The Fish Box Runneth Over
After giving me his fishing report last week, Capt. Rick Croson, of Living Waters Guide Service out of Wrightsville Beach, told me there had been a change of plans regarding the fishing trip we’d scheduled. I prepared for bad news; however, as he explained that instead of targeting king mackerel and dolphin off Wrightsville Beach, we’d actually be headed far offshore to try our luck with snowy groupers and big amberjacks near the break before bottom fishing our way back towards land, my face split into a grin.
Joining us would be Jodie Gay, owner of Blue Water Candy Lures, and his son-in-law Chris Mclean. Jodie is one of Rick’s sponsors, a friend of Fisherman’s Post, and a highly entertaining person to share a boat with, so I began looking forward to the company as well as the fishing.
As Rick pulled back the throttles after the nearly 80 mile run to the sunken scallop boat known as the Snowy Wreck, I marveled at how smoothly and quickly the run had gone at 35-40 mph, nearly double the cruising speed of many of the offshore boats I’ve fished on.
Rick runs a 23 Tournament Onslow Bay center console with twin 250 hp Evinrude Etecs, his second Onslow Bay. After a trip several years ago on his previous boat, a 20′, where the weather deteriorated, I had no doubts about the quality of the Onslow’s construction, but the 23′ takes it a step further. Not only is the 500 hp boat a speedster, its 24.5 degree deadrise cuts through the seas like they don’t exist. In addition, the boat doesn’t exhibit the beam rolling when underway like other high deadrise hulls I’ve ridden on do.
“I need two jiggers,” Rick said after scanning his depth finder on a few exploratory drifts of the boat wreck located 840′ beneath his Onslow Bay. Fisherman’s Post Publisher Gary Hurley and I eagerly volunteered, and Rick handed us each a conventional jigging combo loaded with 65 lb. braid and bearing a slender 600 gram (over one pound) metal jig.
“How long does it take to hit bottom?” I asked, amazed by how small a 100′ boat can appear on a sonar scope when covered by 800′ of water.
“About three minutes,” Rick replied, easing the boat well upcurrent of the wreck so that our jigs would land near the structure after the long fall. “We can only drop two, and you both need to drop at the same time in order to get onto the wreck.”
Gary and I simultaneously flipped our reels into freespool after Rick gave the signal, and indeed I could have eaten a full-sized sub sandwich before I finally felt the jig thump the faraway bottom, the reel’s previously full spool now looking emaciated.
While Rick stayed on the throttles, making small adjustments to keep our lines as vertical as possible in the Gulf Stream current, I followed his instructions, lifting the rod tip high and letting the jig flutter back down several times before letting out a little more line in order to feel the bottom again.
“When you run out of line, you’re pretty much done,” Rick said while Gary and I jigged hopefully. “We’ll be off the wreck by then.”
Eventually, I saw the spindle of my reel’s spool without feeling a bite and began cranking the heavy jig back to the surface. Just retrieving the lure was a substantial effort, one I felt in both forearms by the time my jig finally surfaced.
“You guys drop again and then we’ll switch it up,” the captain said while setting up another pass over the structure. After we dropped again, I continued jigging, waiting for the bite which Rick said would most likely feel like sudden dead weight.
“When you feel that, reel hard to get the bow out of the line, and then set the hook a few times,” Rick explained.
Unfortunately, we reached then end of another drift without a strike. I passed my rod off to Jodie, and Gary handed his to Chris. I’m not sure about the boss, but I was a bit relieved to give my arms a break on the next drift.
Shortly into the drift, Jodie became hung up in the structure, and Chris’s line became unusually tight as well, but as Rick looked at Chris’ rod tip, he saw something different.
“That’s a fish! Reel, reel, reel!” the captain exclaimed, and Chris followed instructions, bringing a healthy bend to the jigging rod. The hookup drew our attention, leaving Jodie to deal with his hang-up alone at the bow.
Chris began fighting the fish, pumping with the rod to gain line when he couldn’t reel anymore, and it became apparent that just cranking in the jig had nothing on the workout the fish was giving him.
“They fight almost all the way up,” Rick had explained earlier. And the fish was proving it, making Chris work doggedly for the line he was gaining.
“If you could have dinner with any famous person, living or dead, who would it be?” Gary asked the struggling angler with a Cheshire grin and a video camera in hand. The attempted distraction almost worked, but Chris was ready for Gary’s next round, and continued the battle while ignoring the next query, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Finally, the reel’s spool looked close to its original line level, and it seemed the fish was near.
“He’s going to blow up soon, and you need to keep reeling to keep tight on him or the hook could come out,” Rick coached, gaff in hand.
Sure enough, the line angle began swinging out away from the boat as expanding gases inside the fish made it buoyant. As Chris kept reeling, the grouper surfaced several yards from the boat. Rick gaffed the snowy when it was in range, and Gary and I leaned over to get a look at the first snowy grouper we’d laid eyes on outside a photo.
