From April 2011

Sorry about the lack of updates lately....busy, busy, busy !

The billfishing has been hot as well as the weather. Warm water has moved the dolphin and sailfish to the nearshore grounds, the grouper are waiting in the shadows on the bottom, and the giant 100 + pound Tarpon have taken up their annual residence in the Pamlico sound. Many options available to the angler from fishing a few miles off the beach , to the gulfstream, to the hot shallow waters in the Pamlico Sound. With the warm weather, the speed and open cockpit of our 32' SeaCraft makes for a great day out on the water. Jigging amberjacks has also moved closer to the beach with plenty of the tackle busting bruisers waiting to test any angler on the nearshore shipwrecks and reefs. The summer months are great fro bailing great eating dolphins off the weedlines with light tackle live bait and topwater  lures.  Come aboard and enjoy the sunshine on one of the fastest charter boats along the Crystal Coast.  The fish are waiting !!!!!

NC Dolphin Madness/ Inshore Cobia/ Grouper !! May and June are months where you can experience some of the best fishing the East Coast has to offer. I still have some dates available, and, many options for the hardcore deep jigging angler, to the trolling guys, to the light tackle sight casting to huge cobia crowd, and more. Plan a trip to the beautiful Crystal Coast, the fishing is hot, the scenery incredible, and don't forget to bring a large cooler for your catch !!

The dolphin have made their annual showing and limit catches of 20 lb. gaffers are not uncommon. Wahoo and blackfin are here as well. Billfish of all shapes and sizes are waiting a mere 50 miles from the dock and over the next month sailfish can be caught within sight of the beach.

Cobia migrate along the coast feeding on the large bait balls of menhadden, and move inside of the barrier islands to feed and spawn. This offers sight casting and live linning for cobia exceeding 90 lbs !! They are just starting to show up and should get thicker over the next couple weeks. I am offering cobia trips for only 500 bucks a day due to the proximity of the fishing. We often catch within 50 yards of the beach, making these trips doable in almost any weather. Don't miss out on this rare fishery.

As always, grouper are hungry and waiting offshore. Amberjacks, almacos, african pompano, king mackeral, and many other species are stacked on the offshore live bottom areas along with many different species of grouper waiting for you to drop a jig. Triggerfish to 8 lbs are common on the deep water corals, and are in my opinion the finest table fare in the ocean. Call and book a date for a bottom fisherman's dream trip.

Combo trips are a favorite. Troll the morning , load up on mahi, tuna and wahoo, then go to the jig and bottom rigs and top off the cooler with groupers, triggers, snappers, ect. Lets go get them ! Check out the website for rates and specials. www.procastinatorsportfishing.com


Thanks ,
Captain John Cawthern

I had the pleasure of having Ed, Logan and Todd join me for a make-up charter to hit the bluewater. The day started off kinda slow with a couple blackfin tuna on the troll. Then, all hell breaks loose when a marlin piles on the shotgun rod. Logan fights the marlin on light tackle and gets the colored up fish to the boat for a leader touch when the fish gets it's head down and shoots under the bow breaking off at the leader. Well done guys. We then went to jigging and threw some more tasty blackfins and amberjacks in the brine tank and called it a day. Thanks again guys. I believe that was the first Marlin of the year caught out of this area this season. Hopefully more are on their way!

Had the pleasure of having James, Mick, and John join me for a combo trip. The good water moved off and once we got to the Stream we were greeted with less than desirable temps and water color. Looked around a bit and decided to go to plan "B" , jigging. The jig bite was good with large false albacores, amberjacks, and almacos keeping the guys busy. They were getting tired of wrestling with reef donkeys so we made a small move and dropped anchor on some marks that looked like triggers on the sonar. Triggers they were and they were coming up 2 at a time. The guys caught on quick with the quick biting triggers and after a short while the brine tank was stuffed with large tasty triggers. Wanting to try for something a bit shallower to give the crews weary arms a break, we went shallower looking for b-liners. All we found were seabass. It was another fast paced trip with a great group of guys. Back at the cleaning table, the guys took all the trigger fillets they could handle, and left the rest for the Captain.....Life is good indeed.

Had the pleasure of having John and Ed joining me for a day of rough seas and fast paced catching. It was fish after fish within seconds of stopping the boat first thing in the morning, and the pace kept the same through the end of the day. The seas kept us from being able to move to many different areas in an attempt to find more species to catch, but, everybody went home with tired arms and some fresh fillets. Check out the video to see how it was, or contact us to see it first hand !!

Had the pleasure of having Dean, Owen, Danny, and Logan join me for an open boat jigging trip. The fog was thick but we left out a dark thirty and pointed her for the blue water. Once we hit the 30 mile mark the fog started to break and we were enjoying the beautiful morning sun. The seas were bigger than forecast, and really started to stack up as the day progressed. Air temps got into the mid seventies with bright sunshine offshore, while inshore it was cold and foggy most of the morning

The first stop was in 69 degree and 200 ft. and it was on. For the rest of the day the guys enjoyed constant action on aj's, blackfin and false albies, and Dean's very first endangered gag grouper.

Danny decked a stud blackfin that was a good 25 pounds, Owen stayed in the bow and fought fish til' arm cramps started taking him out of the game. Dean toughed out the day with the green monster knocking on his door, but kept lunch down and fought fish til' he had no more to give. Logan was the damn energizer bunny, he cranked fish all day non stop, and was ready for more when we pointed the bow for home.

It was a great group of guys and it was a blast sitting back and watching all four guys hooked up at once time and time again.

Had the pleasure of having Pete and Joey from Long Island, Gregg from Raleigh and my son Stephen from Pa. on board for a day offshore.

The plan was live chumming , however, the mullet that were in the marina for the last month vanished almost overnight. There were some of the 12 inch + size fish, but the finger mullet were gone. Furthermore, my castnetting skills left the marina also, things weren't looking good for the live chumming.

Not to be discouraged we pushed off in the cold water and headed about 55 miles out to the break. The temp went from 56 to 68 degrees in a few hundred yards. Things looked right, except for an empty sounder. We tried that beak a bit and then pushed offshore a bit more and picked up a nice wahoo on the troll. Still no life showing on the sounder we headed in a bit to try some jigging.

We found a few patches of fish and it was drop down and everyone would hook up with AJ's .Gregg scored his first grouper on a butterfly jig which was released to see another day. There was some serious tackle testing going on with the Long Island crowd determined to break something....everything held together. The drift was screaming over 3.5 kts so it was tough to stay on top the fish. The drift was too fast to get down to the triggers so it was pretty much a pull fest on AJ's. The ocean gave up some great visuals of dolphins, turtles, and dozens of big hammerheads and other sharks cruising the surface.

I seriously enjoyed the day even though the fishing was tough. We cruised back at 40, and opened her up to 50 once we were back inside and made it in before the sun went down. A beautiful day spent fishing in T-shirts in Feb. cannot be beat !!