Outer Banks: Success!

I'm back from my first deep sea fishing trip, and I would call it a success. But first, I have to correct my previous post. We actually departed from the Hatteras Harbor Marina and not Oregon Inlet. We fished aboard the "Big Eye", a 46' custom charter boat, with Captain Donnie Smith, a.k.a. Squeaky, and his first mate, Jay.
We stayed in a nice little room above the marina office/store/cafe. We left the dock at 5 a.m. on Friday morning. It was pretty sweet waking up and walking right onto the boat without having to drive anywhere. I credit Jason for setting everything up so perfectly. On the evening before we left, we watched the boats come in so we could see their catch. There were some good fish, but I was actually a little disappointed with what people were hauling in. However, what made me more worried was the weather report. The boats coming in said the seas were very rough, and Friday was supposed to be just the same. And indeed it was. The ride out to the fishing grounds was very rough. I started out in the cabin trying to sleep, but that didn't work. I kept getting knocked out of my seat. At this point my story could take one of two directions. I could talk about how I was sick the whole time, or I could talk about the fish we caught. I'll go with the fish. At some point during the ride, I heard the captain start yelling something from above, and all of a sudden we were on top of a school of Dolphin fish. We had at least 6 lines out and all of them hit at the same time. I think Brittany pulled in the first one. It was truly amazing, and crazy. As soon as you put your line in the water, you had another one. I wouldn't say we caught any huge ones, but we caught 54 dolphin in about 15 minutes. With so many lines out, you had to be careful not to tangle the lines, so we were constantly running around, over, and under each other. It was awesome. Unfortunately, it was so hectic that I don't think anyone got any pictures of the action. A few minutes later we started hitting the Blackfin Tuna. These bullets weren't all that big, but they felt huge! Pulling in the dolphin was easy, but the tuna really had some fight. Each time I reeled one in, I thought for sure it was going to be a big monster, but it was just average size. Really fun, nonetheless. At some point the captain yelled out that a shark was chasing the tuna, but we couldn't see the shark. By around 9 a.m. we had already caught 83 fish. The ice box was full, some of us weren't feeling so good, Jay said something about fish not biting after 9 a.m. on the morning after a full moon or some such lore, and so we headed in. Jason said it was the earliest he'd ever gotten in, but it was actually pretty nice. We had a whole half a day back in Hatteras to check things out. Back at the dock, we definitely had the best (at least most) catch of the day. No one else came close to 83 fish, and lots of boats were out all day long. The total weight came to around 400 lbs. They have a pretty awesome system at the dock as well. The mate throws the fish up on the sidewalk for the cleaners to come and collect the fish. This provides a good chance for everyone to stand around and "ooohh" and "aahhh". Then the cleaners take the fish straight to the cleaning shed, where the fish are cleaned and bagged by species. We all decided to go ahead and have our fish split up and vacuum packed for the trip home.
Would I do it again? While I was on the boat I didn't think so. But I think I would. Next time I'll try to the Dramamine patch rather than the pills. If that doesn't work, then it could be my last trip, but I'll give it another shot. Now let's have a fish fry! PICTURES

Outer Banks

One week until my first deep-sea fishing adventure. I'm heading to Cape Hatteras, or more specifically the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center. There have been some great fishing reports in the past few weeks. Let's hope it keeps up. I'm a little nervous about the whole sea-sickness thing, but I plan to use Dramamine.