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Wrightsville Beach
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Hook, line and sinker

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The second week of August has brought a preview of fall weather to the North Carolina coast. With many days and weeks full of heat, humidity and high water temperatures, this week’s cold front was a welcome relief. While recent reports have yet to indicate the fishing is getting ready to fire off a massive amount of catches, history predicts that is just what is about to happen.

While we’ve got another round of heavy rain and some wind in the forecast mid week, the weekend is looking very fishable and with the water more than likely clearing by that point, anything is possible.

Offshore, fishing has been limited by less-than-ideal sea conditions and storms but a few boats and anglers have managed trips here and there. Dolphin catches within 10 miles of the beach are being reported, but unfortunately that fishery is slowly coming to a close. If that sounds like your game, start fishing trolled baits, either live or dead, the moment you run into schools of flying fish. Finding larger bait pods will also help. If you happen upon some inshore dolphin, you’ll more than likely be limited to only a fish here or there, but king mackerel, barracuda, and even a stray cobia are all possible. Further off the beach, the bottom fishing has been good to decent in water depths starting around 100 feet with optimal depths being 120 to 130 feet for more variety of species.

Inshore, the flounder fishing is getting stronger every week, with more reports of keeper fish being found than undersized. This could change, but with the abundance of baitfish in the local waters, those flounder that are now big will get much larger by the time the official start of fall rolls around. Red drum are also being found in good numbers around the jetties, creeks and area docks with lots of over-slot fish being reported. As always, the waters of the lower Cape Fear River are producing some excellent fishing and water clarity doesn’t seem to be an issue when fishing there, namely because it is almost always dirty.

Pier anglers and surf fishermen are finding some decent fishing for Virginia mullet with fresh shrimp. The churned-up water should help anglers catch some larger quantities and larger fish for the next few days. Sand fleas are great bait when targeting the larger mullet. Red drum are cruising the sloughs and anglers are finding some fish by using fresh cut bait on fish finder rigs. A few instances of very large, over slot fish caught from the beaches of Topsail Island and Carolina Beach were recently reported.

Elsewhere, the fishing is in kind of a holding pattern. The fishing and catching is still going on as it has been for the past several weeks but with the current change in conditions, you may just see a big upswing in the coming days.

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