Journal of a Minnesota Angler

As planned, we left Hayward after lunch, so I only got to fish for a little bit this morning. I was on the dock by 6:30 and went in at 8:00 for breakfast. I threw an orange/brown spinnerbait, chartreuse spinnerbait, green/black beetle spinner (which was too light to cast), scum frog, bubble gum fluke, blue booyah jig and pig, large green mimic minnow swimbait (the head was too big and kept bringing in weeds), white pearl fluke, and white spinnerbait. Nothing induced a strike despite the fact... (more...)

Here was my day in a nutshell: got up, fished, ate breakfast, went to town, ate lunch, fished, took down a tree, fished, started up our boat (that had been dormant for two years), fished, ate dinner, and fished. All in all, I probably fished for about 9 hours today. In the morning, from about 7-9am, I threw a bubble gum fluke, white spinnerbait, blue Booyah jig with blue speckled Zoom chunk, texas rigged Slurpie worm, scum frog, and mimic minnow swimbait with spinner. I only got hit once, but it... (more...)

I’m amazed how poorly things went in North Carolina. While I didn’t expect to do well, I didn’t expect to do as poorly as we did. I expected that we’d only catch a few fish decent sized fish at each location, but all we caught were little Spot fish and Croakers. They were just as annoying, if not more so, than the sunfish that we’re used to in freshwater. If I could do it again, I would have tried two other spots. They were told to us by one of the employees at... (more...)

Having had no real success catching fish off a pier, we decided to rent a pontoon. It would hold 10 of us and we would be able to take it out for 4 hours in the morning. Surely someone would catch something worthwhile in the middle of a sound. We rented the boat from Fishing Unlimited in Nags Head to go out to Roanoke Sound. It was a very well run outfit. We got on the boat a little before 8am and headed to the first of a few spots that the guide pointed out. He didn’t come with us, so... (more...)

We told the family about the crabbing spot we went to yesterday and a few of them wanted to try fishing off the pier that was there. The cousins decided to head down in the morning to try our luck. We had room for one more in the car, so my dad tagged along. We stopped in to TW’s Bait and Tackle to pick up fishing licenses for a few of us and also pick up some lures that other people had success with off the pier. We got to Pirate’s Cove at about 10am. Even at mid-morning, the sun... (more...)

While we were out crabbing this morning, my uncle, dad, brother, and cousins Chris and Julie went out to Nags Head pier to try their hand at fishing. They caught a few small Spot fish, but weren’t really happy about their experience. We seemed to have more fun crabbing. Later that afternoon, my aunt and her family went out on an outing on their own. At about 4:00, she called and said she was out at the same pier as the group this morning and the fish were biting like crazy. I hung up the... (more...)

This morning, we went out to Pirate’s Cove to go crabbing. We had purchased some crab lines and chicken necks from TW Bait and Tackle yesterday and they said Pirate’s Cove was a good place to go. It was a bit longer of a drive than we expected, but once we got there, we had a lot of fun. The pier there runs under the bridge that goes between Nags Head and Roanoke Island. It weaves in and out and around like a big snake. We first tried directly under the bridge where there are some... (more...)

Two of my younger cousins bought a couple of flashlights this afternoon and wanted to go looking for crabs while it was dark. We thought they might be out because we found one or two that had wandered into our pool and died. The theory was dead on. We walked on the beach and my cousin, Tim, found a crab right away running from his flashlight. He went after it, but couldn’t catch it. He eventually came up with the technique of trapping it with his flashlight. It was a little tricky getting... (more...)

I’m in the Outer Banks of North Carolina this week for a family reunion. My wife was out walking the beach alone this morning when she met some people that found some really cool conch shells. She found out from them how they were catching them and then we started doing it. Hurricane Bill, while several hundred miles South of us, was affecting the weather by producing some rain storms and stirring up the oceans with big waves (by my Midwestern standards). There were 8-10 ft swells a few... (more...)