Added on Thursday, June 30, 2011  Fish Post

Live Bottom Lessons

“This is a little different than what we were doing last week,” John Roberts quipped to Capt. Mike Taylor, of Swansboro’s Taylor-Made Charters.

A little different to say the least. The week before, John, who owns the 55’ Jarrett Bay “Weldor’s Ark,” had teamed up with Mike to release a pair of blue marlin on their way to winning the Swansboro Rotary Blue Water Tournament. After what can only be described as a phenomenally successful cobia mission with Mike last May, I was confident we were in good angling company with the pair.

Their action had gone from dragging foot plus marlin plugs in the Gulf Stream off the Outer Banks to bouncing 2 oz. bucktails off a live bottom in search of flounder, but Mike and John didn’t approach it with any less enthusiasm.

Gary Hurley and I had joined the pair to horn in on Bogue Inlet’s storied nearshore flounder bite, and barely after finishing his sentence, John snapped up the tip of his medium spinning outfit, much to the chagrin of something that wanted to stay on the bottom 45’ below.

“Flounder,” Mike said, glancing at John’s bent rod. “I swear he can catch a flounder.”

After we reached our first spot that morning and began working the bucktails, I’d marveled at Mike’s ability to call whatever species of fish we hooked seconds after it bit, but it was now mid-afternoon, and the trick was old hat. After getting every fish right for the intervening hours, I had faith that the captain was again correct.

The 3 lb. class flounder flopping in the landing net moments later testified for him, and it was quickly placed in the company of several other flatfish and a mess of fat black sea bass in the bow fish box of Mike’s 23’ Ranger bay boat.

After a closure to the sea bass fishery over the winter, the fish had just reopened to harvest, and they’d provided an excellent secondary reason for Gary and me to hop on board.

“We don’t have to throw the bass back today,” Mike had said with a grin when we met the duo at Dudley’s Marina that morning. “They’re ours.”

“They’re all we catch lately,” Roberts added. “We’ve been catching 3 pounders just about everywhere.”

In the spirit of making the sea bass pay for the long months they’d been off limits, we’d run a bit further offshore than Mike’s usual flounder haunts to load up on bass before fishing our way back inshore for the flatfish.

The same tackle and rigging prove deadly on both fish. Medium to medium heavy spinning outfits with 40-50 lb. braided line are perfect, and they give anglers a fighting chance when the gag groupers that also inhabit the same bottom structure inhale the bait. A short fluorocarbon leader of similar strength separates the braid from a 2 oz. Spro bucktail, and Mike is absolutely a believer that the brand of bucktail matters.

“This is why you need the Spros,” he explained, pulling back the jig’s hair to show us the wire ‘keeper’ that helps hold a soft plastic bait on the hook. “That wire right there, you gotta have it. At 75 cents to $1 each, you can’t be losing that Gulp when they bite the tail, and they’re going to do it every drop.”

After a quick lesson in how to affix the 4” Gulp shrimp Mike likes to tip his bucktails with most securely to the keeper, we’d begun dropping on a live bottom system in 45’ of water just a few miles off Bogue Inlet.

The “bite on every drop” promise wasn’t far from the truth, but Gary and I whiffed our first few strikes, while Roberts wasted little time in breaking the boat’s skunk, adding an 18” flounder to the box a few minutes into fishing.

“A good hard hookset is real important,” Mike said, miming a powerful jerk after hearing us groan in frustration at the missed fish. “I call it the Bassmaster Classic. After that, just reel up steady. You lose more of them if you try to pump them up with the rod.”

Taking that advice to heart, Gary and I were able to turn the frustrated groans into yelps of excitement as we each doubled up our rods on the next drop.

Over the next 15 minutes, all four of us steadily hooked up on sea bass, but only a few were keepers, and Mike wasn’t satisfied with the ratio.

“Keep them up next time you reel in,” He said, scrolling through some waypoints on his chartplotter. “We’re going to head offshore to the sea bass hole.”

