Down East Guide Service can connect you with duck hunting guides in North Carolina

 Down East Guide Service can connect you with duck hunting guides in North Carolina 

Cast and Blast trips. 

Duck blind rentals. 

 

Anna & George,

 

I cannot overstate my positive experience this past weekend fishing with Downeast Guide Service in Oriental.  I have fished with almost all your guides over the years, and Capt Cailyn was absolutely remarkable.  He works hard, is incredibly personable and helped me and my son have a fantastic day on the sound.    

 

We started off slow, not sighting a fish for the first 4+ hours on a flat, calm day (which normally don’t produce many drum).  I was beginning to wonder if we’d be shut out.  Then just after 630PM, the dinner bell went off, signaled by the front reel screaming as line peeled off.  For the next 90 minutes, we had our fill of 40-50+ inch old drum bending over rod after rod.  Our final two two strikes came as we tried to bring in the lines for the day only to get hit on the retrieve.  The second to last fight was the best I’ve ever seen from a drum before we headed back to Oriental in the dark.  I’ve been drum fishing with you for years but this one will be hard to top!

 

Thanks to Downeast, Capt Cailyn and all the people of Oriental for a phenomenal weekend.

 

Jeffrey & Dylan Clark

They're starting to show pretty good.

 Wait what happens after this nor'east wind and filling moon......

Got to fish with these two legends

 Capt. Rick Caton and Mr. Tarpon himself, Phil Ambler 

newsletter link

 https://myemail.constantcontact.com/News-from-Down-East-Guide-Service-and-Dragin-Fly-Sportfishing.html?soid=1111440700321&aid=5e4_1guSigQ

please check them out

 https://www.ncmefoundation.org/

This is who we encouraged you to support in our recent newsletter. 

did I say the tarpon bite was consistent?

 I guess it is consistent tarpon fishing for 15 of the best NC tarpon boats fishing/looking for nearly 10 hours and NO ONE saw a fish.   Two days before there were at least a dozen tarpon hooked by a handful of boats and expectations were high for this tournament.  

We had even invited a tarpon scientist to come take samples of our plentiful fish.   At the end of the day, we apologized for the sorry fishing, but as Lucas replied, that's just tarpon fishing anywhere in the world.   

Some days they just don't do it.  But that's what makes them so special and why we are so mad at them. 

For me, it was a pleasure to fish with two legends, Capt. Rick Caton and Mr. Tarpon himself, Phillip  Ambler, aka Ms. Sharon. 

yup, they are here also. 

 tarpon bite has been very, very consistent. 

Capt. Caylin

Getting it done on the inshore side of things while we were tarpon fishing

 

tarpon and bull sharks

 I drove 14 hours down to the coast to hire Capt. Matt Deaton to take me and Capt. Allen Heath tarpon fishing on my old boat!   Capt. Allen beat me to the rod and caught his first tarpon but did hand me off the next bite, a big Neuse River bull shark.   

Pics to follow, 

wow, there are a lot of tarpon around.

 Got some great guides with open dates if you ever wanted to try and catch a NC silver king. 

Drum dates are getting slim, better call soon. 

Got tarpon?

 

Cobia fishing report

 

I’ve been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars over my career to take people out under miserable conditions which I would not choose to go out into myself, but I’ve never paid so much money to go out in that misery!  I can think of a couple of those trips you financed!.

Still had a great time.  

Friday it started raining and never stopped.  I was in full body condom and the rain gear outlasted my 3 cigarette lighters but at the end I was soaking wet from head to toe, but not so wet that it poured out of my boots.  It rained sideways for much of the day with the 30 knot winds.   When the wind would lay down it was just because the rain drops were so big and so furious that the wind could not blow.   At those times I believe that it was actually raining upside down.  

Late in the day, between one of the squalls associated with the storm that had all the ingredients except a name, I hooked a fish on bait, it shook his head, came to the top and everyone said shark, they saw a fin……I did too, but it could have been the tail of a BIG cobia.   If it was a cobia, tournament winner for sure.   Everything just went slack and I was sure that the shark had cut the line, but the hook came back without a scratch on the leader.   They still say shark, I say we lost the tournament winning cobia.  We’ll never know.

 It rained most of Saturday morning, cleared up for a couple of hours and we saw the winning fish caught beside us,  a 50 pounder.

 Sunday sucked.  Rough, rain, windy, clouds, but it would have been actually very pleasant compared to Friday if our guide had not picked the absolute roughest part of the Atlantic Ocean to spend the day.

 No fish were caught on Friday.  Only 4 boats were loco enough to participate so they drew names out of the hat to distribute those prizes.   1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd place for big fish and the same places for big stringer.   We had 6 chances.   Our name was never drawn from the hat. 

 Patrick Caton, Rick’s son, went with us on Friday.  After the day he begged me not to tell his daddy that he went fishing with us.  When asked why, Patrick is a grown man and can do what he wants, his reply was.   “My daddy would just look at me and shake his head and say that he thought that he had grown me to know better.”.

I really did have a blast and most of the top fish were caught near us, so we were in the zone.   Whether we had our chance or a big shark, I'll never know.   Many thanks to Breakwater Inn, Oden's Dock and Cameron Whittaker's expertise for keeping us safe and keeping us fishing under extreme conditions. 

Meanwhile at Cape Lookout, consistent cobia catches, despite tough conditions, indicate that there are a lot of fish still on the way up the coast.   

If you ever make it to Cape Hatteras, give us a ring and we'll get you connected with a true waterman.

Roanoke River

 I know, I know, I have not been posting much here, but I have been trying to keep the fishing reports updated at www.draginflycostarica.com 

Roanoke is firing off in case you were wondering, rise in water and the sunshine today has them going the right directions, stacking up in catchable numbers on jig and fly.   Going to be a really, really good week. 

Capt Greg Voliva reports

 1 person, 50 shad, less than 3 hours. 

shad fishing two at a time

Even with the colder weather, spring has sprung! The shad run has been on fire with good numbers pushing up into Weldon NC. With triple digit days, clients are  pulling them in often two at a time. The shad run is  an amazing time to dust off that fly rod and sharpen your skill, take a kid fishing or just break away from the winter blues. A "REEL"  good time for all.

Thank you!

Captain Caylin Burrell