Coastal Daybreak Radio Show WTKF 107.1, FM 1240 AM, Host Ben Ball. Jacob Krause, Guest 11/5/18

I have a return guest Jacob Krause, NC State graduate student working on his Ph.D. We’ve had a number of shows that we talked about speckled trout with Tim Ellis and now we have talked for several years now with Jacob about weakfish/gray trout. Good morning Jacob, so how are things going?

Jacob Krause:  We’re finally at the tail end of the project and we have a lot of results all at once here.

Dr. Bogus: Well having been there…done that, I know the feeling, but unlike you I ended up having a job at another location. I had to finish my thesis writing on Long Island rather than Washington, DC so that took an extra year to finish it up. Why don’t you describe what the project was Jacob, and the approach to deal with the understanding of where the weakfish are. We know that weakfish…we’re down to a one fish 12-inch harvest per day limit, and there is a reason for that. There’s been a big falloff…so what’s the project?

Jacob Krause:  So, a little bit of background. The weakfish have been in decline especially since the mid-2000s and the reason for that has been speculated to be predation, not enough spawners, just a multitude of hypotheses but there hasn’t been a really definitive reason for why that is the case. With the decline, as Dr. Bogus pointed out there’s been more restrictions in the take on these fish and right now we are down to one fish over 12-inches. My work is really looking at understanding why the decline in weakfish has happened over the years. We’ve used multiple approaches in order to get at that, what we call mortality or death of these fish that seems to be driving the population downwards. And one approach that we’ve done is to release telemetered fish. Telemetered fish is fish that we track throughout estuarine systems. To date we’ve released 241-fish. Some of those were in Delaware Bay, the majority of them were here in the Bogue Sound vicinity and we’ve also released some fish in the New River.

Ben Ball:  They’re tags that you can track when you say telemetered.

Jacob Krause:  Exactly, these fish, you actually put receivers that detect these fish within the sounds and there is a large array, a placement of receivers, up and down the East Coast.

Dr. Bogus: Some of these receivers are obviously used for a variety of studies, so you can buy into that right?

Jacob Krause:  Exactly, so there is currently ongoing studies off the coast for sand tigers, cobia, sturgeon, just a plethora, so if these fish go anywhere within about 400- to 600-yards of these receivers they’ll get picked up and we will know that that individual fish mover within that specific vicinity.

Dr. Bogus: You have the telemetry fish, you also did the conventional tagging of quite a few fish with the help from some of our friends.

Jacob Krause:  Exactly, so I had a lot of help from people here in the area especially with finding out where and when to catch these fish. And all the tags we out were $100 tags, very high reward.

Dr. Bogus: You wanted them (the tags) to come back.

Jacob Krause:  We wanted them to come back! And most of those were double tagged fish. Using these two approaches it really came down to that weakfish survival was very low. What we found with the telemetered is that these fish go and overwinter on the Continental Shelf and they should return to the estuaries every spring as they are natal spawners. So much like salmon that come back to the same areas every year, or the same area from which they were spawned so too should weakfish. And what we found is that out of 241 fish, only one fish came back the following spring after that overwintering migration.

Dr. Bogus: Where was that fish located? Where did you find him?

Jacob Krause:  That one was released here near the port (Morehead City) and it came back and was detected the following spring down by Emerald Isle.

Dr. Bogus: So very close to where it started from.

Jacob Krause:  Exactly! But it did make the appearance that it had left the system in the winter and that it had come back in the following spring.

Dr. Bogus: Is there something that you may conclude from the time frame there, like when you can within 100-days 92% of these came back. Is that significant…the time frame?

Jacob Krause:  So the time frame is definitely significant because it’s giving us an idea when this mortality, or when the death is happening for these fish. So for the conventional tagged fish we had about 135 returns out of 3600 tagged fish that we put out. And what we found with that is that 92% came back within 100-days and when we think about that overwintering migration only 5-tags came back after an overwintering migration. So that really points to that these fish are leaving in the winter to deal with the cold water by going off onto the Continental Shelf but they are not coming back the following spring. So both of these really show that we are putting out a lot of tags and very minimal amounts are coming back and it seems to be happening that the mortality is happening during the wintertime.

