By Skylar Walters
Here we are in the second week of October and unfortunately, there’s not much on the fishing front to report. Although our area was relatively fortunate after the visit from Hurricane Matthew, there will be some repercussions for the foreseeable future, and the month of October will be slow to get going. Areas inundated with fresh water, not necessarily our waters, but those upstream, will be impacting the fishing for at least one week, and possibly longer. Water temperatures dropped into the middle 70s, almost a 10-degree drop from last week in some locations. The fishing should start slowly improving as water salinity levels start getting back to normal.
As stated above, there’s not much to report this week, mainly due to the impacts of the storm and people trying to make repairs and return to their normal routines. Our area piers fared much better than those along the Brunswick County beaches, so some fishing should start to resume soon. Fortunately, the week ahead is calling for sunny skies and cooler temperatures, which should help the fall fishing get back on track. Just be aware, if prowling the local inshore creeks and waterways, be on the lookout for floating debris. With all of the water dropped both locally and upstream, floating objects will be something to deal with for quite some time.
The offshore forecast is not looking good this week as an abundance of northeast winds are forecast to settle in through the weekend. As indicated earlier, once conditions improve, boaters in the ocean need to also be mindful of floating objects because they will make their way out of inlets. Piers have been destroyed in close proximity to our waters, so be careful and observant.
On a good note, with the cooler temperatures arriving, the speckled trout should be heading into the local waters and ready to bite. Once conditions start improving, I expect a lot of reports of fish being found, and in fact, reports of fish normally start coming in pretty good starting this week, so we’ll have to wait until next week’s report to see if anything is happening. The red drum shouldn’t be far behind and might not have even been impacted. It’ll take some fishermen to get out there and test the waters to see what’s biting.
