Ocean Isle & Sunset Beach Fishing report

Late August / Labor Day Weekend Wrap - Up!

Posted on 09/04/2018

First I must apologize for getting a little behind on my reporting.  I have fortunately been very busy fishing, and coupling that with a few other projects I have going on, has resulted in very little time to do much of anything else.  The 2018 summer vacation season unofficially ended yesterday, after a very busy Labor Day weekend.  I have to thank everyone who made fishing with me part of your summer vacation this year.  I really appreciate your business and hope to see you again in the summer of 2019.

As far as the fishing goes, we are now hung in what I consider to be a "dog-days of summer" type pattern.  The air is hot and humid, and the water is quite hot as well.  This type of situation often leads to some inconsistency in the fishing, but is something that we deal with pretty much every year.  We have had some great trips and some slow trips recently, but on average we have been able to pick away at a least a handful of nice fish each trip.  The redfish have continued to provide some action, and even seem to be starting to school up and move into areas that we would expect to see them later this month and into October.  They have ranged in size from undersize pups up to a few 30+ inch bruisers.  The flounder fishing has also remained fairly consistent as well, with both the inshore waters and the nearshore wrecks/artificial reefs producing some nice catches lately.  We are also continuing to find a few speckled trout and black drum mixed throughout the area as well.  So all in all, fishing has been pretty decent considering the time of year and the amount of boat traffic we have had to contend with. 

We are now only a few weeks away from the beginning of the best time of year for inshore fishing in the Ocean Isle and Sunset Beach areas.  All we need are a couple of cold fronts and some north wind to get things going.  That being said, now is time to plan those fall fishing trips, because dates in October and November are already beginning to fill up, especially the weekends.  In the meantime, I still have plenty of openings throughout September if you're going to be in the area and want to do some inshore fishing.  Either way, give me a call and lets go catch some fish sometime over the next three months.  Check out a few of our catches from the past couple weeks below!

- Capt. Kyle