Jake Jordan's Fishing Adventures

August 4th, 2008

North Carolina Fishing Report

Greetings from North Carolina:

Sorry for the lack of fishing reports lately, I've been pretty busy here in the office catching up on book work and planning my 2009 calendar. Most of the maintenance work is now finished on my boats, trailers, and truck along with the summer house work being caught up.

It has taken some time finishing up my Sailfish School and Marlin School schedules for late 2008 and all of 2009. If you are planning to travel with me during the next 12 months and have not yet reserved your dates, you should as most are now sold out. I will begin taking reservations for Tarpon season 2009 during September of this year please contact me if you are planning to fish again.

Now to the fishing reports! I fished alone on Friday, trying out my boat after the maintenance of last week was completed. Around 7:30 AM I headed "Fly Reel" to the shoal but decided to turn right and fish on a couple of wrecks on the west side of the shoal. I found a small wreck on my chart which took about 20 minutes to get too, as I approached there was one cabin boat trolling around but no one drifting near the structure. I stayed for about two hours, setting up and drifting over the structure, I caught a nice Cuda, a small Mackerel (King), and a Jack in the 10 pound range. Later I moved to several other spots on the chart but never got another bite arrived back at the dock by 2:00 PM.

Saturday the wind was down to 10 knots in the morning, Chuck Laughridge, Kary Via, and Seth Thompson, (CLFF members) were on an east side wreck when John Snipes and I arrived at 7:15 AM. As we pulled up aboard "Fly Reel" they were hooked up with bent fly rods fighting big Amberjack. We began to cast big decievers on heavy sinking fly lines as we drifted over the wrecks, didn't take long, bent rods and landed big Amberjack. Soon after we arrived Tommy Bennett and his son Thomas arrived and immediately began to catch AJ's. It was awesome, three boats with friends all hooking and catching these great fish which were mostly between 15 and 40 pounds. Thomas put on a show teasing the fish up to the transom with live bait and then his dad would hook them on top water flies.

About halfway through the morning all hell broke loose as the big AJ's, hundreds of them exploded on the surface, chasing bait out of the water. John tied on a surface, popper fly and hooked up right away, as I looked around it seemed all rods were bent, really exciting fishing! John took some pictures which I am waiting to see, and I think that Tommy filmed the whole thing on video. John got his first top water AJ and had a nice King up to the boat without a wire leader, I hooked 9 and released 5 several were well over 30 pounds on my Boga Grip, all my fish were caught on 20 pound tippet, a 10 weight TFO TiCr fly rod, and a Mako #9550 fly reel. I can't wait to get out for more of this red hot fly fishing action, these AJ's really kick your butt.

Early Sunday morning found me and my neighbor Adrian, casting flies into busting bait schools in the Neuse River at the end of my street. It was dead calm and you could see bait exploding all up and down the shore line. I caught three flounder before I finally got a keeper for dinner along with 2 small speckled sea trout, all caught on white Clouser Minnow flies. Adrian caught 5 flounder, two keepers and a small Redfish, and we were home before 8:00 AM. Fishing is good here in North Carolina, I am very happy that I decided to make this my home, a wonderful place with super nice folks, I feel like I've made some good new friends. I will be sending more pictures when I get them from John, more reports to follow!

Regards:

Jake