We settled in while Mike throttled up his 300 Yamaha for a brief run south, and were soon dropping our bucktails on a spot in 60-65’ of water, still close enough to the Crystal Coast that Emerald Isle was clearly visible on the horizon. 

Also clearly visible were the dark patches of rocky bottom we were dropping our jigs to, despite the fact that six stories of water separated us.

Without the skyline of Bogue Banks to the north, I would’ve easily believed I was fishing a reef in the Bahamas or some other tropical locale.

“Yep, we get some pretty water in here if a southeast wind blows for a couple days,” Mike said. “Those are coral heads you’re looking at down there.”

The bass action was steady, with an unarguable majority of keepers, but Mike lamented it wasn’t quite as good as it had been in previous weeks.

“The water temp’s come up almost 10 degrees since last week out here,” he explained after John added another knotheaded 2 lb. sea bass to the box. “I think the bass are on their way out of here.”

While Mike may have been a bit disappointed in the bite, I was enjoying watching the number of my favorite eating fish in the box creep steadily upward. The light gear we were catching them makes it even more fun, allowing the bass to put up a much more spirited battle than heavy grouper tackle would have.

Five drifts after we’d begun working Mike’s sea bass spot, the action remained steady, but the fish were getting a bit smaller, with approximately an even mix of keepers and throwbacks.

“See how they’re getting smaller,” Mike asked after I tossed back an 11-incher. “The bigger fish on a spot just about always bite first. They’re just more aggressive.”

After another drift that produced one keeper, the captain was ready to move on to greener pastures (or livelier live bottoms).

“You guys got enough bass?” he queried, to a heartily affirmative response. “Good, let’s head inshore and catch some flounder.”

We stowed the rods and headed back towards the beach, stopping at a ledge just off AR-345, then heading on after an unproductive drift.

Ten minutes and three miles of calm ocean in the future and Mike was again lining us up to drift over a favorite ledge area back in 45’ of water, close enough that the whitewater from the breakers highlighted the shore.

At this spot, it was on from the start, with Mike landing a pair of flounder (the first a respectable 16” and the second a near-4 pounder) on his first two drops.

“Look at that,” Roberts exclaimed as Mike’s second fish hit the deck. “He’ll set up the boat so he’s the only one catching fish. That’s not a joke. He’ll do it.”

With a sheepish grin, Mike replied that that was indeed possible, but not the case here.

“It depends on how they’re stacked up on the bottom. If it’s a well-defined ledge and they’re sitting on one side of it, yeah, you can do it. Here, they lay pretty scattered over the bottom.”

Mike’s friend and big-boat boss was quick to prove his captain right, as Roberts was next to double up on a twin to Mike’s larger fish.

Gary followed suit with a slightly smaller fish on his next drop, and I was beginning to feel left out, taking a few photos of the happy anglers with their chunky flatfish between scrambling around the boat and frantically bouncing the jig, waiting on my turn.

Mike again hooked up before my number was called, rod in the deep, thumping bow that I’d by now learned meant flatfish.

“Now that looks like a nice one,” Roberts needled. “Go ahead and catch him.”

His words must have jinxed the captain because the hook pulled seconds later.

This only gave Mike a chance to illustrate yet another lesson he’s learned offshore floundering.

“If he comes off on the way up,” he’d earlier explained, “let it drop back to the bottom. The jig will beat him back down there, and he’ll hit it again.”

I don’t know whether it was the same fish or not, but when I glanced back seconds later, Mike’s doubled up rod offered support for his theory.

My attention was brought back to my own spinning rod by a stout thump as the jig fell back from a modest hop I’d imparted, and I gave the fish a “Bassmaster Classic.”

The oceanic world must be a tougher scene than it is inside the inlets, because these nearshore flounder are pugilists compared to the flatfish inshore.

