Capt. Vinny had us on a stormy day, and unfortunately we were not able to make it to the shipwreck to fish. Capt. Vinny already knew about the weather and like any Capt. worth his salt, he had backup plans. First we slayed some Ribbon Fish and then Capt. Vinny put us on Red Drum the rest of the day.  My son even caught one large enough for a certificate from the State of North Carolina.  Overall we had a great time, and we would definitely use Capt. Vinny again if we find ourselves back in the OBX.

Even though it was the middle of the day and the fish may not be biting like they would in the early morning or evening, Stick ‘Em Vinny did his best to make sure we had a great trip.  What I liked most is we caught our live bait to start of the trip, to be able to catch the bigger fish later on.  It help teach my family if we needed to survive in the wild, we would be able to catch some fish to provide for ourselves.  It was exciting right off the bat we caught two larger trout.  Then Vinny took us to some of his hot spots, unfortunately, we weren’t so lucky the remaining of the trip until the final cast, where I was jigging the reef with some shrimp as bait and caught the big daddy of the trip.  I will let the photo speak for itself.

There were 3 in our group that booked the 6 AM, six hour shipwreck charter with Vincent.  Arrived at 5:45 with time to get coffee from the adjacent restaurant while Vincent prepared his boat for departure.

We traveled for about 15 minutes to our first fishing spot where we trolled for primarily ribbon fish, fishing among about 10 other boats.  We worked this spot for about 20 to 30 minutes, landing two ribbon fish. We then headed about 6 more miles to the shipwreck fishing spot.

We learned from Vincent, that the “shipwreck” we were fishing above, was actually an old 440-ft barge that had been purposely sunk at that location to provide fish habitat/structure for fishermen to utilize.

We spent about three hours at the shipwreck site and initially had success, catching a nice 10 pound amberjack as well as a triggerfish.  Fishing slowed as we made repeated attempts to catch fish by drifting over the barges, using squid and cut baitfish as bait.  Captain Vincent worked very hard to try to get fish in the boat, but we met with limited success.

We departed from the barges, probably earlier than normal due to the inactivity, and Captain Vincent tried to get us onto fish by drifting in areas where fish were appearing on the monitor.  We did get a few bites, but were unable to land anything.  We continued back towards the dock, stopping along a line in the water created by the tides, and trolled this line for 10 or 15 minutes with no success.  The Captain also had us stop for a few minutes in the region we were at earlier, fishing for ribbonfish, but we were unable to entice a bite.

It was a great day on the water, and it would have been a fantastic day if we had boated a few more fish, but sometimes the fish just start biting and unfortunately, this was one of those times.