Fishing with French- Reef Donkey 101

My best offshore trips have been on the big boats out of Oregon Inlet and Hatteras Inlet. However, I know a bunch of folks vacation farther south, and may not want to make a commitment to do a very expensive offshore trip looking for marlin, dolphin, and tuna. Those trips also don't guarantee success. All my trips out of Oregon Inlet have been really good for the targeted species, but I have done several of those trolling trips where we either didn't have much action or all the action happened at once. Those long periods of inactivity are brutally boring, and it could take a potential future fisherman or woman and turn them into an iPad monster.

If you are just looking for a trip filled with heart pounding action and very few lulls, then the amberjack, the venerable "reef donkey" may be your ticket. Several poor offshore trips out of Morehead City were saved by the captain pulling over a live bottom and letting us drop vertical jigs down to the bottom. Often, that vertical jigging was more fun than fighting the schoolie dolphin and small tunas. I had that in mind when I decided to take my dad offshore during our annual week long pier trip to Emerald Isle, NC.

I reached out to Captain Brian Harrington of Extreme Measures Sportfishing of Morehead City. I had gone tuna fishing in rough weather with Brian before, and he salvaged a rough trolling day with money deep dropping.

I explained that we wanted to do a half day trip on his smaller boat (a 25 foot Contender) and he was kind enough to use an off day in his billfishing season to take us (late May is the top time for blue marlin around Morehead City.)

That was when the surprises started. We met Brian at the Morehead City dockside, but instead of heading out to sea, we ran up the Newport River. Captain Brian threw a cast net and filled the live well with fresh menhaden (called "pogies" in Morehead City and "bunker" in the Northeast.) We then ran out to one of Captain Brian's charted live bottoms offshore. One key pro-tip for anyone who goes on any kind of bottom fishing trip. These captains make their living off their "numbers", the GPS coordinates of structure, wrecks, or live bottoms. They will be nice to you over everything EXCEPT you using your phone to track and plot his numbers. Your phone may go for a swim if that happens.

After the quick 15 mile run offshore (those Contenders will FLY), we anchored up on Captain Brian's spot. I expected to get the jigging gear out. Captain Brian just looked at us with a shit-eating grin and said, "are you sure you guys wanted to catch AJ's?" I said yes, and he grinned bigger. He started to take one pogie out of the live well at a time, throw it against the side of the boat to stun it, and then throw another. After six or seven were staggering around on the surface, an ARMADA of 25-30 pound amberjacks swam up to the surface looking for a meal. Dad and I each took a medium heavy spinning rod with a Shimano Baitrunner 600 rigged with nothing more than a circle hook. We each hooked a pogie in the back and we were hooked up right as the baits hit the water.

For the next two and a half hours, we were either hooked up or too tired to keep reeling. I landed 17 and I have no clue how many Dad got. He was giggling like a little kid at Christmas. It was glorious. Captain Brian seemed to enjoy our pain and suffering. If you took a break, he would bust your balls a bit. Hooking the fish was the easy part. You could bounce the bait on the top of the water and amberjacks would be everywhere trying to get at it. Here is some of the footage.

Here I got to take enough of a break so I could catch my breath and film Dad landing one.

Here were a couple of the nicer ones:

I am not too proud to admit this, but I raised the surrender flag before Dad did. I asked Brian if we could go looking for some cobia, in part to get some fresh fish to take home, but also just to get a break. We headed back inshore and caught a couple of small cobia on live pogies around some buoys, but no keepers. At noon, we headed in and finished the trip with a delicious lunch at Beach Bumz Pub.

The whole trip ended up being $700 plus a very nice tip for Captain Brian. We had a great time. I can't recommend this kind of trip enough for families who are looking for action. There is no better fish than an amberjack for a young angler to get their first taste of a real saltwater bruiser on. The northern Outer Banks have amberjacks, but there are much fewer artificial reefs, so everyone fishes around the tower. It is much better targeting these bruisers out of southern ports like Morehead or Southport where there are tons of artificial reefs and other offshore wrecks. Just make sure you get those arm muscles ready because these things pull like nothing you have ever caught before if you never have been offshore fishing.