quest4reds Posted September 29, 2020 Report Share Posted September 29, 2020 Got to the ramp a bit earlier than planned to find my fishing partner arriving right behind me also ahead of schedule. Things off to a good start. It's foggy, like extremely foggy on the water. Idle to our first spot as getting on plane was out of the question with visibility only about 30 feet! Get to first spot to find someone sitting on it so we move away and fish nearby for a bit hoping the fog will break soon, it does not. Decide to move hoping the fog will break a little farther down river, but it appears to be getting worse so trying to run about two miles turns into drifting and fishing areas that don't seem productive. Almost two hours of drifting down river and the fog finally starts to dissipate, visibility about 100 feet. Start fishing a bend and nothing is happening although we start to see signs of life. Sun finally peaks through the fog and my partners topwater gets smashed. I throw a redfish magic towards the grass and reel a few cranks off the bank and my rod tip bends toward the water with another fish on. For the next hour, it was just about every cast or every other cast, bringing striper after striper to the boat, with the occasional puppy drum mixed in. My fishing buddy reels in one and asks "What's this?" This striper had not one, but two yellow tags attached! That's a first for him, and for my boat. About 15-20 minutes later, I find my striper has an accessory, another yellow tag. I'm not sure what the odds are, but I thought it was very interesting to say the least. Caught probably 30-40 striper and maybe 10-12 reds, no keepers, over the course of about two hours when it started slowing down. Try another area I had success in before, but I failed to realize when I was there last time, it was high tide and we were approaching dead low. I couldn't get anywhere near the area I wanted to fish. We decide to take a lunch break and try for a while longer after before calling it a day. Make the run back to our striper hot spot and two boats sitting in the area, one on the area is just catching bait, the other fishing up river and I'm not seeing any rod bending so I shoot past to a little cove I fished before with some success. The cove is alive with showering bait and torpedoes waking after it. Remember how I said it was dead low tide? Yeah so despite our best efforts to fire our lures in with all that action, we were unable to attract a bite. We spend 20 minutes or so drifting along the grass line and decide to call it a day around 1:30. As we are running back past our striper spot, we notice the boats have cleared out so we decide to give it one more shot. It wasn't on fire, but we were able to pick up a couple more striper and another red before heading to the ramp at 2. So do fish bite when it's socked in with fog? We didn't see much activity until it lifted, so interested to hear other's experience in the mist. No pictures, I still can't seem to attach them. I do have pics of my largest striper, and the tag I took so if I can post them up later I will, but no promises. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whichwaysup Posted September 29, 2020 Report Share Posted September 29, 2020 Q4R - Great post! One of the major Hurricanes absolutely decimated that fishery, which was just recovering at the time and it was a heart breaker. Not sure what the guys in green did, but it appears that they have been going crazy re-stocking the population. Even in the pre-hurricane heyday, 10 fish was a great day. To see reports like this is really encouraging. Maybe someday this place will return to its former glory - super old historical reports talk about 50# fish being relatively common. 'Course, fishermen back then were just as bad about lying as fishermen are today. Oh, and they said something about not being able to post up pics, too . . . . 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quest4reds Posted September 29, 2020 Author Report Share Posted September 29, 2020 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quest4reds Posted September 29, 2020 Author Report Share Posted September 29, 2020 Maybe I got this attaching thing figured out, we'll see. Better sideways pictures than no pictures. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whichwaysup Posted September 30, 2020 Report Share Posted September 30, 2020 That's a healthy looking fish, and probably not a recent stockling. Good news to see those guys around! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quest4reds Posted September 30, 2020 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2020 16 hours ago, whichwaysup said: 'Course, fishermen back then were just as bad about lying as fishermen are today. Oh, and they said something about not being able to post up pics, too . . . . Well, my numbers are completely accurate, no padding or exaggeration at all... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quest4reds Posted September 30, 2020 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2020 35 minutes ago, whichwaysup said: That's a healthy looking fish, and probably not a recent stockling. Good news to see those guys around! I am pretty sure that was my largest fish at 23". The fish I caught that had the tag in it was 17" if I recall correctly and the tag had a fair amount of algae on it but I haven't heard back from NCDMF about where it was tagged or how long ago yet. Will be interesting to see this information along with my fishing partner's tagged fish info. Curious to see if these fish were tagged at the same time and/or place and perhaps migrated together. Of course, like a banded goose I got years ago, it may have been tagged only a year ago and very close to where it was caught this time. Will post the info, or as much as I can without giving up the spot, when I hear back from NCDMF. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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