Tidelines – March 5, 2015
At the end of last season, it took a long time to finally find a weather day nice enough for our annual Fish Post Day on the Vonda Kay. The trip, originally scheduled for October 9, went through about five postponements before ultimately happening on December 15. And now it has taken me just as long to finally write about our day.
The 30+ crew from the 6th annual Fish Post Day on the Vonda Kay poses with some of the stringers of fish they brought back to the dock in mid-December. They were fishing on the head boat Vonda Kay, located at Motts Channel Seafood in Wrightsville Beach, with Capt. Dave Gardner.
The 2014 trip was a relatively tame one—no drunken female arm wrestling matches nor any “fish slaps”—but Capt. Dave Gardner and crew once again delivered on a solid day of bottomfishing for the crowd of 30 or so that had assembled for our annual Fisherman’s Post tradition.
Everyone caught fish, and everyone went home with a solid stringer. The fish tacos and cheeseburgers kept all of us fueled and ready over the course of the day. My beautiful wife was one of the first to land a keeper gag, and it was easy for me to be happy for our captain when he brought up a gag on his first drop of the day (easy because his keeper grouper was a few pounds smaller than mine).
The traditional back-of-the-boat photo is below, and I think the smiling faces tell the true tale. Participation in another annual event that I look forward to every year has also passed since our December issue. That event would be the Cape Fear River Striperfest. The media boat for Striperfest was a repeat of last year—Jerry Dilsaver and I were paired up with Capt. Stu Caulder—and like the previous year, Stu once again put us on some early January stripers.
Our fishing day started by trolling some deep divers near one of the bridges. Stu was up in the front of the boat governing our speed with his trolling motor, and Jerry stayed close to the fish finder giving Stu updates on both water depth and fish/bait marks.
On our very first drift Jerry called out “bait pod,” and then another “bait pod.” Then he called out “tree leaning over” before announcing “suspended isolated mark looking like an arc” which led to Jerry’s final proclamation, “That’s a damn fish.”
Capt. Jerry Dilsaver with a striper caught and released in the final 15 minutes of the 2015 Cape Fear River Watch Striperfest. He caught the fish on a trolled deep diver while fishing near a bridge with Gary Hurley (right) and Capt. Stu Caulder of Gold Leader Guide Service.
We trolled by that “damn fish” a couple of times, but the bite never came, so we moved up the river and worked many of the same areas that everyone else was working that day. And like most everyone else, we caught a few fish moving around from the shallows to structure to deeper water and back to the shallows.
Then on the way back to the scales we decided to try the bridge one more time. With about 15 minutes to go we spotted a near identical mark on the machine, and this time that “damn fish” bit. Jerry brought in our biggest fish of the day, a buzzer fish, from the spot where we had started the day, so we quickly tagged, recorded, and released our third fish before making way to the Coastline Inn docks.
Stu, Jerry, and I earned no accolades that day, as we didn’t produce either the most or the biggest, but certainly the Cape Fear River was a winner that weekend. Striperfest attracted more than 400 people to its benefit dinner/auction on Friday, and then on Saturday they taught more than 500 kids at Education Day.
Other than Striperfest, I have little to no fishing to talk about. The Fisherman’s Post staff and I have been hard at work hosting our annual fishing schools, attending boat shows, and preparing for yet another season of covering all of the fishing action along the North Carolina coast.
That fishing action so far this year, as you can imagine, has been a bit of a challenge for Editor Max Gaspeny. Like the weather, the fishing hasn’t been red hot, or even hot, or even warm, or even tepid for that matter. However, there have been some fish caught, and you will find those fish in our pages.
Also in our pages you will see ad copy for our final fishing school of the season, the Greenville Saltwater Hands-On Fishing School (see page 45). We don’t have another school scheduled until 2016, so I suggest you make the drive to Greenville to join in on the full day of instruction by guides from the OBX, Washington, New Bern, Oriental, Morehead City, and all the way down the coast through Wrightsville Beach.
You’ll also see ad copy in this issue for our first fishing tournament of the year. Last year we brought you the inaugural Topsail Island Spring Surf Fishing Challenge, and this year we modified the setup of the event and re-named it the Topsail Island Surf & Pier Fishing Challenge (see page 4). Yes, this year we will still have surf anglers competing against other surf anglers, but since all three Topsail piers are already serving as weigh stations, we decided to add a Pier Division. Now pier anglers can compete against other pier anglers, too.
I’ll finish my Tidelines with a call to all anglers: send us your photos of 2015 fish no matter how cold you or the fish are. The best method is always photos@fishermanspost.com.
And we will see you again on March 26, the date of our next issue.
