Mountain Dew and Cigarettes: Outer Banks Fishing on a Budget
July 27th, 2019 was a Friday. I was counting down the minutes on my clock as it slowly moved to five. From the first day I moved to the coast of North Carolina, I had wanted to fish off the Outer Banks. You can deep sea fish just about anywhere, but the proximity to the Intercoastal Waterway makes The Outer Banks a hotspot for sport fisherman around the world.
My buddy, Bo Grant, from Tuscaloosa, and I slid out of work a few minutes early to beat my other friends to my apartment on South Broad St, Edenton, NC. In my excitement, I possibly was going a few mph over the speed limit, and after specifically making a point to Bo, who is a speedy guy himself, that in my year and a half of living here, I have only seen one officer on this road. Well, it just so happened that as I stated this, we became well-acquainted with the second. After receiving my ticket (and ordering a whistler radar from Amazon), we raced home to gather the coolers, make sandwiches, and gather the beer.
It wasn't long before I got the call that Parker Buchanan, Will Coleman, and my cousin Nick Rhyne were in the parking lot and ready to squeeze into my jeep. Parker and Will drove from Spartanburg, SC and Nick from Raleigh, and after drives that long we still had an additional 2 hours left to ride. The car, indeed, packed to the brim. We had Yetis, in practically every open space, full of beer. 112 beers to be exact. Hoping to tear it up on the water and replace those empty coolers with fish.
We arrived at the Outer Banks just as the sun was going down. We stayed at some rinky-dink motel on the side of the road and had to wait until the owner looked the other way to actually get all five of us in the room. We were supposed to stay in a nicer hotel directly beside the pier, but “motels” are what happen when you leave the booking to Nick. We walked to dinner at a local bar and began our consumption of beer and Dramamine. With three grown men on a queen mattress, and two on a blow-up full mattress, you can imagine... we slept like kings.
Rise and shine, and we had a 20-minute drive to the boat. We had decided to go with The Albatross Fleet out of Hatteras, NC. The boats were from 1937, and the reviews were pretty good all-in-all. We met the Captain and first mate and set off into the blue waters in hopes of catching just one or two fish each.
It didn't take long to realize that 1937 boats could float, but oh my, did they rock. The smell of diesel and the first mate’s cigarettes billowed into the passenger area. This boat was not by any means a fishing yacht. We did not have an air-conditioned room with a tv and bathroom. Instead we had a bathroom which you would simply rather not use, and we were sitting directly over the engine... so we felt every cylinder and were lucky to hear the faint rhythm of the music we were playing on my speaker.
It didn't take long before one of us became sick, but more importantly, it didn't take long for us to be “on” some fish, and boy did we get on some fish. All hell would break loose as each of the fishing rods attached to the stern were buzzing with Mahi Mahi on the other end. The Captain started getting frustrated as he tried to direct us in an unorganized ballet, while the fish zigged and zagged, leaving our lines to twist and possibly snag. I finally asked the man to refer to us by the color of our shirts rather than yelling,” hey, you” or trying to remember our names.
We were catching Mahi Mahi left and right, and the first mate genuinely deserved, and received, one hell of a tip, as he was gaffing fish and filling the cooler. We may have been falling on top of each other, busting up our hips and elbows, but we were catching fish and having fun. Parker was able to catch a massive Bull Mahi Mahi, and Nick and I both reeled in Wahoo. During the down times, the first mate would chainsmoke cigarettes, eat crackers, and drink multiple Mountain Dews. We watched in dismay, and I could honestly feel my heart rate rise for each Mountain Dew he drank, as if it had some sort of osmosis effect on me.
Like many of my articles, I try to best describe the visuals of my outdoorsman trips. You have to understand that when you are deep-sea fishing, you genuinely do not see anything around you. While heading out from the dock, you watch other charters off in the distance and as time goes on, they slowly disappear from site. Waves are pushing you around like a toy boat in a bathtub. Waves were so tall that you could look to your left and right and the waves would be over your head. Just when you think they are going to come crashing down upon you, the boat rises above them. The water’s color changes, but is deeper and purer than oil paintings can depict. The only time I have seen such blues was in Alaska, where you can gaze deeply into a glacier, and the color just gets darker the longer you look. The best part of off-shore fishing is the color of the fish when they put up a good fight. Much like the blood rushing to a turkey’s head, displaying bright reds, blues, and purples, the color of a fish while you reel it in, bursts through the darkness of the blue and pops far more than what you see once the fish is dead in a grip’n’grin photo. Seeing this in person is an incredible experience.
It's close to 2:45 in the afternoon, and we have not caught a fish in over an hour. Everyone is lying down on the floor trying to nap or simply gather enough energy to reel in a fish without losing what is left in our stomachs. We take a vote and agree to ask the captain to take us in for the day. By unanimous decision we began our long ride to the harbor. Upon arrival, we realized we had an issue. We brought 112 beers with us and due to the lack of consumption, we still had 105 beers left to drink. That meant we had no room in the coolers for our fish!
We tied up to the pier, each with different duties to complete our trip. Some went to help butcher the fish, some to get bags of ice, and the others had to find places to unload the beer. To this day, I am still finding beer in every nook and cranny of my car. Overall we had 118lbs of fish. We had hard coolers, soft coolers, and lunch coolers filled with this beautiful meat. Once we tipped the captain and first mate, we squeezed back in the car and headed out to Edenton, where we would spend the evening cooking and enjoying our fresh catch.
Nick and I cooked while the other guys watched episodes of Meat Eater on Amazon and an episode of Letterkenny. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah!” We used fresh herbs, salt, pepper, old bay, lemons, and could all agree that those fish were the best fish we had ever eaten. Much like eating pasta, for some reason no matter how much you eat it still looks like a full plate, we could not for the life of us make a dent in the amount of fish we had in my freezer, fridge and in our coolers. After a late night drink at the bar downtown, we walked home to sleep like kings before we all returned to our real lives.
Overall, the trip was a blast, and I definitely want to do it again. However, what I learned from this experience will be very helpful in the future. Strap gear to your roof for more leg room. The fish will be there when you get there, so don't speed. Dramamine only works for some people. Bring more water. Mountain Dew is a poor man's cocaine. Most importantly, being frugal on some things is a good idea, but when it comes to booking a charter…book the biggest damn boat in the marina.