Despite more than adequate tackle, this flounder put a bend in the rod that would’ve led me to believe I’d have a sure-citation fish inshore. A few moments of steady, but inwardly-excited reeling later and Mike was sliding the net under my fish, a solid flounder by any account at 19”, but not the paper fish I’d thought was on the way to the surface.

The action continued unabated as long as we stayed on the spot, and after a few moments without action, Mike would be quick to adjust the boat, putting us right back on the fish.

Any bottom fisherman knows that boat positioning is critical to success; simply put, you can’t catch fish if your baits aren’t landing in the right spot. It’s as true nearshore as it is on a grouper spot in 120’, and to that end, Mike was constantly vigilant at the helm, nudging the motor in and out of gear to fine-tune our drifts.

“You guys stay on the bottom,” he explained, eyes on his bottom machine, one hand on the throttle, and the other rhythmically popping a bucktail off the bottom. “I’m just bumping the motor in reverse to maneuver us where we want to be.”

Mike’s power-drifting strategy has a number of advantages over traditional anchoring or drifting. For one, it allows anglers to stay mobile, fishing a spot quickly to gauge the action before setting up another drift or blasting off to another of the myriad bottom spots he’s marked within sight of Bogue Inlet.

Slowing and adjusting the drift with the motor also allows Mike’s anglers to fish nearly vertically, often hard to do unless the boat’s at anchor. Keeping the lines straight not only makes the bouncing action of the bucktail/Gulp combos more appealing to the flatfish, it makes worlds of difference in how often the jig hooks find purchase in the rocky bottom instead of a fish’s mouth.

Of course we snagged a few times over the day, but, between the four of us, there were less than a dozen bottom hookups over six hours of fishing, and Mike’s lure retrieval techniques led to us only losing one of the pricey bucktails to the bottom (though several were rendered hairless by the constant assault of bottom dwellers by day’s end).

“Don’t pull on it,” Mike explained after my jig snared the seafloor. “Bounce the rod tip and it should come off of there.”

If the bouncing doesn’t quickly end the situation, Mike bumps the motor in gear and gets directly above the obstruction. This often frees the jig, but if it doesn’t, he’s got another trick tucked away. After getting the line as tight as possible, he’ll pull a few feet of slack off the reel and pop the line like a bowstring (the action is difficult to describe but very similar to tripping a planer by hand offshore). After watching Mike free nearly every one of our serious snags this way, I’m a believer.

“Check your hook,” he told me after bowstringing my bucktail loose early that afternoon. “If the point’s messed up, you need to tie on a new one.”

The hook was unmarred, and I went back to bouncing the jig.

We continued adding to our flounder total over the next hour, Mike keeping the boat over a relatively small area of bottom that was producing the lion’s share of our keepers.

Needing to travel to South Carolina that evening to pre-fish a tournament that weekend, Mike asked if we had enough fish after Gary and John boated a double-header.

The unanimous answer was yes.

Before we took off, Mike added a bucket of seawater to the ice and fish in the box in order to super-chill our catch before we reached the dock. Back at Dudley’s, we tallied the damage—13 keeper flounder and an even 20 sea bass were the reward for our efforts. I’d wondered why Mike cared how cold the fish would be back at the dock, but my uncertainty was resolved when Mike took the time to clean all our fish, despite needing to get out of town.

The Bogue Inlet nearshore flounder bite stays solid all summer long. Along with sea bass and the occasional gag grouper, pelagic fish like large spanish and king mackerel, amberjacks, cobia, dolphin, and even sailfish feed over the same areas where the bottomfish live, and Mike’s as talented at coaxing the pelagics to bite as he is the bass and flounder. He also targets flatfish, red drum, speckled trout, and more inshore, and legions of wins and high finishes in inshore tournaments for all three testify to his qualifications inside the inlets.

You can call Mike at (252) 725-2623 or visit www.nccharterfishing.com for more information or to book a trip.