Chris and Jodie turned the jigging outfits over to us while Rick again set up a drift over the wreck, but the current soon took an odd turn, making it nearly impossible to get the jigs to the bottom in time.
“We could spend all day out here, but we’ve got to go play with some amberjacks,” the captain said. After we got the jigs back to the boat, we moved a few miles inshore, stopping at a cluster of numbers Rick had in around 300′ of water.
As we pulled up to the marks on the GPS, the depthfinder revealed a thick band 80-100′ off the bottom. “There they are,” Rick said, nodding to the depthfinder while he tied some slightly smaller jigs on.
While showing Chris how to jig for the AJ’s (a rapid, but precisely timed lifting and reeling that makes the lure “walk the dog” vertically through the water column), Rick hooked up and passed the rod off to Chris, who was immediately locked into another serious battle.
Rick had handed me a rod rigged with a Blue Water Candy prototype jig, explaining that it was an especially good grouper jig and that the bottom was good for grouper, so I was prospecting the seafloor, keeping my jig below the AJ’s in the hopes of a huge bottomfish.
Gary had dropped the same style jig as Chris, and soon his needling of Chris was put to a close by a vicious strike.
Watching both grunting anglers repeatedly taken to the gunnel as the AJ’s peeled line off a tight drag, I decided to continue jigging the bottom. Gary’s fish appeared to be the larger of the two, ripping off more line each time he tried to pressure it upwards.
“That might be a hundred pounder,” Rick said, watching the newspaperman worked over by the big jack. Eventually, through much effort, Chris was able to muscle his fish up, and Rick lip-gaffed it, bringing it aboard for a quick photo and estimating it at 70 lbs. before releasing it.
Gary’s fish continued giving him a hard time but was beginning to show some signs of weakness.
A grueling 15 minutes after he hooked the fish, we finally saw Gary’s AJ-by far the largest I’d ever laid eyes on.
“I don’t think he’s a hundred, but he’s close,” Rick exclaimed as he pulled the thick-bodied fish over the gunnel. “Probably ninety.”
After Gary’s fish swam off, I got a crushing strike on the bottom and thought my dreams of a 30+ lb. gag or other impressive bottom dweller were about to come true, but Rick knew better after watching me fight the fish for a few moments. “It’s an AJ,” he said as the fish began another charging run straight down. After an intense, but not overly lengthy battle, a 40 lb. class amberjack surfaced next to the boat, and Rick removed the jig’s hook and sent it on its way.
Gary and Chris fought a few more jacks while I continued my commitment to fishing the bottom, landing a small coney grouper, and eventually Rick decided it was time to go looking for some more meat to add to the snowy grouper in the fish box.
We ran another few miles inshore to some ledges in 240′, and this time Rick tied a hook onto a bottom rig, baiting it with a live cigar minnow he’d jigged up at some broken bottom 8-10 miles off Wrightsville. As I dropped the grouper jig again, Rick sent down the minnow, and it wasn’t long before his rod tip snapped up and immediately took a hard bend back towards the water.
“Grouper,” the captain said, struggling to turn the fish’s head away from the bottom structure.
As he fought the fish, Jodie and Gary baited up bottom rigs with live cigars of their own, and I jigged frantically, hoping the jig would produce in the midst of the live bait fishermen.
When Rick’s fish neared the surface, the telltale brown color gave it away. He swung the fish into the boat, and I saw it was quite a scamp, close to 15 lbs., and bearing the fish’s trademark green eyes and elongated tail edges.
While I admired Rick’s fish, something slammed my jig on the fall, and I reared back into a substantial bottom dweller.
“Max’s got a grouper,” Rick announced, eyeing the bend in my jigging rod. After I turned the fish from the bottom, I used the jigging tackle to pressure another scamp to the boat. Although it was somewhat smaller than the big one the captain had just decked, no ruler was needed to tell that it was well above the 20″ minimum size for the species.
After Gary landed a matching scamp on a cigar minnow, the bite slowed, and Rick positioned us for another drift across the productive bottom.
We repeated the pattern several more times, making a drift, hooking up somewhat consistently for a few minutes and adding a few scamps to the box before Rick would position us for another drift.
Unusually, the bottom bite was a little slow, and it was often possible for the bait fishermen to keep a live cigar minnow on the bottom for 3-4 minutes without bites, even from smaller fish.
However, when we did get bites, they usually produced quality fish, and we added several more scamps to the box over the next hour.
As we neared the end of a drift, I was dropping my jig to the bottom somewhat absentmindedly, and noticed that it seemed to be taking a mighty long time to get there. When I glanced down at the spinning reel I’d been using since switching over to the prototype jig, line was leaving the spool much faster than the sinking jig could account for. I snapped my bail closed and was immediately thrown into battle with something that had inhaled the lure on its way down.
