On the 29th of July, Capt John of Drumbeat fishing OBX, Bryan (Greentails seafood market/kitchen), my wife, and I embarked on a trip east to the gulf stream to prototype some future lure designs I was working on. The Mikros-Pop130 was just released at iCast three weeks prior, and we also wanted to use them to get some footage as customers were asking about this oddly shaped popper. We left a little later than the normal “before first light” run.
After a glassy and brief 45 minute ride, we arrived and started seeing pods of pilot whales and dolphins so we started casting stickbaits and poppers even without seeing any tuna airing out. Needing to stretch out from the ride anyways, we all grabbed some lighter rods and started casting just to see what’s out there amidst the whale and dolphin show.
A skipjack was soon caught, so we decided to stay hoping something bigger would show up. For the next 45 minutes, we slowly picked away at some skipjack tuna, saving them for the table and taking care to dispatch them quickly and efficiently to preserve meat quality. I was the designated “ike-jime” guy utilizing a fish spike to humanely harvest the fish instead of allowing it to thrash around which increases lactic acid build up and making the meat less desirable.
….and then it happened.
Casting just outside the school of these surface feeding of skipjacks, I threw the 5″ Mikros-Pop130 in a mahi-mahi color and popped it a few times as soon as I tightened the slack. Watching the lure pop and walk the dog was pretty awesome and was important for me to capture the action on video so I could document it. As I launched another cast, watching the popper cut through the air with ease, it landed and made a cute little splash on the water. It took two pops and a pause to mimic the action of a flying fish (as it lands). I always give my poppers a pause because of this. Flying fish don’t just zip away after landing, and this pause was the ticket that day. I guess they were hungry for landing flyers!
A three foot yellowfin smashed my popper so hard during this pause and caught me off guard. I almost lost my grip as the rod slid forward from the strike and immediately realized I needed to set the hook. A few rod pumps fixed that, and soon after, tuna mayhem erupted.
Everyone let it fly! EVERY SINGLE cast after that was a yellowfin. The skipjacks were now scattered about and the yellowfin took over. Every angler on the boat started blind casting in all directions, it didn’t matter. The Mikros-Pop130 were making so much noise on the water, tunas were being raised from the deep. Triple and quadruple hooks ups ensued and we had to waltz around each other dodging lines and trying to keep calm (while giggling with fish on the line) and helping gaff each other’s fish.
Needing a break to rest my right trigger finger from fighting consecutive Yellowfin, I looked to make sure the wife got into some of the tuna action as well, it was HER birthday trip after all. With all the commotion going on, the sharks started making an appearance and made things a lot more interesting. Bringing in a yellowfin tuna and keeping them away from hungry sharks proved tough, and we ended up having to share some tail meat with the top predators in the ocean. Taxes were collected, but it was well worth the penalty.
I grabbed a 10k size reel, handed it to the wife and asked her to throw it so that I could film the action of the lure. The boat had started drifting at an odd angle but she still belted a popper out landing 40 feet away. Now, I’ve no idea if tuna can see and track flying fish out of the water, because as soon as the lure landed, it was immediately engulfed by whitewater with the familiar sound of drag peeling out of the spool. Setting the hook wasn’t even needed as this fish hit the lure so hard, it hooked itself in two locations which made for an interesting angled fight. I watched this tug of war with opposing forces go back and forth, one going down, the other pumping up. The runs started to get stronger, peeling more and more drag as the fight went on and we realized there was a shark on the hunt for an easy meal. Somehow I ended up with the rod and started leaning back to gain line and momentum as Capt John stood on standby gaff in hand. At this point, my fingers were starting to lock up but kept pumping up and leaning back to gain line as fast as possible. After a few blistering vertical runs, the fish slowed down, and I started pumping faster to get the fish higher and away from the sharks. A gaff shot to the head by Capt John soon followed, and as he cleared the gunwhale, we realized that this plus size model (and the biggest that day) was now about 10 lbs lighter in taxes.
The tuna feeding chaos calmed soon after that because of the shark pressure and we decided to head back with smiles, memories and a very fishy story to tell. Capt John has now set aside July 29 as “Birthday tuna day”
(coming soon)
“SCISSORMOUTH”
Wahoo (Acanthocybium solandri)
This 4 foot wahoo was a print that I had done late summer of 2024. My three fishing buddies did not invite me on this trip (they had asked me before) because the smell of diesel fumes kickstart my landlubber legs….yes,because I get seasick. Yes that’s right a lure maker and gyotaku artist who gets seasick and loves to fish (story of my life)
I had given them a few custom lures to use on their trip as well as some Small Lure Co trolling lures to try and use on their charter. Sometime later, Bryan had let me know that they had gotten into some really nice wahoo and that he was bringing them whole. On that same trip they had also done some bottom fishing and did exceptionally well; that would be perfect for me to do several species with one clean up. When I opened the cooler, I was very surprised at all the crazy colors that was in the box. The wahoo had a silvery sheen with the deepest blacks, electric blues, whites, grays, and purples. But amidst the “standard pelagic” colors stood out colors of oranges, blood reds, maroons, silvery blues, and pineapple yellows.
