The Season It Wasnâ??t

Well maybe I / We  set unreasonable goals sometimes but I felt this year  10 fish was a realistic one. Before every trip , be it NJ, Morehead or the Bahamas I like to set some type of realistic goal in order to satisfy myself as well as the customers.  This year fishing never really materialized in Morehead NC except for a very short blast of fish from Dec 10th to about the 18th.  Other than that there were many no fish days or  1 or 2 fish days for the entire fleet.  I believe the first fish of the season hit the scales of Potside Marina December 6th. This also about 10 days later than normal. We typically see a couple waves of fish come through in the season but this year was so different. Everything seemed different. Why ? Well we all have our reasons. We dealt with unseasonably cold weather as well as a sustained NW blow for almost 2 weeks. NW winds in Morehead push warmer water offshore which left us fishing places never normally fished as going 30 miles seemed the norm. Its gets very hard to fish when the water moves offshore being that the structure we typically like to fish is around the 10 fathom line. Water around the ten fathom line remained  in the low 50â??s for the later part of December and into January. Bait also seemed hard to come by this year. We usually fish bunker balls we call haystacks down there but even these seemed hard to find after the middle of Dec.

The fleet seemed to have diminished every year since going down there. We use to see 100 boats on a calm day and now we are maybe in the 50â??s. It is very hard to make a living down there as every day without a bite the expenses keep growing. I believe many have pulled out of it and expect even fewer boats next season. Hey maybe they are the smart ones. All this being said this remains one of  my favorite fisheries . There is nothing more rewarding or exciting than to see one of these beautiful fish hit the deck. Not to many times some of us will see a fish pull 40 pounds of drag at will. And THATâ??S why we all do it right. I really hope this fishery rebounds next year as this is the worst season down there to date.

Our Season in Review

This year OverUnder Adventures had 2 boats fishing in Morehead . We both started fishing on December 6th. We didnâ??t have too much to speak of until the 11th with a bunch of albacores and kings between us. On the 11th however we got out chance .  We had a fish come right to the boat and after expecting an albacore we were amazed to see her start ripping drag right at the boat. We made very quick work of the unexpected surprise and had a dart in an 80 inch fish. Well we didnâ??t have to wait to long until our next bite as we again came tight on the 12th boating a 87 inch fish. We had a mixed bag of weather this week and Keith got his first fish on the 15th being 90 inches.  We were back at it again on the 17th and went 1-2 boating a 80 inch fish and breaking off a nice one at the boat. This was Low Profiles last bites of the season unfortunately   and ended with 3 total. We then fished 5 more days before xmas and we wathed the bite come to a halt and went on break the 22nd. We kept in contact with the fleet over the holidays and heard nothing positive the entire week. We  treked back down on New Years to begin fishing with hearing of maybe a couple starting to show. Got a call from Keith on my way down and he was coming in with his second of the season at 74 inches. This got me going and the bite is starting RIGHTâ?¦â?¦NOT. Just a few were caught that following week when Keith got another at 93 inches. This was also Keith and Justifiedâ??s last fish ending them with 3 fish also. It is amazing and very impressive that Keith and John had such a great January when they were only 10 fish for the fleet and they landed 2 of them. . With not much going on we both decided to call it quits January 21st with no good outlook on fishing. To date I believe the top boat had 6 fish down there. This number is usually in the low teens . All in all it was a disappointing season but we made the most of it . There is a great group of guys down there and laughs were had by all . Until next year!!!