Believe it or not, for me, not every fishing trip leads to the success of catching fish. I know, I know, that’s a shocking revelation, but I’ve learned over the years that when God sends me fishing, it’s not always the fish that makes my trip a success. Sometimes God sends me on fishing trips, but he has other things in mind, and I’ve been blessed with the wisdom to recognize this as I’ve grown older. Sometimes he sends me for fellowship or more specifically, to be a good listener that will ultimately draw me closer to Him through the needful prayers for others.
Case in point: A few years back I took my former pastor out on an early fall fishing trip. My pastor isn’t an avid fisherman, but he knows the basics of cast and retrieve so off we went with spinnerbaits and crankbaits at the ready. An hour into the trip I started catching fish on a spinnerbait while the pastor was having no luck with the crankbait, so I gave him my rod with the successful spinnerbait I was using. I showed him the correct retrieval speed and even told him exactly where to cast while I took over the crankbait duties. After going down the bank for the next 30 minutes, I started having success with the crankbait while my pastor never got a sniff on the spinnerbait. I figured that the crankbait was starting to work better than the spinnerbait, so I gave my pastor the crankbait rod and I took the spinnerbait rod back. Shortly afterwards I caught back-to-back fish on the spinnerbait while the pastor continued to struggle with the crankbait again. I was closing in on a dozen fish and decided to quit fishing for a while and just work with the pastor and his technique as well as his casting location with the spinnerbait. I honestly tried my best and bent over backwards to make his day catching fish, but it just didn’t happen and at the end of our trip I had well over a dozen fish. At the very end of our trip, he caught one tiny 6-inch fish to end the trip and it was almost like a slap in the face for him to reel in one tiny little bass to end our day. I couldn’t believe what had just happened and it was as if something biblical had happened because it was so strange and unbelievable. I’ve taken hundreds of people fishing over the years, but I couldn’t explain what had just happened, so I prayed about it and almost immediately got my answer.
“Answers to question type prayers generally come in the form of an epiphany for me and I knew right away that God didn’t send him there to catch fish with me but to fellowship”. It could have been the introduction of something to pray for or someone to pray for but the whole day I knew something was off. I could tell that the pastor was pre-occupied with thoughts and so I prayed for him and whatever was troubling him. I also prayed for his fishing skills to improve but I didn’t really count on that miracle. jk. The point is that some fishing trips aren’t about fishing at all. I’d like y’all to keep that in mind on your next failed outing. Some trips may be to demonstrate a little well needed humbleness for some, or perhaps the healing medicine of fellowship that leads prayer for others. It could be any number of reasons other than catching fish.
Our Trip
I’ve known Greg since we were in kindergarten together back in southeast Kansas and after some 44 years we were reunited when Greg and his wife moved to within an hour away from us. Greg and I had gotten together a few years back and fished together shortly after Greg moved to the area, so I knew Greg liked to fish. Greg used to go to the Outer Banks, NC on fishing trips with his brother Keith, who I also knew but Keith passed away recently, and Greg invited me to accompany him on his annual fall trip to the Outer Banks. I’d never been to the Outer Banks, but it had always intrigued me to fish there, so I signed on to go with Greg in early October. Another classmate of ours, Bill decided to join us for our 5-day trip to the Outer Banks. It was going to be myself, Greg and Bill staying at the Cape Lookout cottages on the Outer Banks for three full days of surf fishing on the eastern seashore of the island. Our cabin was within shouting distance of the beach and to access the island we had to ride the Davis Ferry over from the mainland. Once you arrived on the island it was all sand and driving was a bit unusual because the access to the beach was sand roads that parallelled the beach. The Davis Ferry was large enough to accommodate 4-5 vehicles and 4-wheel drive is a must. It was also a must to deflate the vehicle tires down to about 20-25 pounds of pressure to help with the traction from driving in the sand. Believe me, it definitely helped, especially when driving down the soft sandy beaches. Vehicles were allowed to drive on the beaches and there were even campers, rv’s and pull behinds parked along the beach that stretched a good 15-20 miles. The parallelling access road was narrow and there were pullouts in case one vehicle met another vehicle going opposite directions on the route. Here’s a picture of my view while driving the beach access road and you can see two pullouts not far ahead.
Bill, Greg and I all rode together from Georgia and arrived on Friday evening just before sunset, so we decided to offload some personal gear and fish for the remaining time before dark. We drove to the beach just outside the cabin and I learned the fishing tackle setup fairly quickly. The surf was really rolling and there were 4–5-foot breakers rolling in as we pulled the gear out of the back of the truck. Greg had a couple of friends from his former employment that were staying on the island as well and we paid them a quick visit to see if they couple spare a little fresh bait on the way to the beach. The main bait of choice for us was cut bait finger mullet that were netted earlier in the day by Greg’s friends. Here’s a couple pictures of our setup, while Greg and Bill rig gear, and my view of my big surf rod from my beach chair.
The Gear
Basically, we had 10-foot surf rods with big spinning reels loaded with heavy mono line and heavy weights as well as big circle hooks to hold the cut mullet. The heavy lead weights we used we called “Sputniks” and they were basically 4–7-ounce oval shaped weights with four wires that were about 4 inches long protruding from the weight on 4 equal sides to help hold the weight in the sand like an anchor of sorts. Below is a picture of a 4-ounce sputnik weight that we used to hold the bait in the heavy surf.
