minner, Emerald Isle NC, Saltwater, 9/6-9/12

[FishNews]

Here's a saltwater report for those interested, and if you have never vacationed in Emerald Isle you should give it a try.<br />We got there on 9/6, and fished all week (when it wasn't raining). We got 10 inches of rain in one day!!!!<br /><br />The goal for this year was to establish a flounder bite, catch a king over 25lbs, and figure the fall redfish patterns out. The foul weather prevented most of that though. We did get on a good flounder bite. On Tuesday we were able to get out about 4 miles and fish a 3-4' ledge (live bottom) where the flounder were hanging out. We were power drifting almost like you would for catfish except with the combination of wind and current where would be drifting about 3mph, so the technique is to put the stern of the boat into the wind/waves and back down, constantly shift in and out of reverse to "hover" over a spot or slow your drift to about .1-.2mph. I bet I engaged and disengaged the motor 500 times that day with my left hand while a constantly jigged my 2oz white Spro bucktail tipped with a Berkley Gulp minnow in my right hand. My right arm was sore the whole next day from all the jigging.<br /><br />We gave trolling a try over the next few days but the kings were absent and the Spanish were few. The bluefish were around and were scrappy when the bite got slow. The strange weather, both rain and cool temps really had an effect on the fish.<br /><br />On Friday we were able to finally get out farther to try and find a king or dolphin. We stopped at a naval buoy at the 11 mile mark. The wind started to pick up and we’d have been soaked in minutes if we had trolled in my little 21’ bay boat. I could not hold the boat in one spot long, so we decided to see if we could find anything hanging out by the buoy. Sure enough there was a pod of Cobia hanging out under the buoy. We'd drift by it, with live bait, and they'd follow the boat and then nail our baits. We took turns catching fish until we were tired of doing battle and the wind really whipped up so we decided to head in. That was a long ride in with a 15mph head wind in 4 foot seas with a chop on top.<br /><br />We didn’t get to put the time in on the redfish like we had hoped but there's always next year. <br />