Marsh: Anglers taking advantage of early spot run

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Marsh: Anglers taking advantage of early spot run

Fletcher Oxendine and his daughter, Jessica, recently headed to Kure Beach Pier to catch a cooler full of spots. The spots should bite all the way through October. Below, anglers line the pier during the early morning.

KURE BEACH – The day dawned gray, with a brisk northeast wind whipping the waters of the Atlantic to a lively chop and making the clouds surf across the sky. Most anglers would have preferred to stay at home. But for the select few who know when the fishing will be at its best, it was time to head for the ocean piers.

Fletcher Oxendine, a 53-year-old farmer from Shannon, was standing at the railing of Kure Beach Fishing Pier, facing north, right into the wind. The sky was spitting an intermittent rain and dawn was just breaking.

He was having difficulty tying on another spot rig, even with the aid of the pier’s overhead lights.

“I come down to the beach to fish once a year,” he said. “We called the pier house and they said the spots were biting, so everyone got into the truck and the car. We’ve been here all night long.”

It was Sunday, Sept. 21, and the wind had been blowing for two days. It takes a northeast wind to steer the spot migration to the beach. The fish had arrived with the wind, with the bite beginning in earnest the previous Friday.

“This rough weather helps the spot fishing because it keeps the commercial netters away and blows all of the fish near the shore,” said Jim Wilder, 65, one of the workers at the pier. “This is the best spot fishing I have seen in years and it is two or three weeks early. It could be the start of a tremendous fall fishing season.”

The spot is a small bottom-feeding fish. It has dusky to golden sides and a shiny belly. Fall-run fish get so fat their ventral sides turn bright yellow, earning them the nickname of “yellow bellies.” The spot gets its angler’s name for the dark, dime-sized spot directly aft of its gill cover. A spot weighing a pound is a huge one. However, each fish can feed one small person, while a true fish aficionado may be able to eat three to six spots. The best thing about spots is that an angler can fill up an ice chest in short order once they start biting.

“We’ve caught about 30 spots so far,” said Jessica Oxendine, Fletcher’s 28-year-old daughter and nurse. “There were lots of people out here last night, but now we have the pier almost to ourselves. It is Sunday and people have been here all weekend, so they have to go back home.”

Her brother, Dustin, was asleep in the truck in the parking lot. Her children, 5-year-old Jaylen and 10-yer-old Kaitlin, were so exhausted they were sleeping in the car.

“My father has been bringing me to the pier to go spot fishing since I was a kid and now we are bringing my kids,” she said. “They will be unhappy that they missed out on catching so many fish. They have just begun biting really well. I usually don’t fish very much. But I have caught a few fish and put them in the cooler. He’s the real fisherman.”

Despite the cold rain and chilly wind, other fishermen began stirring. As daylight grew, anglers began a steady parade, walking onto the pier planks from the pier house, wearing their brightly colored rain gear and toting pier carts, wheeled ice chests and fishing rods.

Some of them merely carried a plastic bucket with a couple of two-hook bottom rigs and a box of bloodworms for bait inside. They would simply put their fish in the bucket to carry their catch back home.

“Spot fishing is the easiest fishing you will ever do if you want to catch a lot of fish,” Wilder said. “Somehow, word gets around when the spots are biting and everyone comes to the pier. When this wind stops blowing or switches back around to the west, the bite will end for a time. But when it starts blowing out of the east again, the spots will show back up and so will all of the fishermen.”

Fletcher Oxendine had called the pier house to see if the fish were biting. However, most anglers these days check the Internet, where they can spot the spot action up and down the coast on web-cams, which most piers, including Kure Beach Fishing Pier, now have.

To see the action at Kure Beach Fishing Pier, anglers can visit surfchex.com/kure-beach-web-cam.php.

Mike Marsh is a syndicated outdoors writer from Wilmington.

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