Dr. Bogus: These fish have…they’re cousins, not kissing cousins, the speckled trout…obviously the biology of these two fish are quite different where they overwinter and probably where even they spawn.

Jacob Krause:  Yes, so there is some overlap within the sound but even that I would call they’re different habitats within the sound. So for instance, weakfish here in Bogue Sound you tend to find them in the deeper holes like the port and around the bridges as the speckled trout often times those are found the rock jetties, more the grass beds in the shallower areas and they both have different life history strategies where speckled trout move inshore and overwinter in the creeks and weakfish take the opposite approach and they more offshore to deal with the cold winters.

Dr. Bogus: I’ve noticed that…I can tell when they start to return, I start to catch and actually sometimes mixed in with the speckled trout in like April. Is that usually a time when they come back? And most of the fish that I catch at that time are egg-baring females.

Jacob Krause:  Exactly, so around here, I think the earliest we ever caught them was April-first and about two to three weeks later you could definitely tell, as you said, that they were very ripe, the females. And they were coming in to spawn especially near structure around the inlets and they can spawn multiple times, and that usually occurs from April until July, so that can really put out a lot of larvae.

Ben Ball:  We used to go fishing for gray trout or weakfish in the Haystacks in around Thanksgiving, that used to be a big time.

Jacob Krause:  There is still some of that direction but it’s very minimal. I’ll say that you’re going to catch a speck more times over than a weakfish. It really seems that there are pockets and they really like structure around the port, the bridges and they are very tidal dependent, usually right around the tail ends of slack tide especially high tide.

Dr. Bogus: Your research has to do with dwindling numbers of weakfish/gray trout, so the first question is what are some possible mechanisms for fish mortality that may be responsible?

Jacob Krause:  There are two ways from our perspective, that it can be through fishing mortality or natural mortality. Fishing mortality as we’ve said before, there’s been a lot of restrictions and that does not seem to be the cause for the decline in weakfish from at least the early 2000s onwards. And in conjunction there’s natural mortality which are things such as predation, climatic events, disease all contribution and the hypothesis with the most support at this point seems to be predation. But we didn’t have an idea of what those predators were and how much of the weakfish population they could actually consume.

Dr. Bogus: Okay, so then the BIG question is what predators are out there that may or may not consume the weakfish and how do you figure that out? Who is eating our fish before we do?

Jacob Krause:  So we did a large review of literature with diet studies and what we found is that striped bass, as a finfish predator definitely consumed weakfish during that winter time period. We also saw that bluefish, summer flounder and spiny dogfish all consumed weakfish, but the most surprising was that bottlenose dolphin also consume weakfish even at higher rates than these finfish predators and to put it into perspective 50% of the diet of a bottlenose dolphin during the winter consists of weakfish.

Dr. Bogus: …and how do we know that?

Jacob Krause:  So I worked with collaborators at NOAA Lab and we looked at the diets of stranded bottlenose dolphins so we can see the stomach contents of those dolphins that washed up and we can estimate their consumption of different prey items like weakfish based on their stomach contents.

Dr. Bogus: What other things do the dolphin eat, were there other top snacks?

Jacob Krause:  Yes there were top snacks and all fell out to be sciaenids which are the fish that make sounds, so 75% of the diet consisted of weakfish, spot and croaker.

Ben Ball:  I noticed on your very colorful chart that for 2013 and 2014 or so looks like it dropped off for the bottlenose dolphin, any speculation there?

Jacob Krause:  Yes, so when we estimated the total consumption for the different predators specific for the bottlenose dolphins we had to take into account that there has been two time periods between 1982 and 2014 where there was a large die-off within the bottlenose dolphin population and those were both due to morbillivirus. And we know that based on the increase in the number of strandings two different time periods, the first being 1988 and the second between 2013 and 2015.