My first thought was an amberjack, but then Rick noticed the line angling up and away from the boat. “That’s a pelagic,” the captain said while Jodie nodded agreement.
Since the fish couldn’t take much line from a grouper-appropriate drag, it turned towards the stern, and I followed, raising the rod to clear the motors. Unable to peel much line from the reel, the fish swam in large circles, one of which brought it into view in the clear water.
“Bring him up just a little,” Rick said when the king was just a few feet below the surface, and I lifted the rod tip as he leaned out and gaffed the king, swinging it over the gunnel.
With the king in the boat, we set up for another drift, and Gary soon bowed up on something feisty with his bottom rod. After a battle filled with speculation from all aboard as to what he might have, an unusual shape appeared in the depths.
When I looked towards the stern, I saw Rick gaff and swing a brilliant hogfish over the gunnel. The hogfish ranks very high on my desired species list, and though a little jealous of Gary’s luck, I was thrilled just to look at one outside a photo.
The stunning fish had emerald green eyes that put even the scamp’s to shame, a unique color scheme of oranges, pinks, and reds, and a crested dorsal fin that would rival a roosterfish’s.
The fish fell for a cigar minnow, and though Rick assured me he’d caught all but one of his previous hogs on jigs, I decided to switch over to the live baits for the time being. The prototype had performed admirably, drawing strikes from amberjacks, king mackerel, a coney, scamps, grunts, and an unusual-looking offshore flounder.
As I was hopefully sending a cigar minnow down at our next spot, I heard a commotion at the rear of the boat.
“Dolphin! Big one! Get the light line! Light line!” I looked over my shoulder towards the calamity and saw what I originally thought was two fish, but it turned into a stout bull dolphin as it neared the boat. Jodie hurriedly baited a weightless light line with a cigar minnow and pitched it towards the bull, which immediately zipped over and engulfed the hooked offering.
The bull apparently didn’t like the two treble hooks in its mouth, because as soon as Jodie threw the reel in gear, it leapt from the water, tailwalking near the boat before taking off on a speedy run.
Chris had meanwhile hooked a smaller cow swimming with the big bull, so we were in the midst of a dolphin doubleheader. The cow came to the boat fairly easily, and while Jodie continued playing the bull, Rick gaffed and boxed the smaller fish. The bull had stayed near the boat for much of the fight, but took off once Rick was done with the cow.
Jody worked the fish back to the boat, and Rick planted the gaff in its blunt forehead and swung the big dolphin aboard. The fish proceeded to go crazy, sending me to the stern and everyone else to the bow while it thrashed wildly, sending blood flying from gunnel to gunnel.
Rick’s Onslow Bay is a true fishing boat, customized by Rick and Brad Knight (owner of Onslow Bay), and one area this is visible is in the number of rod holders-47 if my memory holds correctly. While Chris and I had made regular use of the eight flush mounts on the bow during the fishing day, the true utility of that many rod holders didn’t hit me until I looked around while the dolphin continued its rampage amidships.
Somehow, in the commotion to get out of the wild fish’s way, we’d all managed to drop our rods into holders instead of on the deck, where they’d likely have been broken by the manic dolphin. The design is simple-there’s no place to stand on the boat where at least four rod holders aren’t within arm’s reach (more like 6-8 holders if you have arms your boss refers to as albatross wings).
After the fish finally calmed down, we resumed bottom fishing, adding a few more scamps, two sand tilefish, beeliners, some large triggerfish, and a number of other bottom dwellers to the occupants of the fish box.
Realizing we were still well over 50 miles offshore, we decided to call it a day and run home, the fish box brimming with a diverse catch.
While we’d cruised out a 35-40 mph in relatively calm seas, the ocean had gotten even calmer over the day, and Rick pushed the Onslow Bay’s outboards up to 50 mph for the first bit of the trip, easily the fastest I’ve ever traveled on the ocean. We settled into cruising speeds between 43-45 for the majority of the trip, which melted away the distance in short order, and we made the Masonboro jetties in a little over an hour. Although the wind kicked up a bit for the last few miles, I would never have noticed without standing up the last two miles, as the combination of the extremely smooth-riding hull and the beanbag I’d parked my butt in coaxed me to fall asleep after Gary ceded the supremely comfortable position to me halfway through the trip.
Two years ago, the Fisherman’s Post crew went on another summer trip with Rick, and enjoyed fast action on pelagics and bottomfish near Frying Pan Tower. Summertime variety fishing is one of the many types of fishing he’s highly skilled at, and with the new Onslow Bay, he’s got the speed to fish distant places for an even wider variety of species without spending much time on the run. He also offers private charters where he goes out with clients on their own boats, teaching them how to use their vessels and equipment most effectively.
If fast action with a wide array of hard-fighting, great-eating fish sounds like a good way to spend a summer day to you, give Rick a call at (910) 620-7709 or visit his website at www.livingwatersguide.com for more information.
