Chapter 6: Dan Holt – Surf Fishing Pioneer
Dan Holt was the starting point for a whole new brand of surf fishing in the Carolina Beach area, and many have become his disciples in the thirty years of his experimentation with artificial baits and the use of ultra light tackle in angling for salt water game fish.
The story starts in 1940 when Dan was newly moved to Carolina Beach and working for Ethel Dow Chemical Company near Kure Beach. He worked at the huge intake pump house on the ocean side from which raw sea water was pumped into a forty acre reservoir across the highway and a few hundred yards away. Dow Chemical was extracting bromine (an agent used to create high octane aviation fuel). Many fish were inadvertently transferred from the ocean to the reservoir by the strong pumps.
Dan had to go to the reservoir every hour to get temperature readings and was amazed at the number of fish in the pond. He dragged a hook through the water “baited” with a piece of white cloth and proceeded to catch pompano and trout and gigged a few flounder as well. All this was at night.
When World War II broke out in 1941 and meat soon became scarce, Dan caught the fish and sold them commercially. He really took the angling seriously when he realized he was making as much money from the sale of fish as he was earning a salary from the plant. It was at this point he became highly interested in night surf fishing with all its potential.
Dan started fishing at the old Fort Fisher Pier (long ago a casualty of one of the hurricanes) with a “Mae West” plug. He says fish would hit such a bait at night when nothing else was effective. Dan caught speckled trout in large numbers through February. He tried a variety of plugs including a “Dillinger,” which floated on the surface; and
he experimented by adding a little weight to the leader immediately ahead of the plug to bring the lure nearer the sea floor. His theory was correct as he found with increasingly larger catches.
He took over managing the Carolina Beach Pier in 1947. When he got a spare minute, he walked up to the old Civil War wreck of the Venus, whose bones lie in the surf north of the pier. He fished the entire winter catching fish almost every trip including the first rockfish (striped bass) he saw pulled out of the surf. Nobody in the area had ever heard of such a feat before.
When Hurricane Hazel hit him in 1954, Dan chose commercial fishing with a rod and reel for earning his livelihood. Fishing with a baitcasting rod and using plugs exclusively and getting thirty-five cents a pound for his speckled trout, he fared well. “We didn’t eat steak every night, but it was a good living,” he said.
In one twenty-four hour period of unbroken fishing, Dan caught two hundred and sixty-seven pounds of speckled trout. “I fished until the reel froze up with the cold, and it was necessary to put it inside my waders against my chest to thaw it enough to cast. The most I ever earned commercial fishing with a rod and reel was a hundred and four dollars,” Dan said.
“That stretch of beach between Wrightsville and Carolina Beaches is without question the loneliest place in the world at night. I had it all to myself. You could see things in the water, and you had to fight it all the time.
“You had to force yourself to be calm. I wasn’t worried about getting hurt. I don’t ever want to be a hermit. It can be rough out there with the surf in the dark by your self late at night. When Sonny (Dr. W.T. Shearin) came down from Durham to fish with me, it was altogether different.
“The most ridiculous thing that ever happened on one of those night fishing expeditions was the time we crossed Carolina Beach Inlet and borrowed a beach buggy. (Stripped down fishing cars were floated across the inlet on a barge and used to reach good fishing spots up the beach.) We caught a pile of fish and started back to the car when it got stuck in the sand. Sonny put a board under the rear wheels to provide traction, and she came out of there and started heading for the ocean. There weren’t any brakes on that car. When she ran into the water, we couldn’t get the old Ford out again. We got the tackle and fish out and salvaged the car battery and walked miles back to the inlet where our boat was. We had to pay the owner a hundred dollars for the loss of the car. That was some night as fishing trips go,” Dan said.
Dan became interested in flounder fishing after the Carolina Beach Inlet was cut in 1952 when he picked up a flounder on a MirrOlure while trout fishing. He lost a lot more than he caught. He conceived the possibilities of a new rig with a spinner, a long shank hook, and a strip of cut mullet.
“I found the same rig would work in the Inland Waterway and in the river for flounder. They ran a lot larger there than inside the inlet for some unknown reason. Never caught a flounder in the deep of winter. Trout, yes; but flounder, no. Never caught a really big one over six pounds in the inlet though.
“I kept trying to catch flounder and started experimenting with large baits. Went by this particular spot where I’d hung up several times with something big and put the bait overboard. Soon I felt him take it and let him have it two or three minutes. Then I struck three times. The fish – I thought it was probably a large snake – ran out a few feet. I sat down in the boat and played him.
“When I saw him, it was impossible to believe. Almost I scared me to death. Couldn’t get that flounder in a landing net, because he was too big. Finally, when I got him to the boat and aboard, I quit right then and returned to the dock and weighed him. That flounder went fourteen pounds and eight ounces. I’d had him on fifteen to twenty minutes, and he was all over the place. I caught him on a fly rod and never caught one that large before.
“We sent a specimen of the fishing line to the International Game Fish Association, and that flounder established a world’s record for the largest flounder ever caught on a fly rod and reel. He also set a North Carolina record and a New Hanover Fishing Club record,” Dan said.
In the past several years Dan and his pal, Sonny, have been experimenting with the use of ultra light tackle at the sunken tanker John D. Gill wreck for amberjack, cuda,
kings, and dolphin.
They just may establish something altogether new before they finish.
The following text and photo was reprinted (with permission from Sam McDonald) from Bill McDonald’s book Song of Cape Fear. Bill’s photography and coverage of sport fishing appeared in the 70s and 80s in the Wilmington Star News, the State Port Pilot, the Coastal Carolinian, and the Island Gazette.
