Tidelines – June 4, 2015
Last week as we prepared for our upcoming Ocean Isle Inshore Challenge, the first of five flounder and red drum tournaments we will be hosting in 2015, I rationalized that amidst the errands (such as beer/soda/water pickups, trophy runs, raffle item collections) and phone calls (including pizza orders, volunteer support, and participant call backs) a flounder fishing trip in the Ocean Isle area could also count as “preparations.”
Tara Dawdy, of Little River, and Capt. Patrick Kelly, of Captain Smiley’s Fishing Charters, with two keeper flounder caught on Gulp baits off a grass bank near Tubbs Inlet.
Thus, a trip with Capt. Patrick Kelly of Capt. Smiley Fishing Charters was born.
Patrick fishes primarily out of Little River and North Myrtle Beach, so he’s more than familiar with the Ocean Isle flounder and red drum haunts.
Patrick and friend Tara met us around noon at Cricket Cove Marina for the short boat ride north past the Little River waterfront, and as we approached Tubbs Inlet, our first destination, the maze of sandbars in this area was both impressive and a little intimidating.
The area approaching the inlet, Patrick told me, changes every year, but this past year he had seen tremendous change. We were in the early stage of the incoming tide, so Patrick put his Pathfinder on plane and raised the jackplate as we skimmed across water little more than a foot deep to pull back once in deeper water off of a grassy shoreline with an oyster bar extending from the bank.
The oyster bar was more to our right and the deeper water along the shoreline was to the left, so we started fan casting to cover as much area was we could. Tara was on her first saltwater fishing trip, so Patrick armed her with a live mud minnow, and Joshua and I threw out Gulps on jigheads (Swimming Minnows and Croakers).
There was little excitement surrounding the oyster bar (some “pecker” fish and small blues), but bait to our left repeatedly broke the surface in a nervous attempt to escape from something. We first found a couple of under-sized flounder, and then Patrick set the hook on something that felt a little more substantial.
His favorite Gulp/jighead technique in Tubbs Inlet, he explained, was to give a big and pronounced jerk to the line, and then quickly take up the slack on the fall. His emphasis, though, was on making the jerk very noticeable, and here was our first keeper flatfish, a meaty 19-incher, as validation.
Patrick’s bite had come right next to the bank, and most of our other flounder bites from that location also came from Gulps right up against the bank. Our one bite on a live mud minnow? It came from an acrobatic ladyfish (who we then assumed had been the one harassing the baitfish along the bank when we first pulled up).
We targeted a number of spots around Tubbs Inlet and in the inshore area near Little River Inlet, but none produced better than our first stop of the day. While we were moving around I would pull out my phone to take some voice notes about inshore fishing in the area, but Patrick was more excited to talk about the recent Little River River Sweep.
This year in April was the fourth annual River Sweep, and despite rainy weather the group still had over 70 people come out and help clean up the waterway from the Little River swing bridge to Little River Inlet.
Patrick is not only proud of his local community’s efforts at cleanup, but also proud that their efforts are spreading. The Little River folks got the idea from Murrells Inlet, and now Little River seems to have passed it along to Ocean Isle, who has started a Brunswick County annual cleanup.
For more information on the next Little River River Sweep, look them up on Facebook. They will be announcing details about the April 2016 cleanup throughout the year.
And for anyone interested in fishing with Capt. Smiley’s Fishing Charters, you can also find him on Facebook or visit www.captainsmileyfishingcharters.com. Patrick has been guiding in the area for 15 years now, and all summer long he will be targeting flounder, red drum, and trout in the shallow waters.
In addition, he loves taking people to fish for their first time, especially kids. He starts with basic casting instructions, and then patiently helps them through the entire day of fishing, trying hard for newbies to leave both smiling and hooked on fishing.
On our way back to Cricket Cove Marina, I was thinking that Patrick was a very popular guy on the water, as every boat we passed look our way and waved a friendly hello. And then I realized it wasn’t just that Patrick is a popular guy—the attention we were getting from other boats clearly had something to do with Tara riding up front on the bow looking to get a little sun.
