Greg prepping the skiff late in the day.
Hauling ass - thats no photoshop, just pure Carolina Skiff speed.
A beautiful evening, but quite rough!
It seems like a no brainer, I get a new fishing reel for Christmas, I'm fishing the next day, right? Well there are always complications, such as having to leave Rochelle at my parents house while I fish, because she wants nothing to do with 15 mph winds from the SW, the dropping temperatures and a bit of drizzle here and there and especially... fishing. She does understand wanting to try out the new reel, but that means my fishing time is severely limited - Greg and I are determined to limit out, we have 3 hours or so to fish and we feel like WE HAVE TO CATCH FISH as the season will close this weekend while the whole crew (Blair, Wendy, Me, Rochelle, possibly Erin, and Greg) is snowboarding in Snowshoe. The pressure is on...
The ride there is beautiful, but choppy with the wind in our face and we have the skiff planed out perfectly, a great ride. It is sunset and we head to a familiar spot and fish the hard running current in a spot that is glassy and guarded from the wind. The lights on the docks cut on and we expect a ton of action. In an hour Greg lands five on soft plastic topwater lures, I miss a good follow with 3 short strikes but no takers - almost desparate to get something to work, I spy a large mullet subsurface plug in my tackle bag - tie it to my leader and cast it out - bam hard strike on the second cast, its only 17 inches, but fat - I return the fish - hmm, Greg has one in the box and a bunch brought to the boat, I'm feeling the pressure - we have little time to fish. We agree to hit our favorite night time (and sometimes day time) jigging spot.
We haul ass only to find another boat in the best location - CRAP - and the wind is howling with the current pushing the boat at trolling speed - its going to get tricky, being pushed toward the dock, we have to stem the current and fish the structure. It is choppy as hell greg looks nervous - the topwaters arent looking too possible in the wind and chop, but all of a sudden in front of us, we see huge splashes from a few breaking fish. I cast and start catching fish almost immedidately. I land one in the 19-20 inch range and toss him in the box. The topwater is tough with all of the huge chop and the wind continues to pick up.
We catch a few more fish and Blair calls asking how its going. He wants to know if we will make it to the Green Leafe by 9pm for our annual Christmas pint between buddies - I look at my watch, its 7 - I tell him we just got into the fish and yes we will make it by 9:30 - He tells me we are assholes and we suck because he's not on the boat.
Greg looks at me and says "You know we have to limit out and take a picture just to bug Blair right?" I say "Of course" - The fishing goes on, its really difficult to stem the tide and get accurate casts in because the wind is getting worse, but the fish as still there - I land a few more and catch up with Greg. We switch to our own bucktails and I caught a ton on my signature orange and white combo on a white head - but I keep catching schoolies just undersize. We got quite a few double hook-ups, with me taking Greg's fish off his line for him while he is trying to keep the boat off of the dock in the strong current and wind - the action is so crazy I even accidently throw out a keeper from gregs line and tried to keep the smaller one I caught because I got confused. We caught around 20 rockfish in just over 3 hours, all fat and we managed to limit out, I went to pick up Rochelle and we still got to the pub to meet up with Blair and rub his nose in the picture of us with our fish! Merry Christmas Blair!
Merry Christmas Blair, you should've been there!
