Tidelines – June 19, 2014
Capt. Richard Andrews (left), of Tar-Pam Guide Service, and Gary Hurley with one of the many reds they found on a shallow flat behind Pea Island. They were fishing out of the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center.
A good friend of mine recently made the move to charter out of Oregon Inlet Fishing Center for the summer months, and that seemed reason enough for me to travel out for a visit to see how he was acclimating to his new environment.
Capt. Richard Andrews, of Tar-Pam Guide Service, stays busy catching fish all year long, from fall in the Pamlico (mixed bag), to winter in the lower Roanoke (stripers), to spring in Weldon (stripers), so I wanted to experience first-hand the summer fishery around Oregon Inlet that had enticed him to rent a house and bring his wife and three-year-old son out to Manteo for June and July before he headed back inland to Oriental to chase the big red drum from August through September.
His 22’ Pathfinder is now tied up at the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center just two boats down from another longtime friend, Capt. Donnie Davis of DOA Charters, and I found out through phone calls on my drive out that the two of them had already been sharing inshore fishing intel—Donnie with a strong handle on the speckled trout in the area, and Richard scouting out new haunts to find schools of upper slot puppy drum.
Puppy drum were going to be our target, as Richard had been finding fish on a flat behind Pea Island offering plenty of 1.5-2.5’ water with grassy bottom. The intrigue for Richard, though, was exploring more of the grassy flats than he had been able to with recent charters. There were literally miles of this redfish-holding estuary that Richard had yet to cover, so my arrival (with the added company of Ryan White of Hatteras Jack and Century Rods) gave him reason to go exploring.
Capt. Richard Andrews holds up one of the upper slot reds that struck a Z-Man MinnowZ soft bait under a popping cork in 2′ of water over a grassy flat.
Richard may be relatively new to the inshore fishery in the area (he had logged plenty of years earlier in his fishing career working the cockpit on a sportfisherman out of OIFC, though), but I believe all locals will agree that the waters behind Pea Island are skinny and hard to navigate. There may be a slight channel here or there to give a little avenue into the backwaters, but most of those “channels” merely fade away into the shallows.
Richard decided on an area for us to target, pulled back off plane to idle closer (muttering something about a jack plate could have gotten him a lot closer), and then when the Yamaha outboard was a little uncomfortable with the shallow water depth, he went to the Minn Kota trolling motor to put us in position.
The bottom was grassy for certain, but there were variables. Some of the grass was short, and some taller. Some grass had small sand pockets, and other areas had sandy expanse. The constant, though, was upper slot reds. We weren’t hooking them on every cast, but the bite was steady over most of the terrain we covered.
There had been sight casting opportunities the sunny day before, but the overcast conditions on this day made it tough to see any fish until they were a mere 5’ from the boat, a little too close to capitalize on. Topwaters were productive, but the best bite was on Z-Man soft plastics under popping corks.
Red drum are fun to catch, offering a strong strike and drag pulling action, and the shallow water works to emphasize those features. Our reds were boiling, splashing, and pushing water as they ran right and left and away from the boat. We never found that ever-so-desirable school of 100 fish, but we did find unlimited singles and doubles, and we found them in virgin water that none of us had fished before, nor had Richard been coached by anyone else who had.
And that was one of the many joys of my trip with Richard. I got to be a part of his efforts at learning a new body of water. His cell phone rang several times over the day, as other local inshore captains already had Richard on their radar and wanted to know how the exploration was going. Clearly he was already accepted.
By the time you read my Tidelines article, Richard will have those reds even better patterned and will probably already be working on locating new speckled trout territory. I suggest you join him for an inshore day out of the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center by calling him direct at (252) 945-9715, or visiting his website at www.tarpamguide.com.
I’m already looking forward to my next trip with Richard, possible 100+ striper days between Christmas and New Years on the lower Roanoke.
