Got to OC at 7:30am and headed out at 8am after a minor repair to my GPS antenna(lost nut and bolt).
Started south looking for marks, boats or birds. Fished a while at the NC line with no luck and continued south. Ended up at the Duck research pier. Found a good school of bait, the first we saw all day. First fish hit a chartreuse mojo and ended up weighing 42lbs 12oz. Next hook up we had a tripple of 25-28lb fish. Next fish came about 10min later and weighed 24lbs. Trolled around for another hour with nothing. The wind picked up and so did we. It was a long bumpy ride back to Rudee. All in all, not a bad day. We ended up with 5 nice fish in the boat with one citation. If I get a chance to go again, I may try O.I., it may be closer to the fish. Anybody know where the charter fleet went? We only saw one or two charters all day.
Eddie G.

we were with the rest of the charter fleet off sandbridge. everyone whacked em. nice class of fish. most bites came deep. not many birds.

Thanks for the report guys, pretty work on the paper


-Chris

How Deep where you hitting the Striper off Sandbridge. I was there in the only group of about ten Boats that where in sight, except for the fleet that was about 5-6 miles straight out off the beach from us, max depth on the 3 mile line was around 40 foot and never saw or heard of a fish being caught.

So the fleet must have been well past the 3 mile line. We were trying to fish for keepers so we stayed in. I figured the bait must have been pushed offshore from the north wind.
EG

We were fishing in 45-50 ft off of Duck. Not too far from the end of the pier. Mojos were bumping bottom when we went below 45ft. We stopped for a minute off Sandbridge and didn't see anything happening. But that was around 9:00am. On the way back up around 3pm we didn't see anything going on either. Must have happened when we were out of the area.

I heard from one of my students that he was on a charter boat that went out about 8 miles to play catch and release with Striped Bass. Isn't it illegal to catch Stripers past the three mile line - even if it's C+R?

It's illegal to target striped bass past the 3 mile line. I guess they were bluefishing and releasing all those pesky bycatch striped bass.

Yes it is, But interpretation is everything in this case. I'm sure they where actually Targeting Bluefish or Bluefin Tuna and where catching Striper in the same area. The student may have misunderstood what they where actually targeting. Myself I just won't go out there unless my charters actually want to target Bluefish or Bluefin Tuna, and in that case we are running alot further then 8 miles. I'm not teasing my charters with striper they cant keep. What if they caught one that could be a citation ot even a state or world record, and you have to throw it back. I think that would hurt more then anything. You can't keep it, if your conscience dont get you the Lie Detector Test will, then you all look like fools.