The Tar Heel Outdoorsman

It was the first weekend of the first "split" of duck season.  Mid-November.  Unfortunately . . . our first hunt on the sound this year didn't go quite as planned.   Several buddies and I had two Currituck National Wildlife Refuge Blinds, off Knotts Island.  We've had good hunts there before , and I love going up to that part of the world.  Northeastern North Carolina is a special place, a place full of water and waterways.  A place full of history, thanks to all that water.  One of the first colonized areas of Carolina.  Knotts Island is an especially unique place . . . and getting there from the rest of our state requires boarding the Currituck ferry or driving into Virginia, and coming back south, down NC 615, through Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, and onto Knotts Island, the island-peninsula jutting out into the Currituck Sound. This year, we rented a cabin at a campground right on the state line.  Wate...

A look back . . .  Speckled trout.  What a great fish.  To fish for, to catch, and, every once in a while, to invite a few to dinner . . . When the trout get thick and start chewing, it's that time of year.  The temperature cools and the water clears.  It's the best time time of year---fall on the coast of Carolina. Catch 'em from the skiff, catch 'em from the jetty.   It just doesn't get much better . . . especially when these "trout-tivities" coincide with spoil island skeet shooting and some Turkey day oysters and a bit of Atlantic Beach pie.