We (John Schillinger, Doug Nason, Mike Carroll and myself) returned from our trip to Carolina last weekend so I am a little tardy in getting this report up. Anyway....the two weeks leading up to our trip I had been reading about how good the albie fishing was. The word was it hadn't been like this in ten years. Even words like "epic" were being bandied about. The weather was good for the most part and it looked like we were going to hit it right! We had five days in the boat booked and I figured from past experience that if we got three good days of fishing it would be great. Before leaving I had scoured every weather web site and the forecasts were all favorable....no indications of Ida.

We arrived in New Bern on Saturday to bluebird, windless skies and temps in the low 70's. After getting situated in our condo in Atlantic Beach we went to Food Lion for necessary provisions and began stringing up our gear. Everyone was so fired up it would be hard to sleep that night. After a nice meal and a good dose of High Lifes I tried to get some shut eye. By 3:30 AM the next morning I was ready to go. The coffee was brewing and last minute tackle checks were being completed. The other guys weren't so enthusiastic but soon I had everyone out of bed. We didn't have to meet our guide....Capt. Tom Roller....until 7:00 AM so we still had some time to kill.

When the sun finally rose we could see that we could not have asked for better conditions. The day would be calm, warm and sunny. After greeting Capt. Tom we headed out in his Parker 23 discussing the game plan for the day. We would catch albies for awhile and then go to an offshore wreck to fish for amberjack since the weather was so nice. This sounded great to us since none of us had ever caught amberjacks on top water gear before.

Upon clearing Beaufort Inlet we motored out a mile or so and on the east side of the shipping channel clouds of gulls were picking at the bait balls the albies were pushing to the surface. The frantic calls of the gulls over the churning water had my hands shaking as I grabbed for a rod! We caught plenty of albies there. They were hitting pretty much everything and after awhile the action calmed and we ventured further east looking for more. It was a good way to start the trip!

After checking out some spots only to find sporadic action we got a call to get to the Hook. It was going off big time!! Throttle down we raced there as fast as we could and the eye candy that greeted us when we got there was phenomenal. Schools of tunny pounding bait in every direction. Spinning gear, fly gear, it all worked. Everyone was hooked up. I hadn't seen this many fish in the Hook for years. Even the guys on the beach were getting multiple shots and after awhile we took out the video camera just to get some footage of the feed. It was 12:30 PM and if were wanted to to go wreck fishing we would have to leave these albies now. It's always a tough call to leave a sure thing but we had all had our fill. The anticipation of what waited for us offshore made our decision easy.

I can't remember how long it took to get there....maybe 40 minutes.....but the whole way out we saw signs of life. Spinner sharks jumping in the distance, turtles bobbing on the surface and random boils here and there. As we approached our destination we could see there were no other boats. We would have it all to ourselves. The water took on a deeper blue coloration out here and as we slowed to a stop above the wreck you could see huge numbers of Amberjack come to the boat in the clear water. These were nice fish looking to be from 30 to 60 lbs. Our goal was to get them on top with big Yo-Zuri plugs. It proved to not be an easy thing. They would follow it most times but turn off just when you thought you would get a strike. Apparantly during the warmer months they will hit them much more readily. Finally I hooked up but was busted off pretty quickly. It took awhile longer but I got another and this one stayed on.....for 25 minutes or so. That's how long it took to get him in. Deep dives and fast short runs had the 7 foot spin rod working hard to lift him to the surface. After a few pictures and seeing him bottom out a 30lb Boga Grip we released him unharmed and looked for more. We never landed another but the visuals were awesome!

The whole time we were out there, amazing schools of albies were foaming on the surface. We actually caught some good video footage of them. For the most part we did our best to try and ignore them and concentrate on the jacks. But occasions arose where you just had to pay attention to them. They crushed anything you thew at them and once hooked gave a great fight despite their size. These albies were different than the ones we were catching inshore. They were only 5 to 6 lbs and they had a deep blue coloration instead of green on their backs. There was also a neon purple strip down their back similar to a skipjack. I wish I had taken a picture of that but failed to with all the action going on. Alas, it was time to head in. It was only our first day and it felt like we had been out for days already. We could not have imagined having a better first day.

The next day was another perfect one except a little more breeze was expected. The plan was to catch albies in the AM again and then go back to the wreck. We found someone at the dock who had some nice sized live bunker so we got two dozen to feed to our amberjack friends. They can't resist those according to our guide. The action we had in the shipping channel the day before was not to be found so we went east towards Lookout Point SE of the rock jetty. We were out about a mile and the swirling and diving birds let us know something was out there. John put on a bone colored Jumpin Minnow and tossed it out. Within seconds an albie crushed it! For the next day this lure out fished all others. The fish would go out of their way to kill this lure. At times it looked like bass or blues were chasing it but they were all albies. Our guide had never seen that before. I didn't bring one but I put on the Spofford's Needlefish and they loved that too! Our whole morning was spent catching albies on surface plugs. I got one on a small ranger to boot.

The seas were building a bit by late morning and we had to go to the wreck now if we were going to go. As we crossed the shoals at Cape lookout we realizzed we may not make it all the way out to our amberjack wreck and would have to try one closer in. When we got there I started vertical jigging and got an albie and a king mackerel right away. John was using a 4 oz Spro Jig tipped with a cigar minnow looking for something big near the bottom. Soon he had a hit! Using his light tackle with 30 lb braid he fought this mystery fish for awhile. Finally the fish began to surface. It looked huge! As it got closer we could make out that it was a giant red drum! The whole time John was fighting this fish he mentioned that his leader was chaffed. This would turn out to be a problem. The fish was tired and was brought next to the boat. Capt. Tom grabbed the leader but before the Boga could go on his lip it parted. We watched this behemouth turn tail and swim for the bottom. The guide said he has caught 50 lbers before and this fish was bigger than all of them. It was the biggest one he had ever seen. He said it had to be 60 inches and 60 lbs. Unfortunately we did not get a picture of the fish out of water but we did capture the end of the battle on video. What a fish!! We had to try for another but all we ended up getting after that was some large sand tiger sharks. They loved the bunker we had brought with us but they do not put up much of a fight for such a large fish.

The seas continued to build and we made the call to run back and get in on a late albie bite before heading to the barn. We headed west towards the shoals and once there picked up an albie and some small blues under some birds. We moved on to the Hook which was dead and then ended up outside Beaufort where we had started. The fish were there and they crushed that Jumpin minnow again and John got one good 14.5 lber before we went in. Two days on the water and we are sore from catching fish! How much more can we take?

The next day would be our last day. Ida was making her way towards us and the wind and rain would screw us on our last two boat days. We fished hard again never leaving the the area west of the Beaufort shipping channel. Big bait balls were all around and albies could be caught on the surface as well as down deep. A 450 grain fly line and a big clouser worked very well that day. After three days of prtty much constant fish we were tired. It would have been nice to get one more day in after a day of rest but it wasn't in the cards. The rain came down in buckets and the wind wasn't nice either. So we spent the last few days recooperating and relaxing. We had got what we hoped for....three good days on the water each with their own highlights!

Can't wait until next year!