Outer Banks Inlets Fishing March through Summer and on

Sheepshead

Outer Banks Odyssey:

Inlet Species Variety

By Bruce Litton

Tides sculpt Outer Banks inlets into fish-attracting structures like channels, drops and shoals with sand bottom shifting frequently like the weather. Right now, the winter migration of bluefish and striped bass to the south has these two species lingering on, offering the chance of hooking big fish. The world record bluefish of 31 pounds, 12 ounces got caught in the surf near Hatteras Inlet, so no kidding, the potential for great catches is there. In April, big red drum can sometimes make brine seem coppery with huge, dense schools, and the summer smorgasbord of species begins to arrive in May, so if you haven’t planned an Outer Banks trip, this may be the time to think ahead.

Three major inlets—Oregon, Hatteras, and Ocracoke—connect the Atlantic to Pamlico Sound, each about a mile wide with fishing pressure fairly light. Don't let relative lack of boaters discourage you. The culture of Outer Banks fishing is very well represented from March forward by outfitters, piers and charter captains who know inlets fishing is excellent.

A Smorgasbord of Species

Spanish mackerel, bluefish, flounder, sheepshead, black drum, pompano, cobia and redfish serve as spring and summer attractions. It’s essential to have a good map of the inlet you choose even though sand shifts so often it will be less than reliable in some ways. The main channels stay pretty much in place.

Choosing what fish to pursue is a daunting prospect when you’re not clued in to which best currently run. Nevertheless, if you launch your own craft with wind absent or light, most likely you’ll happen on plenty. My first experience on Ocracoke Inlet in a rented skiff resulted in lots of flounder (same as fluke in New Jersey). We succeeded despite strong winds and complicated drifting, but once we employed the services of Captain Ryan O’Neal, we saw the beauty of associating with someone who has his finger on the pulse of the inlet, who knows exactly how and why to pursue what fish, and every time we’ve fished with him, we’ve done well both in numbers and variety. Over the years, the variety kept increasing. You don’t catch everything on one outing.

Whether you insist on fishing on your own or charter, it won’t hurt to be prepared with an overview of possibilities, unless you want a charter captain to surprise you. He may even have fish up his sleeve this article doesn’t anticipate.

Trolling and Casting Spanish Mackerel and Blues

Big catch of perfect plate-size cocktail bluefish

Spanish mackerel chiefly eat silversides, small menhaden and finger mullet, torpedo-like speedsters arriving in late May to travel in pods and large schools along the edges of channels, in cuts and just outside in the ocean. Bluefish often trail behind. Flat water, incoming tide and early morning ideal, Spanish feed by sight, so clear, in-flowing brine is best. Trolling with size-0 Clark spoons is standard. Tied directly to 25-foot leaders of 25-pound test fluorocarbon attached to size 1-planers, an additional spoon can be placed behind a 4-ounce trolling sinker for a shallow ride. The planer gets spoons down to eight feet at five to six knots. Simply place rods in the boat’s rod holders. Look for birds to find a school busting baitfish on top, but mackerel sometimes swim deeper. Trolling can be a search method without clear evidence of fish.

Matt Litton and one of his Spanish mackerel.

On occasion, schools mix so vast that trolling is much less effective than gunning and running once a surface blitz subsides and another frothing commotion is sighted nearby. Casting tandem 3/8 to half-ounce chartreuse jigs with medium power spinning tackle right into the frenzy results in instant hook-ups. Don’t use wire leaders because Spanish will avoid the jigs. Risk some bite-offs with 20 to 25-pound test fluorocarbon.

Spanish group in pods or schools by size. “Some mornings, the Spanish run a pound or two, others they’ll be about three pounds,” O’Neal told me our first time out. “The world record 13-pounder came from this inlet, and every summer we get Spanish over five pounds.”

Summer bluefish usually measure on the short side of cocktail class—perfect for the table.

Drift Slowly for Flounder

Flounder double-header which Ryan O'Neal unhooks.

From late May into November flounder associate with inlet structures and carpet the bottoms of the deepest channels during summer: Wallace and South Point (Ocracoke), Hatteras and Oregon. Pamlico Sound stays slightly off-color, so when tide is falling, it stains the depths. Radically different than mackerel, lying in ambush on sandy floors like flattened footballs, possessing a kick to pulse upward and seize bait, flounder nevertheless also prefer clear water.

“They rely more on sight than smell, whereas bluefish or a drum will just smell it,” O’Neal said. “If the water is turbid, a flounder will too, but they lay flat and look up for baitfish such as small pinfish, finger mullet, two-inch baby flounders.”