Ben Ball:  Would a decrease in the major predator like that also subsequently lead to an increase in the weakfish?

Jacob Krause:  Yes I would say but our data ends in 2014 so we haven’t seen the product. I will say anecdotally and as we were putting out fish in and 2016 it seems that there were more weakfish and they were of greater size then at the beginning when I started this project in 2014. So there may be some evidence but it’s an ongoing experiment that we will see in future years if the weakfish start to rebound and that there is some good support for this hypothesis.

Ben Ball:  But then again the food chain has played a huge roll. So if the dolphin come back, we may see the weakfish decline.

Jacob Krause:  Exactly, and the other point to bring out with this is that there are other predators, it’s not just bottlenose dolphins. Striped bass have made a resurgence in the last 15 to 20-years bluefish seem to be coming back according to the stock assessments, spiny dogfish are again almost at all time level highs and summer flounder have been rebuilt. So when we have multiple fish species that are being managed for as many as we can for maximum sustainable yield it might be at the detriment of other fish species.

Dr. Bogus: Is it (predation) happening while over wintering at the continental shelf or in transit between the two, because the striped bass aren’t really a deep ocean fish. The flounder go out and spawn in the winter time, they are out off there and I don’t know what the life cycle of the dolphin are, do they spend a lot of time that far offshore?

Jacob Krause:  So, when we think about weakfish going offshore in the wintertime it still remains somewhat of a mystery how far they go out, but it seems it would be within 10 to 15-miles of the shore maybe more depending on the typography of the shelf in that area. And what we find for instance with bottlenose dolphin is that there’s a population that lives between the Virginia boarder and New Jersey during the summer and they come down to North Carolina to overwinter off the nearshore shelf and so weakfish is in that same range and they follow that same movement.

Dr. Bogus: Is there any way Jacob of trying to fold in the mortality of the newly spawned fish that get caught in nets and things of that sort? Or is that really a number that we can’t get to?

Jacob Krause:  It’s a difficult number to get at but there are from a fisheries gear perspective and what management does there are different indices that look at the number of fish that are spawned and so we can look at the number of larval fish and get an estimate on how many are there for instance in the summer, we would call “age zeros” and then the following spring we would use other gears maybe fisheries independent gill net survey or trawl surveys and see how many of those survived to the following year.

Dr. Bogus: How do you see this project going? You obviously are moving on, you’re writing things up and getting into cobia I hear, and where do you see this project going? Is there another step to this in either trying to manage of deal with the weakfish situation?

Jacob Krause:  At this point I think the biggest thing is giving the information of what is the most likely reason for the weakfish decline in the population and from there managers and can incorporate that into the stock assessments and really use that information put some management strategies that may help these weakfish come back. It is difficult when there are a lot of other predators that are important to the fishery so sometimes maybe Mother Nature in the form of natural cycles within for instance bottlenose dolphin and striped bass may cause enough weakfish to survive the younger age classes to make it to harvestable size.

Dr. Bogus: It’s interesting when we’re talking to Tim Ellis with the speckled trout, and you now with the weakfish…it seems like in both cases the numbers of fish…the death of the are mostly natural causes. That seems to be the bottom line of both of these studies, is that correct?

Jacob Krause:  Yes, natural mortality is really what shapes the dynamics or fluctuation within these populations and that makes it very difficult from a management perspective because managers can regulate harvest but you can’t tell a bottlenose dolphin not to eat a weakfish!

Ben Ball:  Dr. Bogus you were talking about troutsicles for the speckled trout does that similarly affect the weakfish at all?

Jacob Krause:  No, they should not be inshore in that amount where they would have the massive die-offs from the cold.

Dr. Bogus: They have taken another strategy than the speckled trout…

Jacob Krause:  Which has its own costs and benefits as we have seen from the data here.

Dr. Bogus: Apparently so! Do you know what the major predator for the speckled trout are?

Jacob Krause:  I have not looked at that so I’m not sure, but probably with what Tim Ellis has found it was COLD honestly is really the shaper of that! But anything, I would think bluefish, or anything that would interact within certain season, bluefish and other species like that.

