Tidelines – November 2023
Capt. Dave Gardner, of the head boat Vonda Kay out of Carolina Beach, called me one day after the news went out that grouper would be limited to two per boat, even for head boats, starting October 23. Our conversation included complaints about fisheries management in North Carolina and the obvious recognition that a grouper reduction would severely challenge Dave’s business, but the real purpose for his call wasn’t for Dave to talk about how this new regulation would negatively affect him and the Vonda Kay (and this conversation was still before the follow-up announcement that the two-grouper limit would actually be modified to no grouper after October 23).
The main reason Dave called was to be a friend and look out for me. He wanted to get a quick date in the books for the Fish Post Day on the Vonda Kay, an annual tradition where Fisherman’s Post books his entire head boat for a private fishing trip.
Each year on this trip, Fisherman’s Post typically has a guest list of 30 or so anglers of mixed fishing abilities for a day of bottom fishing. We go about 20 miles out of Carolina Beach Inlet, and the stringers include sea bass, grunts, beeliners, triggers, and any number of tasty bottomfish. However, for a certain number of anglers (including me), the primary target, in fact the only target, is grouper, and that’s why Dave made the call—to make sure we got the trip in before the new grouper regulations went into effect.
We set our date for mid-October, on just about the only opening on my calendar, and hoped that weather would cooperate so we wouldn’t have to reschedule.
Tidelines: Vonda Kay
Our next phone call was the Monday evening before our Wednesday trip, and it started out something like this:
Dave: “What kind of group do you have this year?”
Me: “The same type of group I have every year.”
Dave: “We need to keep the trip limited to people who know how to catch grouper. I have some good bottom saved for you, and I don’t want someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing to mess the bite up.”
Me: “I know that’s what you want, Dave, but I have the standard crowd of mixed fishing experience.”
Dave wants the Fish Post trip to have the best opportunity possible to put a number of gags on the deck, which is really how he approaches all of his full day bottom fishing trips throughout the year. I don’t disagree with him that rookie anglers can miss the bite, break off a fish, or bounce the weight off the bottom so much that it pushes fish away, but ours is just as much a social trip as it is a fishing trip and new anglers are part of the tradition.
We then had another one of our traditional conversations.
Me: “What supplemental bait should I bring? The standard? Cigars and Bostons?”
Dave: “Yeah, but live pinfish has been working the best this season.”
Me: “I’ll be working long hours prior to our trip. I won’t have any chance to catch live pinfish.”
Dave: “Maybe Tim will catch some for the trip.”
Tim would be the mate, and Dave’s “maybe” on catching pinfish was all I needed to text Tim and let him know that Dave had volunteered him.
Then the conversation ended with something I hadn’t expected. Instead of sandbagging, downplaying expectations, and giving a laundry list of reasons why the fishing might suck, Dave expressed actual optimism. This year, he gave me a list of reasons why he was thinking positively about Wednesday, including the wind changing direction and not blowing out of the east, the wind laying down, and a weeks-long big swell that was finally going to subside.
With Dave being unexpectedly positive, I wasn’t sure how to end the phone call. I think I told him halftime was over at my boys’ high school soccer game, hung up, turned to my wife and said, “You’re not going to believe this.”
On the morning of our trip, the weather forecast turned out to be correct, and we enjoyed 10 knots of NW wind and less than 2-foot seas.
Allison started cooking breakfast as soon as we broke the inlet. I saw a bacon and egg breakfast burrito go by, and then I was handed a croissant stuffed with egg, cheese, and sausage.
Ben (Dave’s other mate) made the rounds collecting everyone’s $10 for the Big Fish Pool.
Grayback, the dog, was moving between the back of the boat to the galley and sizing up the day’s crowd, probably figuring out who his best targets would be to work over later for some food.
One small group gathered at the stern, another wanted to take in the sights from the bow, and others stayed on the couches in the cabin or sat on the engine boxes.
All of these details are standard for the Fish Post Day on the Vonda Kay, and all add to the experience and the memory of the trip, but there was one new detail, in my opinion, that would be the most significant detail.
Tim had an aerated cooler full of pinfish, and live pinfish would ultimately be responsible for well over half of the boat’s total grouper catch.
The first whistle blew, we all dropped down our baits, and a grouper hit my live pinfish immediately. Another grouper came up from the back left corner. Then one came up from near the fish coolers, and another from where the engine boxes meet the cabin.
The bite would fade at one spot, and Dave would move the boat to another, sometimes just yards away and sometimes a half a mile or so. Some spots produced many, some spots produced a few, and some produced none, but by mid-afternoon when the three whistles blew signaling it was time to head in, the Vonda Kay had seen 19 keeper grouper.
For me, the best memory of the day wasn’t the delicious galley food, nor the camaraderie, nor the friendly mates always handy to take off a fish or untangle a line. It wasn’t the multiple keeper gags I enjoyed setting the hook on and fighting up through the water column, nor the solid stringers of fish that just about everyone put together.
No, for me, the best memory was seeing Capt. Dave Gardner standing outside his wheelhouse and looking down on the back of the boat as we posed for our traditional group photo with all the fish—stringers and gags—and for a fleeting moment, I swear I saw an actual smile on Dave’s face. The closest way to describe that surprising, heartwarming but almost out of place smile would be to picture the Grinch on the mountain above Whoville when he finally realizes the true meaning of Christmas.
I’m not sure who, if anyone, knows what’s going to happen with grouper next year, but I know that my good friend Dave Gardner will be taking clients out as often as he can to put them on stringers of fish and give them the experience of offshore bottom fishing with a great crew and captain.
