A Season of Change

 

By Heather Maxwell

(Originally published Sportfishing Report December 1999)

1999 has certainly proven to be a season of change. And here I thought that we were finished with all of that. Personally, I had enough change in ’98, but here we are La Nina set in, hurricanes threaten and the boys are chunking for tuna. Chunking for tuna, that’s about it in a nutshell! And not the least change of all is the format of the Sportfishing Report. “Regional editors to bring the action home” is how Terry Beers described this idea to me just a month ago. And so here I sit with cigarettes and coffee (my favorite writing partners), a brief outline of ideas and plenty to say until my fingers touched the keys. Last night I caught a rerun of Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s a movie I have seen many times before, but just like most things in life the harder I look the more I see.

Last night I watched the “bad guy” kick over a fish tank in a rage. The little goldfish lay on the floor with eyes bugging out gasping for air and we cut for a commercial. Later I saw that same bad guy fly out a window into the Martian atmosphere. He lay in the red earth of that planet with his eyes bugging out gasping for air until he died. Interesting metaphor and an interesting segue in to what I hope will bring some of the action home.

For fishermen it’s all about fish. We spend endless hours reveling in the chase expending our patience in the ocean waters, our wives (or husbands as the case may be) cook the fish, our families eat the fish and our children read Dr. Seuss – one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. At restaurants we order the fish we can’t catch: salmon, Chilean sea bass and escobar. When we have the chance we travel to aquariums with family in tow to watch all species swimming in endless circles pointing out the ones we know by name and, in an emergency, making up names for the ones we don’t. Each fish safe in it’s environment, never gasping for air with it’s eyes bugging out.

During this season of change I have had the opportunity to visit a few aquariums including our own on Roanoke Island that is still under expansion. The first of my face to face encounters was in Baltimore. The aquarium there boasts a great shark tank, a rain forest, hundreds of skates dancing in the water and, to my surprise and appreciation, the skeleton of a white marlin dwarfed by that of some type of whale. A special exhibit called “Venom” allowed me an opportunity to confront one of my greatest fears. At that aquarium, on that day, I put my nose against the side of a tank that contained the ugliest scorpion I have ever seen. That night I enjoyed a sleepless, terrifying flight through dreams of scorpions coming to get me – so much for facing your fears!

My next jaunt found me cross island wearing hardhat and boots on a tour of the construction site that will soon be our own aquarium. Neil Connoly who works with the three aquariums in our great state met me there. Although my friend, Diane Tillett, had been keeping me up to date on the progress, I was not prepared for the overwhelming expansion of a once “small town” facility. Opening in May of 2000, the new aquarium includes a huge deep-water tank with a model of the Monitor and a design that will take visitors on a walk through the coastal plains of North Carolina. From the residents of our rivers and streams, to the ditch dwellers along I-64, right down to the rockfish in the Sound and out into the ocean waters off the Outer Banks – the Aquarium promises a great show and an education for children and adults alike. Season passes will be available for all of us that must do something fishy on blow days.

Just last week I found myself at the greatest “aquarium” of all time. What began as an idea for some Pirate’s Cove Marina R&D turned out to be a complete mind-blowing experience for me. Up from the depths of the ocean waters around Nassau, Bahamas recently arose the fabled lost city of Atlantis. And what a city it is. A Disney World of water. Water park, water slides, water views - water, water everywhere! And aquariums where I saw fish safe in their tanks and others with eyes bugged out, gasping for air. On my first of three short days at Atlantis I was knocked out by the opulent architecture and impeccable service (odd for the Bahamas) and the school of six dolphin – mahi-mahi – I spotted swimming in one of the reef tanks. Before my sad departure I was amazed by bonito swimming with sharks, ‘cuda hanging motionless above my head in a “walk through” tank and my sister’s amazing luck at the roulette table. And with a dimension of real life thrown in on my final day, I saw a triggerfish on the surface frantically kicking in circles, it’s body clipped by some predator – eyes bugged out and you know the rest. What has all of this to do with a season of change you may ask?

What’s it got to do with bringing the action home? When do we get to the “chunking” part? Well, it all has to do with the industry in which we spend our recreational time, not to mention most of our money! Apart from the Roanoke Island Aquarium tour, each of these trips rode piggyback to working a boat show. And that’s where the real action is. The lifeblood of this industry, all the secrets (well, almost all) exposed; the boat shows set the pace for our seasons of change.

Early in the month of October, as I prepared for the Annapolis Boat Show, a couple draggers set out their nets for butterfish and summer squid east of Oregon Inlet. Cousin to the trawler, a dragger scoops up it’s catch and pinches off the net as many as seven times as the deckhands direct the fish down into the boat’s hold. Butterfish is great, summer squid is even better, but the combination of the two is not the best of both worlds. Most people know that a squid emits ink when frightened in an effort to facilitate enough confusion to make it’s escape, but did you know that the ink is very acidic. A butterfish awash in squid’s ink will decompose, even after it has been frozen. In the case of catching both species, the one with lesser value becomes a by-product of the catch and is discarded.