“GOOGLIES” – Glassy eye (Priacanthus arenatus) and Short Big eye (Pristigenys alta)
I’ve ever seen a big guy Toro or a glassy eye snapper in person. They were the cutest reddest fish I had ever seen with the biggest googly eyes which felt like marshmallows, and transparent like blue Iron-free glass. The short big eye toro reminded me of those swimming fish of the underwater world of Super Mario brothers, and the Glassy eye snapper looked like an elongated and streamlined big eye toro, and definitely meant for a little more attack speed.
The best part to this was how fresh they were. They were firm, eyes were perfect. The gills were super red and the scales were all intact.
I tackled the wahoo first because I needed to get it cleaned and I did not have a cooler that would fit a 47 inch FL wahoo. When I was cleaning this fish, I couldn’t help but notice that by lifting the membrane just above the teeth, you can actually see more of the cutting design as the top jaw perfectly slices down against the bottom to create a scissor-like mechanism. That was when I decided to call the original gyotaku “Scissor mouth”
I tackled the glassy eye next, which was pretty cool to do because the fish was small enough to handle easily and because of how rough the scales were, gave a really good imprint to base my paints on. The fish was so red even after I wiped off the black ink that I decided to experiment and try to mimic the same exact color of the fish with my paints, to do a colored version of a traditional gyotaku.
The end result looked interestingly different to me, so I decided to do the last deep water fish, the short Big eye toro that way. I made several originals of that particular fish and will offer them as I complete them. I’ve never seen a sport fish as cute as this, and I do have to say this is definitely one of my top choices when it comesto great tasting fish.
Mullet (Mugil cephalus)
“Mullin’ over mullet”
On December 18, 2024, my in-laws came to visit for the holidays and I promised to take my father-in-law fishing for some speckled trout. I chartered Captain Vincent Santullo of Stickem OBX on the 26th to take us to Juniper Bay to catch some gator trout. The weather was nice earlier that week, but, as anybody who lives on the Outer Banks knows, conditions can change drastically in just a day.
I also had some kind of flu for two weeks, which made me pretty miserable as I was congested and sniffly….. and it just kept lingering. I couldn’t shake off whatever it was (at least I tested negative for COVID), but I NEEDED to go fishing. We met up with Capt Vinny at the Wawa for gas and followed him to the area early that morning. The short ride out on his bay boat was pretty uneventful, weaving between the reeds, estuarine grass, and winding through channels of the marsh. Things looked promising.
We started off casting to a lot of eddies and swirls since we were using mainly soft plastics and a few of my hard baits. After what seemed like a thousand casts, Capt Vinny finally hooked a speck while my father-in-law Dave (and I) couldn’t buy a bite. We persisted, because you never know when the bite would turn on. In the brisk 52 degree cold, it was tough casting with numb, wet hands… and that’s when the wind started picking up, of course.
Eventually, Captain Vinny hooked another speck, and we started casting in his direction, desperate for any bites. Dave cast first and hooked up with a curly tail grub, the kind I use for fluke up north. After a brief fight, a corncob mullet surfaced and I started giggling because I’ve never seen a mullet caught with one of those. They’re mostly vegetarian, scraping algae and feeding on detritus so this was not normal to me!
Soon after, the tide switched, the wind began to howl, the sun started to set … and I finally felt a tug- that drug I was craving! It was my turn next. I hooked up big time and it felt so good, just like redemption after two thousand casts.
Sniffling my way through the fight, I tightened my drag to get it closer and closer. There was definitely some weight to it. With one last manly crank, my catch surfaced …. I caught a branch! Now feeling completely defeated, I blew my nose, set my rod down and stuck my hands in my pockets to get warm. It was a tough day on the water.
It was a quiet ride home and only much later, after a steaming hot shower and two shots of theraflu, I realized I was still thinking about the day’s fishing… and mulling over that mullet. I’ve printed a pair of mullet in the past, but this time, I created a proper mullet school.
One speckled trout with half a tail, the lone mullet and the branch came home, and I made two special prints, one for Capt Vinny and the other for Dave called “Tough day on the water”
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