Dr. Bogus: The number of the 1% survival from offshore to inshore plus or minus…

Jacob Krause:  There is uncertainty in there but it shows that the magnitude of how many are not coming back.

Bogue Banks Ocean Surf Fishing Locations, East to West. (Dr. Bogus www.ncoif.com, drbogus@drbogus.com)

1. Macon State Park at Beaufort inlet. Ocean, rock jetty and inlet fishing down to the CG fence.
   1. Nature trail, Visitors’ Center, summer concerts too.
   2. Don’t forget the swimming beach to the west, renovated pavilion.
2. Atlantic Beach
   1. Henderson Street Atlantic Beach town access (former location of Triple S Pier).
   2. New Bern Street Atlantic Beach, town access, just east of Oceanana Fishing Pier.
   3. Oceanana Pier.
   4. The “Circle” in Atlantic Beach.
   5. Sheraton/Double Tree Hotel, far west end of Atlantic Beach.
3. Pine Knoll Shores has many access points labeled A-K (11 sites) I have listed ones I have fished
   1. PKS Access “B” at Knollwood St., mile marker 5 ½.
   2. Memorial Park at mile marker 6.
   3. Iron Steamer access “F”, site of former IS Pier mile marker 7 ½. The old wreck and pier are to the left where the stairs are from the houses leading to the beach. I fish all the way down to the Whaler Inn.
4. Indian Beach/Salter Path
   1. Newly renovated Carteret County Beach access at mile marker 10 ½.
   2. Indian Beach vehicle beach access also has parking for vehicles mile marker 11.
   3. Indian Beach access on the high dunes just east of the old Indian Beach Pier around mile marker 12 near Emerald Isle Indian Beach town line. Pier was lost in 1999 to Dennis/Floyd.
5. Emerald Isle
   1. Third St. just a bit west of the old Indian Beach Pier at mile 12 ½.
   2. Emerald Isle Eastern Regional Ocean Access, former location of Emerald Isle pier lost to Bertha and Fran 1996. Mile marker 15.
   3. Bogue Pier. Lots of structure at and around pier. Keep 200-feet from pier to fish. There are markers on both sides indicating 200-feet buffer zone. Mile marker 19 ½.
   4. Emerald Isle Western Regional Ocean Access next to Islander Suites off Islander Dr. at mile marker 20 ½.
   5. The “Point” in Emerald Isle at Bogue Inlet across from Bear Island found near the end of Coast Guard road at the end of Inlet Drive. You can fish the ocean, Bogue Inlet walk north to the connected CG “Island” and also fish the CG Channel. Lots of options here. There is parking at CG Road and Station Drive.

Dr. Bogus’ BOOK CLUB

1. Science based on fishes and their world and the “why” (as we understand it) of fish behavior.
   1. What Fish See, Understanding the optics and color shifts for designing lures and flies.
      1. By Colin J Kageyama
   2. Through the Fish’s Eye, An anglers guide to fish behavior.
      1. By Mark Sosin & John Clark
   3. The Fisherman’s Ocean, How marine science can help you find and catch more fish.
      1. By David A Ross
   4. Sharks, Skates and Rays of the Carolinas
      1. By Frank J Schwartz (IMF)
   5. Historical
      1. North Carolina’s Ocean Fishing Piers, from Kitty Hawk to Sunset Beach.
         1. By Al Baird (NCFPS)
      2. Striped Bass Chronicles, The saga of America’s great Game fish.
         1. By George Reiger
      3. The Most Important Fish in the Sea
         1. By H Bruce franklin
      4. Striped Bass Fishing (classic)
         1. By Frank Woolner, Henry Lyman
      5. How To Books (Venue)
         1. Mike Marsh:
            1. Inshore Angler, Coastal Carolina’s Small Boat Fishing Guide
            2. Offshore Angler, Carolina’s Mackerel Boat Fishing Guide
            3. Fishing North Carolina (from the mountains to the coast)

