North Carolina DNR fishing report 9-21

Ocean: Dolphin, wahoo, Atlantic bonito, little tunny and the two, blackfin and yellowfin tuna hit the docks in great figures. Anglers continued to release plenty of sailfish and equally, blue and white marlin. Anglers fishing in the midrange area caught a number of striped bass and red drum close to 4 – 5 miles offshore. Artificial reefs offered a handful of sheepshead, black drum, tautog and spadefish. Near shore motion was limited by tough seas, but favorable climate situations did yield good figures of bluefish with a few Spanish mackerel. Flounder, spotted seatrout and red drum had been caught with improved regularity.

Inlets/Seems/Bays: Flounder ended up caught on a standard basis with favorable keeper ratios in most locations. Shallow locations around shorelines and islands continued to yield the bulk of the catches. Spotted seatrout were caught in the early morning hours in the Roanoke Audio off of the Small Bridge and underneath the Washington Baum Bridge dropping off sharply about mid-early morning. Spot, croaker and kingfish have been caught in reasonable amounts.

Piers/Shore: Bluefish blitzing occurred for individuals that had been fortunate enough to be there at the appropriate time. Coolers ended up crammed with spot, alongside with moderate quantities of pompano, kingfish, croaker and pigfish. A number of cobia ended up caught off the stop of piers soon after dark.

SOUTHERN

Ocean: Offshore, when weather permitted, fishing was amazing. Wahoo, sailfish and dolphin were caught in very good numbers. Most of the wahoo had been in the 35-pound array, but fish up to ninety pounds ended up caught. Anglers bottom fishing in drinking water depths of one hundred to one hundred twenty feet developed large red and scamp groupers, alongside with a selection of reef fish. Gag grouper had been biting around ledges and wrecks in the 10- to twenty-mile assortment. Close to shore reefs created flounder, huge red drum, gray trout and a lot of Spanish mackerel.

Inlets/Sounds/Bays: Anglers focusing on flounder caught some actually big fish, but numbers of fish caught remained low. Snow’s Cut was the very hot spot for citation dimension flounder with a number of fish more than eleven pounds caught. Fishermen targeting red drum and speckled trout did nicely in the bays and creeks powering Bald Head Island and the rock jetty at Small River.

Piers/Shore: Spots have revealed up in extremely very good numbers. Alongside with the spots, anglers caught pompano, sea mullet and bluefish. Anglers fishing are living shrimp and mullet minnows caught great figures of flounder and red drum, but most have been undersized. Surf fishermen caught a lot the same with pompano, sea mullet and red drum getting the prevalent species becoming caught.

Central

Ocean: Anglers caught some wahoo and dolphin on the reefs, as nicely as amberjack and almaco jacks. Anglers bottom fishing created huge figures of sizable gray triggerfish, and a mix of gag grouper, red grouper, white grunts, vermilion snapper, black sea bass, scup and some flounder. Within of ten miles, Spanish mackerel and bluefish continued to be caught in good figures. In the vicinity of shore bottom fishing anglers noticed kingfish (sea mullet), black sea bass, flounder and scup, along with some Atlantic sharpnose sharks.

Inlets/Sounds/Bays: Anglers caught some bluefish and Spanish mackerel in the inlets. The seems continued to be full of bait fish, the occasional flounder and at times, very good numbers of spot. Spot ended up currently being caught on reduce bait on bottom rigs.

Piers/Shore: The piers saw some bluefish, Spanish mackerel, Florida pompano and speckled trout. The spot had been becoming caught in larger numbers on the piers, shore, turning basin at the N.C. Port and Shackleford Financial institutions off the beach. Anglers ended up also catching kingfish (sea mullet), pigfish, croaker, spadefish and pompano. From the shore, anglers caught pigfish, croaker, spot, kingfish (sea mullet), pompano and Spanish mackerel.

N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries • 3441 Arendell Road • Morehead Town, NC 28557 • (252) 726-7021 or one-800-682-2632