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From: devin
Date: 9/20/2023
Time: 2:58:58 PM
North Island, 9-14 / 9-17
Wife and I had 8am ferry on Thursday morning. When we hit the sand we could go south about 400 yards and nowhere north from the old cabins. The backroad was flooded with the corresponding high tide. Just pulled to edge of dunes and spend a couple hours tying up and organizing truck and camper waiting for water to go out some. Made it south to Ophelia without much problem as tide was getting low. Caught a big sting ray in about 30 minutes of fishing the inlet. I wanted to walk the end and backside at low tide so we cut fishing short. We left after our walk to be safe and did not make it back for two days. Found a place to ride out the extreme tides on the backside near some deep water. Could park the truck right there, awesome. Probably not an authorized camping area but everybody on the island Thursday and Friday were either parked in the dunes or somewhere like this…there was no beach sand available. Thursday afternoon we caught some puppy drum in the slot and over. We caught several nice blues up to 4 pounds. Friday we caught more puppies and blues along with 5 keeper flounder, first two of which went into the cooler. Biggest flounder we caught on hook and line was 21.5”.
Saturday we felt safe to venture out. We loaded livewell with sweet 4-5 inch mullet before leaving the spot that had been so good to us during the hurricane tides. Fishing was very slow for us that day and the following day. I waded out to the inner bar near the inlet and spent an hour or so. Again only one ray. Looked intensely drummy to me. I was fully confident I was about to get bit the whole time. I did talk to some friends that caught some slot and slightly over slot drum in the ocean that day but not us.
I was about to clean flounder from night before when ranger pulled up along side truck on Sunday morning. Super nice guy. Checked cooler, checked license, added to wife’s chorus of noticing how her flounder was much bigger than mine. Hung out to chat a few minutes. Good interaction.
Sunday fishing was again slow for us in the ocean. Walked to the sound in a new spot but it did not turn out to be great for bank fishing.
Made some new friends, some even from right here where I live that I did not know before. Enjoyed seeing and spending time with old friends that I had not fished with in a while. Get Jim to tell you about his experience swimming out to rescue a drowning/dead guy floating face down in the water on Sunday. All he could see was face down, feet and hands outstretched wearing pants, shirt and lifevest. He was relived to discover it was a US Coast Guard training dummy wearing an official coast guard jacket and vest. Full sized…. Crazy seeing it laying on the back of his deck!
Great time. For sure Hurricane Lee treated us much better than the tropical storm on lower island on Memorial Day weekend.
Hope to see everyone in about 17 days for tournament week. Looks a little discouraging on the political side this year unfortunately that we may not be able to.
devin