I crossed two things off my bucket list this week. Well, at least 1½. First, I had a #1 book on Amazon, and yesterday I caught a saltwater fish from a pier. How many of us get to accomplish two milestones in such a short time?
While bridges scare me, for some weird reason I absolutely love piers, and all my life I have wanted to catch a fish from a pier over the ocean. The popular Oceanana Motel in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina has a fishing pier that stretches nearly 1,000 feet out over the ocean. Anglers catch everything from drum and Spanish mackerel to albacore, mullet and pompano. The cost is $10 a day to fish and no license is required, or you can just stroll out on the pier and watch all the action for free.
Though ten pound fish are not uncommon, most of the folks yesterday were catching small pinfish and blues, not many worth keeping.
We struck up a conversation with a couple of regulars and I asked them a lot of questions about pier fishing. The wife caught this needlefish. Look at all those teeth and you know how they get their name. Then she caught a nice keeper Spanish mackerel.
I told the husband that catching a fish from a pier was high on my bucket list, even a little fish, and he said he’d let me land the next one he hooked. Up until then he had been doing pretty good, but then things died off for him, of course. His wife and everyone around him were busy with little fish, but not my new friend John. No problem, Terry and I were just happy to watch everybody and enjoy the views of the beach.
Eventually John did hook a fish, and he handed me his rod and I got busy cranking away, pulling in this bluefish. And while it wasn’t very big, I was still tickled. So, while I didn’t set the hook, I did reel it in and land it. That counts for at least half, right?
Adult bluefish average 20 pounds, and besides being a popular game fish, they are aggressive predators. It is not uncommon for them to go into feeding frenzies and attack schools of smaller fish, chasing them right up to the beach. Locals call this a "bluefish blitz." If we stay here very long I may have to dig my fishing pole out of one of the motorhome’s storage bays and go back to the pier.
Today is your last chance to download a free copy of Big Lake. So far over 69,000 people have taken advantage of this promotion, and I’m already seeing some very good results in terms of positive reviews and sales of the other books in the Big Lake series.
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Thought For The Day – Enjoy life, there is plenty of time to be dead.
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Nick Russell
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Is Terry going to cook it for dinner?
that fish appears foul-hooked (not in its mouth) to me. As such you cannot count it as a legitimate catch – try again