1. Joe Malat (Pamphlets)
   1. Pier Fishing, How to catch more fish from Atlantic and Gulf Coast piers
   2. Surf Fishing, Catching fish from the beach, when, where and how.
   3. Let’s Go Crabbing

1. Surf and Saltwater Fishing in the Carolina’s
   1. By Jeffery Weeks
2. The Complete Book of Surf Fishing
   1. By Capt. Al Ristori
3. Coastal Fishing in the Carolina’s
   1. By Robert J Goldstein
4. Surf Fishing the Atlantic Coast
   1. By Eric B Burnley
5. Inshore Fishing the Carolinas’ Coasts, Finding and catching the most popular salt-water Game Fish
   1. By Bob Newman
6. The Saltwater Fisherman’s Bible
   1. By Erwin A Bauer, revised by Bob Sterns
7. Pier Fishing in North Carolina
   1. By Robert J Goldstein
8. Specific Technique Books
   1. Fly Rodding the Coast
      1. By Ed Mitchell
   2. The Complete Kayak Fisherman
      1. By Ric Burnley
   3. How to Fish Plastic Baits in Saltwater, A complete guide to rigging and fishing plastic lures to catch your favorite gamefish
      1. By Capt. Jim White
   4. Flyfishing the Southeast Coast, A complete guide to fishing fresh and salt water.
      1. By Gordon Churchill
   5. Get Info!
      1. Ken Schultz’s Fishing Encyclopedia
         1. By Ken Shultz
      2. How to Read a North Carolina Beach, Bubble holes, barking sands and rippled runnels
         1. Orin H Pilkey, Tracey Monegan Rice, William J Neal
      3. Common Marine Fishes of North Carolina
         1. By Frank J Schwartz (IMF)
      4. By Vlad Evanoff
         1. Salt Water Fishing Rigs (Pamphlet)
         2. Salt Water Bait Fishes (Pamphlet)
      5. The Bluefish Cookbook
         1. By Greta Jacobs & Jane Alexander
      6. Nature Guide to the Carolina Coast, Common birds, crabs, shells, fish and other entities if the Coastal Environment
         1. By Peter Meyer
      7. Fiction
         1. Douglas Adams
            1. So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
            2. The Salmon of Doubt (Terry Jones finished the book after DA’s death)
         2. All Fishermen are Liars, True tails from the dry dock bar.
            1. Linda Greenlaw
         3. Standing in a River Waving a Stick
            1. By John Gierach
         4. In the Heart of the Sea (Nantucket whaling & movie, based on real events)
            1. By Nathaniel Philbrick
      8. Non Fiction
         1. Casting into the Light, Tales of a Fishing Life
            1. Janet Messineo

November water temps like October were wildly fluctuating from early to late month. Surf had a high of 68 °, low of 52° a drop of 16° in about three weeks with an average of 62.6°. Sound had a high of 70° and low of 44° an amazing difference of 26°and an average of 58.2°. The difference between high and low for November in the surf and sound was almost the same as October, which in itself was very unusual. Check out the graph, blue diamonds are the surf, red squares are the sound temperatures.

October water temps were unusual and very wildly fluctuating from early to late month. Surf had a high of 82°, low of 65° a drop of 17° in about three weeks with an average of 74.3°. October is normally the month with the biggest change, but this is over twice what I normally see. May shows the biggest difference (increase) for spring temperatures. Sound had a high of 85° and high of 59° an amazing difference of 26°and an average of 70.4°. Surf continues to be dirty, there is a lot of fine particulate stuff along the surf and sound that is stirred up with even any slightest disturbance. Check out the graph, blue diamonds are the surf, red squares are the sound temperatures.

September water temps were slightly above normal. Surf had a low of 79°, high of 84° with an average of 82.0°. Sound had a low of 75° and high of 86° and an average of 82.8°. The data is probably a little off since I missed a week’s data due to Florence. AS expected after the hurricane the ocean temps dropped due to mixing. Check out the graph, blue diamonds are the surf, red squares are the sound temperatures.