Despite this preference for baitfish, flounder readily attack strips of squid or shiny-skinned mackerel belly on 1/0 hooks fashioned with vinyl strips, usually red/white and chartreuse/white colored. Known as the speck rig, a tandem hi/lo combination with a two-ounce bank sinker weighting it is just right for drifting at about a half to one knot. 1-½ to two knots drift a boat too fast for O’Neal’s exacting standards. He won’t take a client out to fish flounder if it’s too windy.

Medium power six-foot spinning rods with 12-pound test monofilament even hold their own against the rare encounter with a cobia. Some of O’Neal’s summer clients have boated cobia as large as 40 pounds on such outfits while fishing speck rigs for flounder. The outboard is fired and the great fish followed until pumped to the net.

“Let out just enough line to stay at an angle and let drift,” O’Neal told us. “When you feel something like added weight, open the bail and let out line for a few seconds before you set the hook.”

Tide Rips, Shell Bottom and Sheepshead

One look inside a sheepshead’s mouth gives you the obvious clue to look for crustaceans, mollusks and barnacles. The front teeth a delicate set, if not so strong they might seem breakable on the calcium they crush.

“Just like human teeth,” O’Neal pointed out. “Some people would kill to have a set like that.” Perfectly straight, those front rows look exactly like miniature human teeth.  

Sheepshead as large as 12 pounds feed on barnacles attached to shells coating the bottoms of drop-offs, and 15-pound black drum sometimes mingle. Some of the tide rips associated with sharp drop-offs from sandy islands or shoals get packed hard with shells, and barnacles cover the shell pack. Round-bodied sheepshead feed mostly on barnacles as they relate to vertical structures. A ledge drop-off cut by a tide rip around a prominent shoal edge is perfect. The sluiceway of current—whether incoming or outgoing—is not an impediment to sheepshead holding against it.

They may station in eddies also. Anchor and don’t put too much line out. Notorious bait stealers, sand fleas gathered at the surf line and bucketed for bait disappear from 1/0-curve-shank bait hooks without you even knowing it, unless you set a hi/lo rig near enough to feel the bite.

If wind and current allow, you can position the boat to fish off the back. Current flowing directly from behind the boat will allow a straight, tight line between a two-ounce bank sinker and the rod tip to transmit the tell-tale taps of an interested sheepshead. These fish hit so eagerly, it doesn’t take long to be in steady action once you find them. Let the fish take the bait a couple of seconds. You can usually tell by a sudden strong pull to set the hook hard. Sheepshead attain weights of well over 10 pounds and fight hard with dogged resistance, yet medium power spinning tackle and 12-pound test line is sufficient.

Black drum associating with sheepshead along the same rips also take sand fleas. While summer drum are usually 15 pounds or fewer, giants nearing 100 pounds have been boated in the region. 

Sandy Shoals for Pompano

Close cousin to the fabled permit, diminutive Florida pompano abundant in the Outer Banks surf and a little larger hanging out along pier pilings, these curvaceous fish come good-sized on inlet shoals and in the drop-offs at the edges of these sand spits, sometimes right down in pockets of deeper water between shoal humps. Two-pounders common, rare fish may exceed five pounds.  

                                                                      Ryan O'Neal and pompano

Inlets comprise a maze of channels, holes, shoals and tiny islets. Finding fish can seem like a bewildering free-for-all, unless you concentrate efforts and stick it out at a spot or two. It’s one thing to troll the edge of a channel at five or six knots for mackerel and blues, or even to drift for flounder through a channel at one knot, but to tease pompano to take sand fleas on hi/lo rigs can be a little bit like tempting permit to take a crab fly—that doesn’t happen very often.

Set bait and wait, anchored. More often than not, if you wait awhile for the first hit, the pace begins to quicken rather than slow. You’ll have more interest from these subtle feeders if you use hi/lo rigs without metal arms or any colored beads, just monofilament, hooks and a snap at the bottom for a two-ounce bank sinker.

While pompano inhabit similar structure as do sheepshead and black drum, take the shells and barnacles out of the equation and put a rig right up on top of a shoal in three or four feet of water, and another in the trough. Pompano cruise high and low, rather than position along a vertical drop as sheepshead do.

One way or another, you can almost always catch fish from March through the fall in Outer Banks inlets. So long as you don’t spread your effort too thin on any given day, it’s easily possible to make outstanding catches. And regarding those red drum, August is a magical month when on occasion huge schools begin to appear at inlet mouths. By October, serious struggles with these fish happen often. Have heavy rods handy with three or four-ounce bucktails. In any event, memories are made here that last a lifetime.

