Stripers in 1,000 Casts or Less
“We were catching some reds here last week, but all that rain may have pushed them out,” Capt. Danny Wrenn (910.619.2224), who operates 96 Charter Company out of Wrightsville Beach, said after easing back the throttle of his 21’ Sea Mark. Though we would have been delighted to hook a red drum, our principle quarry this early spring day was the elusive Cape Fear River striped bass. As the boat, a hybrid between a flat-bottomed skiff and a V-bottom center console, drifted towards the reed-covered bank of the Cape Fear River, he explained our mission to Fisherman’s Post Publisher Gary Hurley and I.
“There’s a lot of stuff on the bottom here, but it clears up a little once we get closer to that creek. You just want to cast up towards the bank and retrieve it back,” Danny told us, gesturing towards a creek mouth a hundred yards up the bank. My first cast confirmed his statement, as I hung up and broke off the soft plastic shrimp I’d casted close to the shoreline.
While the freshwater-tolerant stripers were likely the only “saltwater” fish feeding this far upriver, well north of downtown Wilmington, the recent drought has increased the salinity of the river to the point that anglers in previous weeks were landing red drum and speckled trout in the same areas where we’d be striper fishing today. An army of fiddler crabs also reacted to our presence by scuttling back and forth between their holes along the banks, and Danny pointed out oysters and mussels growing in areas where they’d been historically absent, confirming the river’s salinity is indeed on the rise.
He handed me a pink Calcutta Swimbait that he assured me had been responsible for many a striper and gave Gary a rod rigged with a Rapala X-Rap. Then Wrenn gently used the motor to guide the skiff back towards the bank, placing us just far enough offshore to cast tight to the reeds while a mild current pushed us up the bank.
A few casts later, I hung up again, this time able to free the swimbait before breaking off, as Danny revealed just how tough this fishing can often be. “You know what they say about muskies, the ‘fish of a thousand casts’ thing? These stripers are just about like that. A friend says it’s like fishing for unicorns.”
Wrenn’s caution made me even more determined to land one of the rare fish, and I silently resolved to make as close to a thousand casts as possible over the day if that’s what it would take to hook up. As we drifted along the river bank, Wrenn periodically adjusted the boat’s position with the motor, keeping us around 20 yards offshore while we drifted towards the creek. All three of us stayed busy casting, with Gary throwing the X-Rap, Danny casting a chrome/chartreuse Rattletrap, and me continuing to toss the swimbait.
After a few suspicious taps that I thought might have been missed strikes, Danny assured me the lure had just been bumping the structure. “When these fish bite, you’ll know it,” he said. “They really slam the bait.”
As we neared the creek, Gary’s plug found a snag, and Danny handed him the Rattletrap-equipped rod as he bumped the motor in gear to approach the hang. It turned out to be a fortuitous moment for Gary. Five minutes later when Wrenn positioned the boat just off the creek mouth’s southern corner, something pounced on the Rattletrap just a few yards from the boat.
“Alright, hooked up!” Gary exclaimed as the fish struggled towards the shoreline. While at first glance I misidentified the fish as a speckled trout, Danny knew the truth, and he soon slid his rubber meshed landing net beneath a genuine Cape Fear striper. Although the fish wasn’t terribly large, it was a striped bass, and the three of us celebrated the capture of our first ‘unicorn’ of the day.
After a few quick photos, Gary slid the fish back into the river’s brown water, and Danny explained the all-release philosophy he applies to this fishery. “I’ve never killed one of these fish. There just aren’t enough of them to do that.”
Apparently, the NC Wildlife Resources Commission (which manages the river north of the Hwy. 17 bridge—anglers must have an inland waters fishing license here) agrees as they are placing a moratorium on harvest of the Cape Fear stripers effective July 8. Currently, anglers are allowed to keep three fish above 18” per day, but for one angler to catch three in a day isn’t exactly common, a problem the moratorium may help address.
After watching Gary’s striper disappear into the river, we made a few more casts before Danny crossed the creek mouth and positioned the boat to give us casting opportunities at the mouth’s other side.
As the boat moved from a combination of Danny’s throttle input and the river current, the captain displayed an impressive knowledge of the sunken hazards that awaited our lures.
“See that ripple over there,” he said, pointing to a barely visible deviation in the water’s surface. “There’s a big tree or something underwater right there, and it sticks out to both sides, so be careful, but cast towards both sides, because there might be fish holding on it.”
We managed to avoid snagging the tree, but Danny was alarmingly accurate when he’d point to an area and declare it especially snag-filled, as either Gary, me, or the two of us would generally manage to hang up soon after his warning. The same structure that grabbed our lures is what holds the stripers, though, so a modest number of snags mean that anglers are casting to the right places.
While over the course of the day we got snagged as many times as I have on any fishing trip in my life, we lost few lures (in fact, I don’t believe Gary or Danny broke off one). After hanging up, we’d simply motor to the other side of the structure that we’d hooked and work the lures loose.
A short distance up the river from the creek, I got a crushing strike at the end of a long cast with the pink swimbait, and set the hook into what felt like a more solid fish. Striped bass are hard fighters, and, consequently, I wasn’t sure exactly how big the fish was until it boiled near the boat. “Nice one,” Danny said, and as though the striper heard him, it made several more runs away from the Sea Mark before I was able to coax it towards the waiting net.
This fish measured just over 20”, and I excitedly posed for a couple of photos before returning the linesider to the river. This fish made my day, but anglers should know that much, much larger stripers also inhabit the river. Danny’s largest was a 35” fish, and anglers have reported some fish over 30 lbs. from the Cape Fear.
Most anglers consider the Cape Fear striped bass fishery strictly a wintertime thing, but Wrenn believes at least some of the fish are present in the river year round. However, he cautions anglers against targeting them when the water temperatures warm.
“I don’t think most of these fish migrate,” he explained, “but when the water gets above 65 degrees, their release mortality quadruples or something like that, because they can’t get rid of the lactic acid they build up during a fight in the warmer water. They’ll swim away just fine, but then they die in a day or two.”
After fan casting the area where I caught my fish for a few more minutes, we decided to head into the creek and explore the area while hunting for more fish. While we didn’t land any more stripers, we located a few likely-looking spots for Danny to try on future trips.
After trolling our way out of the creek, pulling a diving plug and the Rattletrap along the creek channel’s edges, we motored downriver to another creek mouth where we repeated the strategy of fan casting around the mouth before entering the creek and anchoring up to cast to a series of likely-looking channel bends and smaller creek mouths.
After we fished the second creek hard but produced no striper action, we headed back to the boat ramp at the foot of the Wilmington drawbridge, proud to have captured photographic evidence of a pair of Cape Fear unicorns.
While our fish bit the Rattletrap and swimbait, a variety of lures have proven themselves effective on the Cape Fear’s striped bass population. We casted a number of other lures Danny has had success with in the past, including the X-Raps, Yo-Zuri diving plugs, a Frenzy crankbait, and several different soft baits on leadheads.
Tackle requirements for the fishery are pretty simple, and most any spinning or casting rod capable of light inshore saltwater duty will handle business. Danny prefers baitcasting gear for his personal use, as it eliminates the line twist tangles that spinning gear is prone to.
In addition to chasing the Cape Fear stripers, Danny is a light tackle specialist who focuses on the waters surrounding the Wrightsville Beach area. He targets springtime Atlantic bonito beginning in mid-April, spanish and king mackerel starting in May, and red drum and other inshore fish year-round.
To book a trip with Capt. Danny Wrenn’s 96 Charter Company or to get more information, give Danny a call at (910) 619-2224. Or you can send an email to 96charter@bellsouth.net.
