By Dave Cronk
The day started out at 5:30 a.m. in the marina out of Morehead City North Carolina. My brother-in-law Bill Klose and myself had scheduled a trip out with guide Dean Lamont. Bill had met with Dean for a cup of coffee in Raleigh a few months before to set up our trip and to let him know our interest in using fly equipment if possible. Dean provided information on what size rods, reels and line to bring. We used 9 foot 9-10 weight fly rods with reels capable of holding big fish.
As we left the marina Dean decided to troll out to the area we were to fish. With spinning gear set up with diving Rapalas and Yozuri crankbaits. We began picking up a few king mackerel and Spanish mackerel and when a school showed up on the fishfinder Dean shut down the boat and we started setting up our fly equipment. We were to use some special flies Dean had had success with earlier in June. One thing we learned was that we needed strong tippet. We tied on 40# test Frog Hair fluorocarbon tippet to these flies which were a Clouser pattern made of Yak hair.
The line was a 550 grain sink tip which we hoped would get our flies into the strike zone. We casted out the flies and followed Dean's advise to just let the flies sink for about 45 seconds. At the end of our wait we would strip the flies pointing out rod tips directly at the fly.
The first king mackerel hit hard and stripped line off the reel. With the rod bent in the big U that is a joy to any fisherman the fight was on. After several minutes the first fish came to the surface. For the next hour or so we took turns catching king and Spanish mackerel. These fish hit hard and run with a vengeance. Each tippet would only be good for two fish as they have sharp teeth that shreds the 40# tippet. It was a great start to our day.
The fly fishing slowed so we set up the spinning outfits to bottom fish for flounder. The one great thing about the ocean is you never know what you will catch. Using fresh shrimp and fishing the bottom we caught flounder, sheephead, black bass, black tip shark, lizard fish, and a few more king mackerel.
The day was deemed a success as we had accomplished our goal of catching fish on a fly rod as well as several others on spinning gear. With sunny skies and warm breezes for the day couldn't have been much better.
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