Charter Services and Launches

Oregon Inlet

·        Close to a dozen charter services are available at Oregon Inlet Fishing Center just off Route 12 on the north side of the inlet. Launch is available.

Hatteras Inlet

·        Hatteras Harbor Marina, Hatteras Landing Marina, Oden’s Dock, and Teaches’ Lair Marina all offer inlet charters just off route 12. Launch ramps are available.

Ocracoke Inlet

·        Tarheel Charters (Captain Ryan O’Neal), Miss Kathleen, Ocracoke Inlet Charters, Drum Stick Charters, Fish Tale Charters, Rascal Sport Fishing Charters, The Gecko Charter Boat are all located in Ocracoke Village off Route 12. Public launch is at the end of Route 12 just before the ferry.

http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2012/07/florida-keys-bridge-fishing.html

   

Spring's Here

Today's temperature of 75 here in New Jersey is the highest in memory this early. I got word of trout rising for tiny midges a week or two ago. We've had mild weather with more to come. Trout were rising on the Musky on a recent morning. Not by my witness. Another informant.

It would be easy to check out Facebook and get more word on the trout, but I'll let this pass. Prefer word in person.

A friend of mine fished the Delaware and Raritan Canal on a mild day last week, three pickerel on a jig tipped by Keitech.

Spring is here.

Here's to Long-Lived Prosperity

 The man demonstrated for Mike his bait casting outfit. He gets a very long cast.

Mike Maxwell seemed especially eager, when I invited him earlier this week, to fish Round Valley Reservoir with me today. On the way, I put on Ambrosia's "I Keep Holding On," Mike not familiar, but comparing the music to Pink Floyd, as it began. An album I haven't heard in years; the rest of it is sappy, sentimental, and gimmicky, and I refused to listen, but at least one band member plays multiple instruments; the violin is real and very well played for the song I selected. Later, Mike asked me had I got the weather report. No. I'm so busy I pay little attention, but I quickly understood why he expressed eagerness earlier. Temperatures rose into the 70's; spring seems here.

Hold on, I do. All these years of Round Valley, I've sort of feared what it could be otherwise: just a place the state upkeeps, ordinary and predictable on the level of concrete intelligence. And when I got there today, I encountered a man I judged right away as the sort to experience this place that way, and I knew my gig was up. So that's how it was for me, too, as I decided to let it be and find what turns out. I even questioned the reality of what I've experienced here for years, but as two hours wore on, my mind performed one of its acts of salvation, me knowing that, no, it's not a question of reality, of course not, but what's chosen. Anyone who thinks they know the limits of reality is a presumptuous fool.

And with that, I knew, contrary to Ambrosia's attitude, all my yesterdays have not gone by after all. Food of the gods, ambrosia; someone or other, I forget which name, once remarked that philosophers live on a diet of ecstasy, citing longevity among them, and I could point out that ecstasy, I think, is better than muscular exercise. No one lives longer by an unreal factor, either.

We sort of crowded the other guy's spot. Best spot to fish, so happens. Upon arrival, I spoke to him, but he was little willing to reply. I engaged another opportunity later, which oiled gears a little, and then, when he later began packing it in, I broke the ice. The three of us stood there together talking for at least 15 minutes, as it became progressively evident this man is deeply experienced, fishing. He fished bass tournaments nationwide during earlier days. When he walked on out of ear shot, I said to Mike, "Add 60 points to the IQ, and he'd be Ernest Hemingway."

We exchanged some information, but mostly, I specified some of the points he made, when once or twice he responded with acutely focused acknowledgement. I told Mike later that I've been fascinated in walleyes at the Delaware and Raritan Canal locks for years, and have tried one of them a couple of times or more, but as the man referred to some who do this, I just can't see myself soaking a live sunfish all night long, "watching my rod with a Glo-Stick attached 20 nights running before I get one tap."

There's life in that sort of endeavor, certainly, but although I slow down fishing trout during winters here at the Valley, sadly, most of this exercise is over for me, since I had hours every week, previously, on my lunch breaks. And it never could have been the same sort of peace an independent man with a tough low-paying job enjoys at a canal lock time after time all night. More like a multi-media event for me than that. Only, it was all a real encounter between what's out there in that sort of semi-wilderness and my consciousness.

So we left at 4:00, having caught nothing, but still talking. I shot many more photos during the last hour or so than I've posted, since I've decided not to publish most nor the best, keeping them fresh for possible book selections in the future. I knew. Those yesterdays remain here, but it's different now. Right when we had arrived, we had to rig up, and I ran into some complications. "It's amazing how quickly you go south when you lose habit," I said to Mike. When I came every other day, my tackle bag was just as messy, but I knew exactly where to put my fingers to get what I needed.  