In the midst of the action at the Annapolis Boat Show, Pat Healey, President of Viking Yachts in New Jersey, announced that his production lines are full through this time next year. When a production boat building factory like Viking announces that they are more than a year out we are all facing a true sign of the times ahead. A season of change perhaps driven by the baby-boomers who have just found their passion for boating. At the same time, off the coast of the Outer Banks, the fishing fleets of Oregon Inlet got their “Jersey” up and began what was to typify our own season of change when draggers began discarding a by-catch of butterfish.

La Nina, there’s another one for you. El Nino comes and goes La Nina follows. What does it mean for us? Most old-timers will tell you it’s the year of the tuna. Anyone on the east coast might say it’s the year of the hurricane as Atlantic Ocean waters heat up far to the east and the Cape Verde season opens early and dies late. Our beach fishermen would confirm this as they suffered cancelled fall tournaments due to beach erosion and rough waters. But at odds with the eastern Atlantic is a coastal season that heats up and passes us by twice as fast as normal. These waters attract tuna before their time and send our billfish north of the Outer Banks before the season even officially begins. October’s funky fishing definitely proves that the old timers, at least, are right.

Chunking is a style of fishing that is simply the opposite of all that we, as Carolinians, hold dear. There is no appraisal of the color of the water that day, no need to dissect the tackle drawer in search of the perfect sea witch color for the conditions. No assessment of tide and temperature, no skill needed in the art of rigging baits that do not spin. There is only the direction of the current moving away from the boat, a knife set in action to keep pieces of chum free flowing and the magic of hiding hooks inside of butterfish. And even during the month of October, the question of “where to go tomorrow” was mute as the yellowfin fed, for three weeks, on the by-catch of those nearly stationary draggers.

So while my eyes bugged out during Annapolis at the changes ahead of us, Oregon Inlet captains traded beer, cigarettes and T-shirts to the crew aboard the draggers for buckets of butterfish. And that’s the way it went for weeks, limits of yellowfin ranging from 30 to 60 pounds. Day after day the fleet filled their boxes until the other gift of La Nina came a calling and hurricane Irene chased the draggers away.

And that brings me back to the next boat show on the circuit: Ft. Lauderdale. Bigger than February’s Miami show? Some say yes, others no, but with 10 ½ miles of floating docks, who knows how many square feet of display space and yachts up to 185 feet in length, the Lauderdale show is one of my favorites. While the boys were at home making their way from cliff to ledge at the Point, I made my way around the show with eyes bugging out again.

So many boats, so little time. Not to mention engines and gears, clothes, destinations and anything else that has to do with boating. A surprise around every corner, the Lauderdale show met all my expectations including a photo op with Marilyn Monroe at North Carolina’s own Hatteras Yachts display. For the Carolinians the show was a great success. The season of change ahead, and behind, us revealed itself with sales on boats from Hatteras to Jarrett Bay. And to compliment my bugging eyes, I gasped for air (just a bit) at a press conference hosted by our own Davis Boatworks where Buddy Davis announced a recent partnership with Allied Marine as their new, and only, factory representative. Along with this announcement, Davis confirmed his new factory partnership with Jeff and Jo-Ann Dickson and the addition of 70,000 square feet of Davis plant right here in Wanchese.

Waylaid by Capt. John Bayliss at the Viking Yachts display, I learned that Oregon Inlet’s own “Temptress” skippered by Chip Shaefer had released a quadruple grand slam plus an additional 6 white marlin the day before at a Florida tournament. Back at home the boys found some dolphin on scattered grass due east of the inlet while others continued to endure the House of Pain and gauge their knowledge of the bottom structure at the Point by what they threw on the dock.

So as George and Barbara Bush, preceded by a secret service sweep, perused the new line-up of Hatteras sportfishermen I swallowed the fact that Davis just isn’t the same anymore – good, bad or indifferent, still not the same. As Ocean Yachts strutted the fact that the new 56’ tops out at 45 MPH (not to mention a 43 MPH cruise) I realized that fishermen just aren’t the same – good, bad or indifferent my own boat tops out at only 31 ½ and prefers a fuel milking 27. Bigger, better, faster, more: that’s the season of change that I see ahead of us.

And that is when the trip to Atlantis came up. To stay ahead of the change, on the cutting edge as they say, the Outer Banks has got to change as well. The Atlantis marina gets nearly $400 a day for dockage rates and there had to be something special about that. But then again, upon closer inspection, transients of that marina are just as “wowed” by the resort as I. In retrospect, I learned that in order to stay on the cutting edge, Oregon Inlet need only continue to produce fish. Some of the finest fishing on the East Coast to be exact.

Whether the future of our fishing includes boats that can get to the Point in one half an hour remains to be seen - as we all know the ocean off the Outer Banks is rarely confused with a millpond. Whether the future of our fishing includes the skills of chunking – forecasters are calling for another La Nina next summer. Whatever the future of our fishing brings, it will always bring new fishermen, eyes bugged out and gasping for breath, to the bountiful ocean waters and docks of Oregon Inlet.

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