The Tar Heel Outdoorsman

Around Wrightsville Beach and Figure Eight Island, they always said you couldn't catch fish off the docks on artificial bait.  Those fish just see so much thrown at them, they said.  It was live or cut bait only, preferably live.   I've found that not to be the case.  Especially for big flounder and the occasional drum or trout.  And if you enjoy the active experience of trying to manipulate a bait with a rod and reel to try and trick a fish, fishing artificial bait is the way to go.  If there's a flounder season this year in North Carolina, give it a shot.   At least for the fish by the docks around the Wrightsville/Figure Eight areas, here's my playbook.  White soft-plastic baits , preferably scented, on a jig head that's going to sink quickly enough and stay at the bottom, depending on where you're fishing.  Cast close to the dock, bump the bait off the bottom, retrieve slowly.   The flat fish seem to like white baits,...

If you're a bit too much into gear, like me, let me show you a relatively cheap and easy way to organize and store all your stuff.  And maybe it'll even allow you a nice platform to sleep on during your outdoor pursuits, when even the dirtiest "roach motel" with a haze of perpetual cigarette smoke is miles away, or if the Holiday Inn isn't in your budget at the moment.   There are companies that make these type of truck bed storage systems, such as Decked, etc.  However, this is a cheaper, and simpler alternative, though maybe not perfectly waterproof or perfectly thief proof.  Still though, it's better than an open truck bed, with gear and tools and spent shotgun shells and Hardee's biscuit wax paper from an early morning wood duck hunt and who-knows-what-else strewn about in a homogenous mix and you can't find whatever it is you need that's somewhere in there.   If you're into gear, there's also a further chance, like me, you enjoy testin...

We shoved off from the Edenton Marina for a cruise across the sound.  Lunch over at Mackey's.  I had yet to go over there since our move up to Northeastern 'Carolina.  Southward we went, through that tannin-stained water of the "Sea of Roanoke," about eight miles to the mouth of Mackey's Creek.   It was a calm early-March day, and it was warmer, a welcome thing compared to the usual cold and breeze of winter and early spring.  The "wind machine," had been turned off.  It sure felt good for my skin to soak up that sun for the first time in a while, too long deprived of Vitamin-D.   It was hard to spot the mouth of the creek, amongst the cypress and their knees and Spanish moss, it's not wide.  But it's deep, deep for a ways, way past the marina.   We grabbed a fried seafood lunch at the marina grill, along with a cold beverage, and after eating way more than my fill, we continued to cruise up the creek.   It's hard to ...

My next DIY project is for those of you who are already thinking about next duck season.   If you've hunted open water with a guide, especially from a "scissor rig" on the Currituck or Pamlico Sounds, chances are your guide may have employed a floating "Mojo" or other spinning wing duck decoy.  Especially on the big water, you often need some movement to draw the birds in from afar.   For my weekend-warrior duck hunting pursuits, I wanted to try and recreate a similar Mojo rig.  The biggest issue is, the water's deep.  You're not sticking any sort of pole into the bottom.  And even if you could, the best days are the rough days.  The chop of the sound isn't going to let the thing stand up even if you could get it in the mud.   As luck would have it, on a summer trip to Maine, I spotted an "offshore" lobster buoy washed up on the rocky beach.  I suddenly visualized the thing, perhaps, being perfect for this floating, deep-water...

Who wants to build some big ol' sawhorses?  This is the first of a few DIY projects for those of you, like me, who are always starting another project, another project to better do something---to more efficiently store gear, to make outdoor pursuits a bit more pleasant, or in this case, make your truck a truck again for whatever "truck" activities life sometimes requires. If you've got a camper shell, you probably got it for the practicality.  Your truck is now essentially a "SUV," with all the extra storage, double the storage than those flat "toppers" that sit level with the bed rails, storage protected from the rain, wind, and a bit safer from the opportunistic thief who eyes those tools or hunting gear in your open truck bed.   However, sometimes you want to use your truck for "truck stuff."  That's really why you have a truck after all, isn't it?  Hauling some trash to the dump, moving a couch across town, the list goes on.  ...

It's a funky place, Wilmington.  A weird mix of beach luxury, old in-town money, yet grittiness of a port city with a blue collar and service economy backbone, and poverty and drugs and violence in the "wrong" part of town, and people who grew up there with roots reaching down through generations of sandy dirt, and now more than ever a mix of "new" people from all over and North and West.   It's a funky river, the Cape Fear, and her sister, the Northeast Cape Fear.  It's sometimes a dirty river---industry, logging, chemicals and heavy metals, fuel, both nearby and upriver, and the sprawling semi-urban and suburban landscape of New Hanover and the quickly developing Brunswick and Pender Counties.  It's an old river, full of history.  From the Native Americans who first called the area home, to the English colonists and the raiding Spanish at Brunswick Town, to the economy of naval stores and tar and pitch and turpentine, to the last port and   "...

Rails.  Marsh Hens.  Mud Chickens.   What fun little birds.  The tide is the big factor---very high, often around a big moon in early fall---high enough that these marsh fowl don't have much of a place to hide, hopefully congregating around the floating mats of dark reeds, or maybe just off some of the higher areas of marsh or a small island with some brush and scrub live oaks.  We push the skiff through the spartina grass, trying to jump some birds.   We strain looking for them.  Sometimes they try to sneak off, we barely see their heads as they slink away through the water, out of scatter gun range.  We have to get close to them for the birds to take flight.  Sometimes we have to almost give them some encouragement with the push pole to hop up airborne.  Sometimes they don't fly far, sometimes they try and make it to the next "hammock" over, the next higher section of marsh.   It's lower, slower shooting than those ...

My blog has been dormant like an alligator in the winter mud.  I'm trying to awaken it from its slumber.    In an attempt to rouse this online place where I occasionally jot some things down, I'm looking back a ways, back to March of '22.  A darn fine weekend.  Or a collection of a few weekends.  Regardless, darn fine.  Oysters and drum and cool, clean, and clear salt water, and azaleas in bloom.     Picking oysters---knocking the too-small ones off the clusters, toss the ones you keep in the fish basket sitting in the still cold, early spring, southeastern Carolina water, still cold and clean, maybe even shuck one of the bivalves for a briny mid morning snack, or maybe it was mid afternoon.  Find a few mussels too, just poking through a mud bank of a small creek, pull them, often connected together in a big clump, out of that dark rich mud that smells like marsh.   A few drum---casting up on the oyster bank, let the jig a...