August’s water temps similar to July’s last 2-weeks staying around 80°/81° with 20 days being 80° or 81°. Surf had a narrow range and a low of 78°, high of 82°. Sound had a low of 79° and high of 85° and an average of 82.0°. Averages for surf and sound almost identical, surf was 80.2, sound 82.0, Check out the graph, blue diamonds are the surf, red squares are the sound temperatures. We had our initial mullet blow on 8/26 with the surf at 79°, anchovies made their initial run on 8/24.

Old reds: Radio interview by Dr. Bogus with Capt. Joe Shute on 8/13/18, Ben Ball Host of Coastal Daybreak, WTKF 1240 AM, 107.1 FM.

Dr. Bogus: This is a season for the old drum fishery, before we talk about the old drum catching…you’ve been, not to harp on it but you’ve been around here for quite a while Capt. Joe.

Capt. Joe Shute: Yes I have!

Dr. Bogus: You’ve seen a lot of changes.

Capt. Joe Shute: I guess I’m kind of equated with the old drum; I’ve been down here running charters since 1987, so I was probably one of the first of a handful of people with a skiff that fished inside in the early days.

Dr. Bogus: What I wanted to get to before we get to catching those guys, in 1997 we had the Fisheries Reform Act and we also went into the situation where we started to protect the resources, the red drum resource which we were getting to the point of killing them all off. So how had that gone, compared with those days when things were really at a low, how do things look now? Not only with the slot drum but also the old drum because, it’s been long enough now that some of those fish are getting older.

Capt. Joe Shute: Right, the old drum fishery is as good as I ever seen it. Both up in the Pamlico sound, you’re seeing good concentrations of them and especially in the winter months now around Cape Lookout from the shipping channel at Beaufort all the way to the east side of the cape, we do real well on then there from about November through January and February and some up into April even.

Dr. Bogus: They’re working those menhaden schools out there.

Capt. Joe Shute: Right, you’re catching them anywhere from 15- to 20-feet of water out to 50- to 60-feet of water. You’re hearing of larger numbers of old drum coming from the New River area, you’re hearing them down near Wilmington a lot more than they ever have been in the past that I have seen or heard of and the old drum stocks are really looking real good right now.

Dr. Bogus: Interesting you mentioned the New River, because, one of the things that I have noticed over the past few years it that the piers on Topsail Island are catching a lot of those big old drum. And I don’t remember hearing that in years past.

Capt. Joe Shute: I didn’t either, not in the quantities that they are catching now. They’re having some days, pretty heavy days down there now.

Dr. Bogus: I assume they are spawning up in the New River and just working in and out of the New River Inlet.

Capt. Joe Shute: Right, I would imagine that a lot of that is coming from there either that or they are just filtering down from the Pamlico.

Dr. Bogus: Joe, the old drum fishing is kind of a specialized fishery, what sort of tackle do you recommend, if you are using bait or even artificials these days.

Capt. Joe Shute: A lot of people in the last little while started fishing for the old drum using popping corks, which is something fairly new for the old drum in the last few years and it’s been right effective. They are using some of the DOA 4- to 5-inch Air Head Shad, they’re running them about 24-inches below the popping cork and they are working the edges and points around there especially where there are schools of bait fish. It’s been real surprising it’s been real effective on those old drum getting them up off the bottom and getting them to come up and take a bite. Of course you need some heavy tackle. When I say heavy, a good heavy, medium to heavy action spinning rod preferably with 20-pound braid or 30-pound braid on your main running line and something that you can get these fish back to the boat fairly quickly, but that’s been coming along real good. There’s also a big fly fishery up there for them now. Basically the same rig is used; it’s called a Pop-n-Fly that Gary Dubiel came up with. It’s a popping cork basically with a fly suspended 18 to 20-inches underneath the popping cork. And the same thing in 20-feet of water you’ll get these big drum to come up around those bait pods and eat that bait 20-inches under the water.

