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 we were on our own.
He said there was a spot near buoy 22 that had a 15 ft hole. The rest of the sound was pretty shallow. Boy, was he right. Most everywhere we went it was only 2-6 feet. We tried to find the hole he talked about, but the pontoon didn’t come with a depth finder, so we were pretty much shooting in the dark.
We ended up fishing in a random spot for about an hour, but only caught little 6″ croakers. Sometimes two at a time since there were two hooks on each bottom rig.
We then decided to head under the bridge at Pirate’s Cove and try the other side of the bridge. We motored over there at about 9:45am and anchored around buoy 24A. We actually tried to anchor further downshore, but we drifted a bit. The nice thing is the spot we settled in was about 10 ft deep.
Most of the boat was using bottom rigs, but a few of us were casting with Got-cha lures. Again, mostly small croakers. No one using a lure caught anything. My uncle did get a few crab using the crab net my cousin (his daughter) bought yesterday.
After another 40 minutes or so, we headed back downshore where we tried to anchor initially. It was only 6 ft there. Still nothing but little croakers.
Our time was nearly up so we motored back to the other side of the bridge and tried closer to shore. I even saw some fish splashing near shore, but it was so shallow there we couldn’t get close enough to cast into them.
Over the entire 4 hours, we only caught two croakers worth keeping and they were still pretty small. My uncle walked away with 2 crab.
The whole saltwater fishing thing is just too unfamiliar to us freshwater folks. My brother and I are the most avid fisherman, but we’re used to fish in lakes and streams. We’re just not used to fishing in these shallow waters with tide cycles.
We only have one day left, so I’m not sure we’ll head out again tomorrow. There’s a little park not far from our house in Kitty Hawk that we were pointed to early on that was freshwater. I’m not sure if it’s worth a $10 license to try that spot just for a few hours. I would hate to be disappointed again.
It was nice being out on the water, though, and not just trying to fish off a pier.