The wires were held in place by slots in the lead and with a quick jerk you could release the wires from the slots and the wires would pop loose and rotate 180 degrees from the slots to make the weight easier to retrieve. Casting was interesting as we would hold the big rod over your shoulder dragging the weight and bait in the sand behind you. As the surf went out you would walk to the water’s edge, and you would launch the rig in an over the shoulder cast using the rod tip bend as the launcher. Depending on how strong you were dictated how far you could launch the weight and bait. Just to give you an example, I caught on pretty quick and took pride in launching the rig about 30-40 yards, past the breakers. It was a challenge for me to see how far out I could get the rig, but the further the better because sometimes the wires on the Sputnik wouldn’t hold and if the rig was in the surf, it would usually get washed right back up to the beach.
We didn’t really catch anything the first night, but we didn’t fish long. It was more of a training exercise than a fish catching mission because neither Bill nor I had done this type of fishing before. We had brought plenty of food to cook and the cabin had a stove to cook on as well as me bringing a little portable Blackstone to cook on also. Bill is an excellent Cajun food cook, and we ate well the whole time. I had also brought enough crappie filets to provide a fish fry for us a couple of nights. Well also had a pork loin one night that was delicious. We had different side dishes and desserts every evening, so we ate like kings the whole time.
We fished hard for 3 full days, but we just couldn’t catch anything substantial and after talking to other fishermen in the area, it was a problem for everyone. The heavy surf, moving tides and rip currents from an Atlantic hurricane far out at sea caused the bite to all but shut down on the coastline. We tried every trick in the book but the big bites we did get turned out to be toothy sharks that would cut the line almost immediately and the target fish, like Bluefish and drum were very few and far between. I was taken in by the wildlife and the scenery in the area as the island was covered with sea oats, wax myrtle and beach grass everywhere but the beach itself. The beach was riddled with sea gulls, sand pipers and the occasional fly-by consisting of one or more pelicans. I watched out past the breakers as the pelicans would dive on fish out past the breakers time and time again. There was the constant squawking and chattering of the sea gulls here and there and they would do what gulls do, scavenging around the washed up Sargassum seaweed and I was amused by the little sand pipers as they pecked along in the surf as the waves receded in the surf. Sometimes the little sandpipers would come close to me, but they were aware of my existence and would stay about 5-10 from where I was sitting. I even saw a few Ospreys flying along the beach looking for a nice mullet dinner. Speaking of mullet, every once in a while, you could see mullet jumping out beyond the surf and I wondered if that was what the pelicans were hunting. We could also see what I thought to be small schools of bluefish surfacing in the distance but not anywhere near close enough to cast to. There was usually a distinct line of sandy churned up water in the surf that extending out into the Atlantic further than we could cast and I wondered if the churned-up water from the heavy surf kept the fish we were targeting further out to see. There were a lot of Carolina Skiff type flat bottom boats fishing out along a line where the water went from a sandy color to a blue color hundreds of yards out and further than even, I could cast.
Greg caught one or two small bluefish and some nice founder but the bluefish was too small and the flounder was out of season. Here’s a couple pictures of Bill and his flounder.
Yours truly didn’t catch a fish the whole trip and that was ok because I realized that I wasn’t there to catch fish but for other reasons. One of those reasons was to net bait for us which I thought was pretty cool. Mullet was our bait of choice and there was a lighthouse on the southern end of the island called the “Cape Lookout Lighthouse” and near the lighthouse was a courtesy dock inside the sound where a tour boat took passengers for a ride to look around inside the protected sound and a long gangway to the courtesy dock where passengers boarded the tour boat. That’s where we netted our mullet along with a lot of other fishermen. I knew how to throw a cast net, and I had a blast netting the mullet we needed from the gangway. We had to watch the water below and every once in a while, a little school of mullet would get close enough to the gangway for me to make a cast. The net was a little 6-footer and perfect for precise throwing when trying to hit a moving target of the small schools of mullet. It only took me about 7-8 throws to get 40-50 mullet that were about 6-8 inches in length, and we would keep some alive in a minnow bucket with a bubbler and the rest went on ice for cut bait. Here’s a few pictures from the bait netting excursion.
We also used fresh shrimp for bait and as a bonus, we used the leftover shrimp to add to our dinners for a couple of nights. We used smaller chunks of shrimp on smaller fishing rods to catch pinfish to use for bait but every time we used a live pinfish something big would tear off with it and ultimately break the 40lb test line. Whatever was eating the live pinfish was big and the only fish I had on, I couldn’t turn or stop, and it was either break the line or let the fish spool the reel. It was disheartening but a fun fight for a minute. The fishing wasn’t that great for our stay, but the fellowship was more than I could have imagined. We made it back home safely on our 5th day and I’m still catching up on my sleep. Here’s a few random pictures of the cabin. The first being the view from my bed when I woke up in the morning. There was usually on onshore breeze and the sound of the rolling surf coming through the window.
It was pretty awesome to hang out with two guys that I grew up with in little ole Girard, Kansas and chat about long past memories that I had forgotten all about. We told stories of our youth and talked about growing up and we also talked about the classmates that are no longer with us. We listened to music from our era growing up and even after returning home I’m still having these little mental flashbacks from my youth that were stirred up from our conversations and music of our youth while we were there. I’m not sure that I’ll return to the Outer Banks for another trip because it was pretty hard on my body and I’m still feeling the aches and pains from the trip but one thing that’s for sure though, I’ll never forget our reunion at the Outer Banks.