Dr. Bogus: Twenty years ago you didn’t see people fly fishing for these fish, did they?

Capt. Joe Shute: Noooooooo! And we do a lot of that in the fall. We target them and do real well with fly gear around the Cape in November and December. And conventional fishing I use a lot of heavy spinning gear, 30-pound class and above spinning gear. I use 50 and 60-pound braid on my reels because I really want to get the fish back. Your basic rig is the Owen Lupton rig, which is just a very short…the whole rig is only 4 or 5-inches long, it’s got a  fixed 3-ounce egg sinker and a 10/0 circle hook on the bottom of it. And you fish just with your drag tightened down if you’re fishing it with bait. The fish picks it up, goes to move off with it, the egg sinker pulls the hook to the corner of the mouth and probably 90-percent of your fish are hooked in the corner of the mouth and are real easy to release. And the circle hook is the way to go.

Dr. Bogus: And those circle hooks are run barbless, right? (Owen Lupton rig is required gear in North Carolina when fishing bait for old red drum. http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/mf/red-drum) 

Capt. Joe Shute: Yes, a barbless circle hook. All these fish are above the slot and have to be released. And the reason for the heavy gear and the heavy drag is you want to get these fish back to the boat and released with minimal detriment to the fish because the water temperatures in the sound, especially in August and September are so hot if you play these fish on light tackle you’ll end up killing them. They can’t handle the heat and I use a huge net to land my fish and most of the fish…the party wants to take a picture so we’ll pull the fish out real quick and get a picture. After we get a picture of a big fish, most of the fish I never even bring into the boat. I’ll leave them in the net take the circle hook out, let the fish go, and the fish is no worse for the wear. A lot of people get up there and want to take a picture of the fish…they don’t pay attention to what’s going on, they’ll hold a 40-pound fish up, the fish will wiggle and fall and hit its head on the boat. You know that’s not too good! Plus a lot of the males and females both when you pick the male up he’ll secrete sperm all over you, and it’s as slippery as it could be and the same thing with the females with the eggs. So the least you can handle these fish the better off you are.

Dr. Bogus: This fishery has gotten quite popular over the years; do you think we’re impacting those fish? Obviously the growth of the fishery is partly because there are a lot of them around.

Capt. Joe Shute: Right, I think that more and more education to people as far as how to handle the fish, what tackle to fish with, you don’t use “J” hooks anymore, you just  use circle hooks on them. I think that that’s had a big impact.

Dr. Bogus: We’ve got a lot more user friendly with them over the years. Even though the fishery has expanded we’ve gotten better at handling them?

Capt. Joe Shute: Right and there’s been a lot of education put out there from the DMF and also from guides that do seminars and tell people. The main thing is pushing the barb down on these circle hooks because many people don’t realize, and I used to get this all the time on the fisheries commission about how need to switch everything over to circle hooks, because it’s a catch and release fishery. What people don’t recognize is the circle hook was not designed as a catch and release hook; it’s a catch and HOLD hook. If you don’t push that barb down and you don’t know how to properly release a fish with a circle hook, you end up doing more damage than you do good.

Ben Ball: We talked about this so much; don’t they make barbless circle hooks? (Gamakatsu, Owner, Mustad and others make barbless circle hooks for sharks, salmon and fly fishing etc.)

Capt. Joe Shute: There are barbless manufacturers but it doesn’t take but a second with a pair of pliers to pinch it down. So it (the hook) will just slip right back out. The main thing is to take it out the same way it went in. You can’t just push it straight down like you can with a “J” hook and pop it out because it’s got the curve in the hook; you actually have to rotate that hook around to get it out.

Ben Ball: How old are the old drum?

Capt. Joe Shute: They can be anywhere, when they are hitting the upper 30’s, 40’s and 50-inch range they can be anywhere from five or six years old to 50 or 60-years old. They live a long time and some of those fish that you are catching that occasionally we used to see a lot of them years ago, even though there weren’t as many you would see the 60 and 70-pound drum, and they are still out there. And there are a lot of them. I would say the majority of the drum people are catching now are anywhere from 35 and 50-pounds and once they get up to a certain length you can just about within a few pounds get the weight of the fish due to the length of the fish. If you got a 45-inch fish he’s pushing 40 to 45-pounds.

