took a screaming run, coming up a bit in the water column but not quite making it to the surface. Rick put the boat in a lazy turn towards the fish, which had streaked off to the port side, allowing us to keep the long line in the water in case any of its compatriots wanted a meal as well.

As Leslie’s reeling and the boat’s motion conspired to close the gap on the king, it took a zippy run, tearing across the back of the transom to the starboard.

“Just walk right underneath the long line and follow the fish,” Rick said. “We’ll probably be able to gaff him on that side unless he takes another turn.”

Sure enough, after a few brief circles below the boat, Rick was swinging Leslie’s first king mackerel over the Onslow’s port gunwale, and another first was checked off her angling list.

“Wow, he’s the same size,” she said, smiling, “But those are a lot easier to reel in than grouper.”

After a photo session with the shimmering fresh-from-the-water mackerel, we began to reset the spread, and something took an interest in the long line while I was dropping it back. I free-spooled the bait a moment when the fish dropped it, and soon line was peeling off the reel at a rapid clip. When I advanced the Accurate’s drag lever to add a little pressure, a spirited dolphin leapt from the boat’s wake in a flash of green and gold.

“Leslie,” we all shouted, “Grab the rod!”

Within a few minutes, the little cow dolphin’s acrobatic antics and a few brief runs took their toll, and Leslie’s dolphin met Rick’s gaff.

With three offshore fishing firsts for Leslie, finally a banner birthday trip in the books for Gary, and a box full of meat, to say Rick had come through would be a severe understatement. We made a quick stop at a wreck 20 miles out on the way home to feed our remaining pogies to a pack of Rick’s “pet” amberjacks, who were more than happy to show themselves for a free meal.

“They hear my motors coming and it’s like the ice cream man’s song,” Rick explained tossing a netful of baits to the delight of a quartet of jacks. “They run right up to the truck.”

Rick’s equally comfortable pursuing virtually every gamefish off the NC coast, from flounder and spanish nearshore to blue marlin in the Gulf Stream. In addition to fishing on his Onslow Bay, he also runs private guide trips teaching clients how to use their own boats and tackle to their full potential. To find out more information about Living Waters Guide Service or talk to Rick about a trip, visit www.livingwatersguide.com or give him a call at (910) 620-7709.