Tidelines – April 28, 2011
Fisherman’s Post Newspaper has been around eight years and counting now. We started printing in the spring of 2003, and East Coast Sports in Surf City has been in our pages starting with that initial season.
Doug (father) and Chris (son) Medlin, owners of East Coast, have been the anchor of the Topsail report since we’ve had a Topsail report, and they also very quickly became a key photo contributor. Photos courtesy of East Coast Sports graced two of our first six covers: a 71 pound cobia caught by Parrish Sasser and a 53 lb. dolphin brought in by Bradley Stancil.
Doug’s wife, Cathy, helped me out in those early months in another key way. She was running her real estate company in the same building as East Coast Sports, and after I talked a little about my vision for this new fishing publication that I wanted to bring to Topsail Beach, she pulled me aside and made a suggestion. Grouping everyone as from Topsail Beach, she politely informed me, would offend certain residents.
The politically correct way for me to proceed was to either be accurate and talk about Topsail Beach as being separate from the towns of Surf City and North Topsail Beach, or go generic and refer to it all as Topsail Island. As a man of words, I welcomed the help.
So the Medlin family and East Coast Sports were a big part of the creation phase of Fisherman’s Post, yet in these eight years I had never been fishing with a Medlin. That changed this past Saturday, though, and I think Chris and I were sincere when we made plans, after a fun and easy bonito trip out of New River Inlet, to do another trip this year (look for a Topsail sheepshead Guide Time article later in the season).
Capt. Phil Leonard, one of the main captains working under the umbrella of Topsail Fishing Charters, a company managed by Chris, was our host. And he did exactly what he was supposed to do.
He successfully navigated New River Inlet, took the skiff at a comfortable pace out to the Diver’s Rock area, found some surface feeding activity and fish marks on his electronics, and let Chris, Max, and I make all the bad jokes we wanted while hooking singles, doubles, and even triples of bonito.
We quickly caught all we wanted to eat, released a number of fish after that, and then Phil had us headed home in plenty of time for Chris to make his son Charlie’s T-Ball game and for me to make a wedding back in Wilmington.
Catching fish and taking photos continues to be the staple of our Guide Time series, but as we all know some of the best highlights from a day on the water can come from the day’s dialogue. Chris and I have both become fathers in the last five years, he with a boy and a girl and me with two boys, so being new fathers we shared a handful of kid stories.
It’s not that we were having a competition, but if we were then Chris would have won with his story of Charlie going to school thinking he had taken Spiderman DNA (a little lie he was told the day before at the doctor’s office to get him to take a vaccine shot).
Unfortunately, Charlie did what a lot of kids would have done thinking they now had Spidey powers—he played a little too rough at school that day. So Chris had to explain to his son that he did not have special DNA coursing inside him.
My suggestion is to act fast and call East Coast Sports to request a bonito trip with Capt. Phil Leonard, or trailer the boat and chase them yourself.
Phil, I’m told by Chris, also has a knack for catching nice sheepshead and getting beginner anglers hooked up with the tasty thieves. And if Phil makes it easy for me to hook a 5 lb. sheepshead, then I can put more thought and effort into telling a more competitive kid story of my own.
