Will Huffine (Wilmington store) and I got a late start Wednesday (September 16th). We ran south out of Wrightsville Beach looking for false albacore, as we heard there were some the day before towards Carolina Beach Inlet. We passed a couple of small schools that didn’t stay up long enough to cast to, and then circled back up the beach after finding nothing else of interest, On the way back along Masonboro Island, we found a huge school of spanish mackerel crashing around on bait just beyond the surf. We caught a couple of fish, and then they disappeared. As we continued up the beach towards Masonboro Inlet, the false albacore started to show up again, enough for us to hook and land a couple of them. Finally, we pulled up to Masonboro Inlet on the south jetty, and found big spanish mackerel mixed with schools of false albacore. They were tearing through schools of silversides, as well as ballyhoo and small bait. We caught a good number of spanish mackerel, some false albacore, and a few houndfish until the bite tapered off as the tide slowed.
With the winds light and bright sunlight, we headed up the beach to look for drum, but got sidetracked by a shrimp trawler. As we pulled up behind it, we immediately spotted sharks cruising and picking off bycatch. Will was up first and he made a nice first cast in front of about a 4 foot shark. An instant strike was followed by a hookup and a few fast runs, and we had one shark landed and safely released. It was my turn next, and it took a few tries with a big fly thrown into a group of several sharks before one followed and ate. We ended up hooking and landing 2 sharks to round out a day of fast-paced fishing. Look for some video for Will when he gets a chance to post it… we didn’t take enough shots, as we were both too greedy to stop fishing in the frenzy of activity we encountered, but here are a couple of photos to back up the fish tales!