Battle at Big Rock

This past week, me and Pops (my dad) were lucky enough to run down to the coast to do some early-Summer mahi-mahi fishing. For the last few weeks we have been hearing about how the fishing is heating up offshore but my work schedule has been extremely busy and Monday, June 1st was going to be our first crack (since April) at packing a cooler or two with good meat.

The last time Pops and me got down to the coast, April 25th, we were hit with some strong NW winds and the seas were white-capping once we left the dock. After trying to get out in 5+ ft. waves, we decided to stay inside the inlet and try our luck chumming for shark. While we did land a few sharks, we didn't have a chance to get out far enough to bring home some tuna or mahi.

However, after watching the fishing reports, we saw that Monday was going to be our best shot at getting a good ways offshore. So Sunday night, my dad and I headed down to Atlantic Beach to stay at a family friend's condo.

The morning of, what will now be known forever in Brown family storytelling as the Battle at Big Rock, we dropped the boat in Morehead City around 6:ooam and headed out to seas.

We traveled for about an hour in before we stopped to fish a seaweed line on a 70 degree temperature break about 20 miles offshore (known as "Buoy 14"). We found a whole herd of other boats trying their luck at landing mahi, but after trolling for a few miles between Buoy 14 and AR-302 ("Artificial Reef #302) we came to realize that we were in the right place at the wrong time.

So there we were, about 15-20 miles offshore, with no signs of any sort of keeper fish. We heard all over the radio that nobody in the area was doing much of anything.

After talking over a few options and looking at the charts, Pops and I decided to go big or go home. And going home with empty coolers wasn't an option today. We were half way to Big Rock (as in the "Big Rock Blue Marlin tournament - the biggest Blue Marlin tournament outside Australian waters) and we knew that if we could make it out that far, we might find warmer water and have a better shot at finding dolphin (aka- "mahi-mahi").

It took about another hour before we came up on Big Rock. We were around 45 miles offshore, the water jumped up to 72 degree and we were floating in about 400 ft. of the deepest blue water. Big Rock sits right at the edge of the continental shelf and the Gulf Stream, so we knew that there were some good fish in the area.

For the majority of the day, we fished a seaweed line that we found on the north side of Big Rock. We were somewhat pleased to hear on the radio, all throughout the day, that the majority of the stubborn boats trolling back at Buoy 14 & AR-302 weren't catching much of anything. I don't say that because I want to hog all the fish - Lord knows there is enough fish to go around; I just say that because it felt good to know that we made a good play heading out to deeper waters.

There has been days that I have caught more fish and there has been days where I have caught bigger fish. But I have never caught such beautiful fish in such a beautiful setting. 45 miles out and the deep blue was nearly flat. The sun was shining at a pleasant 80 degrees and the water was crystal clear blue.

a pretty, little Bluefin - big enough for a few fillets

We didn't have much downtime throughout the day. We must have had at least 20 big fish bites. I can't even count how many times one of us would be fighting one of the fish and the other was clearing lines and getting the gaff ready when we'd suddenly hear another line on the opposite side of the boat start stripping *zinnnnnnnggggg*. We easily could have tripled our fish count if we had another deck hand.

Rightfully so, Pops ended up catching the "catch of the day" with this big gaffer, pictured below:

At the end of the day, we made our way back to shore (after stopping just long enough for me to drop a line in a school of blue fin tuna and pull a small one to the boat) and we shared the highlights of our day with each other, just as if the other person wasn't there. To other cars on the highway, we must have looked like two men on the run that just pulled off a Fort Knox-size heist; smiling from ear-to-ear, reenacting our Battle at Big Rock.

It was the best father/son day I've ever had with Pops.