Dr. Bogus: The state record is that 94-pounder (1984), and that was estimated to be over 50 years old.  We’ve talked about flies and DOA soft plastics on a popping cork but the traditional method was using live or cut bait.

Capt. Joe Shute: Mostly it’s cut bait; the two most prevalent baits are menhaden and mullet. A lot of the guides really like to use mullet; they feel that the mullet will get them a better bite. This time of year especially don’t go out there with just a dozen mullets and expect to fish for a while, the pinfish and skates and rays are very bad. Most of the guides when they go out there to fish a full day they take 50-pounds of mullet with them. And they will go through on a good day, 50-pounds of mullet. I leave Morehead and run up there through the ditch and I always stop here and load my boat up with fresh menhaden. I keep some alive and I keep some on ice and I constantly change baits and we’re fishing six to 8-inch baits and I’m using half a fish on each hook.

Dr. Bogus: I remember going out with Bryan Goodwin, I forget how many rods we had out but he’d start out at one end…is that the way it works? (https://www.ncoif.com/big-red/)

Capt. Joe Shute: That’s the way it works, I fish six rods when I go, but I know people that fish as many as 12 rods, and that’s too much work for me. Because when you get out there, sometimes when it’s real frustrating you’ll cast your six rods out and about the time you get to the sixth one you’ve got to do it all over again, because there’s nothing, no bait left. The bluefish and the pinfish are that bad. But you know a lot of times that will create a (chum) slick and that will get the drum in there also.

Ben Ball: They you can try your popping corks and flies.

Capt. Joe Shute: That’s right, that’s right.

Dr. Bogus: It’s amazing with the popping corks, well I guess sometimes those fish could be suspended part ways up off of the bottom, but often they can be right on the bottom feeding that dinner bell gets them all the ways to the top!

Capt. Joe Shute: It gets their attention and they will come up and check it out. A lot of them you know are cruising around the schools of bait and, they won’t be on the bottom but a lot of them will be underneath the bait on the bottom picking up what falls to the bottom. So it’s a very good way to get their attention and when they come up and see that little shad floating there they say okay I’m going to eat that.

Ben Ball: You use popping corks in the creeks.

Dr. Bogus: Oh yah, in the wintertime particularly like to use various kinds of corks because I can adjust the speed that I work them and there in the wintertime the fish get a little sluggish and so we want to be able to do that. Joe you said you use 50-pound braid on a 30-class reel.

Capt. Joe Shute: Right, I use one of the old 7000-Penn Battle reels and I actually have 65-pound braid on mine. And I use a 30-pound class spinning rod and you can put a lot of heat on those fish. And when I’m setting my drags for the fish I’m setting it at 12 or 15-pounds. It takes a lot to pull them off, but the good thing about that is when that lines starts going that hook’s already set, you never have to set the hook. It’s great for charters because people say, “well when do I set the hook?” I say don’t worry. “When will I know if I got a bite?”  I say don’t worry, whenever the rod bends over and you hear the line start squealing then touch it and pull it out of the rod holder.

July’s water temps started off unusually HOT (85°) then dropped, normalized and stayed around 81 for the rest of the month. Surf had a low  of 79, high of 85, sound a low of 75 and high of 87. Averages for surf and sound almost identical, surf was 81.9, sound 81.8, Check out the graph. Check out the graph, blue diamonds are the surf, red squares are the sound temperatures. We also had extreme super tides in July and excessive amounts of rain and rainy days.

June’s water temps gradually increased throughout the month at abour 0.2°/day. Surf had a low of 72, high of 82, sound a low of 78 and high of 85. Average surf was 78.5, sound 81.3, Check out the graph, blue diamonds are the surf, red squares are the sound temperatures.