Mike Maxwell

Rescued Ice Fisherman

Some of you probably read my recent caveats about unsafe ice fishing. And you might have heard from the news about the ice fisherman rescued from Lake Hopatcong a few days after I posted. Police went in with ice rescue suits on and floated the guy until the fire department got him out. I would feel embarrassed to the bone...maybe a little cold, too.

What a way to end a late fall and winter musing on ice fishing that hardly ever was.

Unsafe Ice Fishing

Got word minutes ago: two guys were out ice fishing Lake Hopatcong today, about a half mile south of Bertrand Island. No facts on ice thickness, but my informant was pretty sure it was unsafe.

Guys do it. I once crawled out--a rope around my waist--on two inches of ice over clear water, viewing bottom 10-feet below me, and cut holes with a hatchet. Ice crackled outward from cuts, slightly threatening to weaken under my left hand supporting shoulder-weight.

I set tip-ups. And then watched from shore.

More recently--2008 I think--on Lake Musconetcong with my son, I told him to keep back on the safe three-and-a-half-inch ice, while, curious about a spot, I got on hands and knees, progressing for about seven or eight yards on ice two-and-a-half-inches thick to place a tip-up.

I may not be well-known for this, but I have a streak of hubris. That day, my son and I ice fished for two hours on clear, hard ice before my mood grew until I felt confident that if I fell through the ice over five feet of water, it wouldn't matter. I once suffered a big wetsuit rip in brine of nearly 29 degrees. Treading clams commercially. Air temperature 22, wind 45 mph. I was more than a hundred yards from the boat. The incident resulted in deep second-degree hypothermia, which felt as if I drank at least two six packs, but of course--I'm here to tell you.

Also to tell you, if you do go through extensive thin ice, you likely have less chance of survival than falling through thin ice with thicker nearby. I had ice spikes on Lake Musconetcong that afternoon, but they would have worked by allowing myself to pull my weight up onto ice which at best would support that weight.

Obviously, if I fell through those two inches of ice I dared, I would probably have to keep breaking ice and sort of swimming or floundering, until I reached water shallow enough to stand in. Similar on Lake Musconetcong. I would have had perhaps seven or eight yards of struggle to overcome before my time was up, though I have to say, I was aware the spikes would have helped. Grip that ice and pull! Grip and pull!

Disrespect for my son is implied. Imagine an eight-year-old boy witnessing his Dad in that situation. He would feel, if he did nothing--even if I told him to stay back--compromised.

The hubris I experience, no doubt, does involve heightened perception and heightened tactile coordination. Inevitably, the inner desire of a man of such drive is to try what he sees is possible. But it is dangerous. And it often seems ethically edgy at best.

It can seem to others downright foolish or crazy. But, in fact, the experience--and in my case, I'm ultimately the only one to know the experience at its center--is in essence neither. The hubris is a form of natural force, though of course, to yield to it is to choose to do so. It is dangerous and certainly unconventional, yes. The very essence of daring adventure, and never to be imitated or faked, because without the heightened senses, it is suicidal.

The ethics would require more analysis than I care to offer here. 

Fly Fishing March

Sometime in February each year, I feel March approach, the month always proving the process of spring's unfolding has begun. A few times, I've fly fished trout in March, and though I have fished stream trout successfully in February, I would have to consult my handwritten log to be all but absolutely certain I've never tried streams in January. For many years, this hasn't mattered to me, if during the last few or so, I've begun to think of doing this. Last winter, I thought of it a lot, but I never got out this January on any small river or stream, if perhaps next winter I will, or rather, when I get the time. And perhaps the boot-foot waders.

I think this March I will do it.

Over the years, I've caught a lot of bass in March. Quite a few in February also. This year, if things work out and I get an evening, I've learned the whereabouts of a pond nearby I've never fished, with bass present.

Lake Hopatcong Anchoring Restrictions Scrapped

According to the Daily Record, the plans to limit anchoring further than 200 feet from shore between May 15th and September 15th on Lake Hopatcong have been scrapped. No details offered in the story, I can only assume Knee Deep Club and its President Eddie Mackin have especially spoken effectively on the behalf of all of us who fish the lake to gain this result we need in order to continue fishing freely, although no doubt, everyone who wrote the  Boat Commission Chair has helped. Never assume people with more power will take care of such an issue for you. Everyone's voice is important.

So next time I'm on the lake between that period of time when restrictions could have stopped me from anchoring, when I do anchor, I will remember and feel grateful.