South Core Banks Report

[crashq]

This is for you guys that are heading down to the South Core Banks. Sorry I didn't post it last night, but I got back very late and fell asleep on the couch before I turned the computer on.

We fished from Saturday Nov. 7 through Friday Nov. 13. Well, we actually didn't fish on Saturday and and Sunday because of the crappy weather. We were tent camping, and the combination of N/NE wind blowing water down from Pamlico sound, full moon, and storms pushing water onshore caused problems, We were tent camping, and because of the major rearrangement of the channels caused by Ophelia we had limited access to the islands and therefore had limited camping spots, so we camped on the end of one. The wind and wave action kept eroding the end of the island. We lost 100 feet of each where we were camped. This caused us to have to move camp twice over the weekend. Between the cook tent blowing away, fsihing out stuff out of the water, and moving we had no time to fish (although I'm sure the fishing was great during that period)

Just when we were contemplating packing it in and camping onshore (and day tripping it) or going up to the Chesapeake, when the storms broke on Monday. Monday afternoon turned into a gorgeous day. I took my light spinning rod out to the front of the island, and fished the shoreside of a bar on the beginning of the incoming tide using small chinks of jumping mullet on a 1 ounce sliding sinker rig. I landed 9 drum to 30" in the next two hours. The weather and our luck continued to get better throughout the rest of the week.

The first three hours of the incoming tide continued to produce and turned out to be the best fishing time, with the night time incoming being best. There was only a couple of good bites on the outgoing tide during the whole week.

Shoal waters adjacent to the end of islands was the best location for red drum, although fishing on the shore side of sandbars and top of sandbars (farther into the incoming) produced very well at times. All of the usual bait (finger mullet, jumping mullet, and bluefish) produced well. We even caught some fish on metal.

We ended up catching red drum to 50" with everyone gettting a citation (40"+). Most fish were the usual large puppies (24-30") with bigger fish mixed in. Large stingrays also provided excitement; at least until the scorching first run ended and we realized it wasn't a 60" drum.

In addition to the red drum, we caught the usual bluefish (10-20") with a couple larger ones (6-8lbs) mixed in. We found them both in the surf and on the backside of the island, where they were willing to bite almost anything, including flies. We fished flies there on Thursday and Friday; landing not only bluefish, but some small puppy drum, a few gray trout, and a couple small grouper. This was best around distinct channels during times of moving water. We also spooked some drum to 24" away from grass banks on the core side flats while we leaving the island.

You guys that were headed down to Davis this weekend should have a great trip. Good Luck!

[cefireman2154]

ty for the report sounds like yall had fun except for the first few days.we went over wed. and thrus. didnt have much luck tho, maybe it will be good this coming week

[crashq]

I finally got my photos back. Here is the fish porn.

This is our third camp. We didn't fish from Saturday through Monday afternoon because our first two camps got washed away.


Once we set up the final camp we got started making bait.


Which we used to catch some of these




Some Big ones too.

[crashq]

We also caught some other species.






...including some blues, trout, and grouper on the fly.









It was over too quick.

[derf]

crash
where were you camped at ??

[crashq]

Our final camp (Monday through Saturday) was between New Drum Inlet and Ophelia Inlet. It took us most of Saturday to find the channel over there from Sea Level. It looked like the guys on North Davis has some good days while we were there.

[Fish4Fun]

Awesome
I'm on the ferry Sunday the 5th-9am. I'll be there till Thursday.
How did you make out camping with the bugs this time of year?
Those mosquitoes can be killer on the sound side when it warms up.

[crashq]

It wasn't bad. The bad storms during the first weekend killed most of them off or at least blew them across the sound. We started to see them toward the end of the week as new ones hatched, but it wasn't as bad as last year, which was as bad as I have ever seen it. Even with the newly hatched ones the numbers were fairly low. I only used my 30% DEET occasionally because my BuzzOff shirt, hat, & bandana were enough tokeep them at bay most of the time.

[rockhoppingmike]

Nice big reds /
you guys know what your doing!