Category: Fish Stories

Mike and I have been friends since we were twelve, growing up in Marlborough, MA. We met at school and decided to go fishing at the Sudbury Resevoir and have been friends and fishing buddies ever since. This is the story of the time we went fishing on the Point at Buxton, N.C. in early May 2001. I met Mike at Reagan National Airport early Thursday afternoon , we gathered ourselves into the Jeep (1998 Jeep Cherokee Sport that I still take fishing) and headed south. The drive was great, about six hours, giving Mike and I time to catch up on the goings on in our lives. Time flew while we drove around Richmond past Norfolk and VA Beach and finally over the bridge onto the Outer Banks. While it’s exciting to get on the Island, we still had a ways to go to get down to Buxton. The drive past Kitty Hawk, Nags Head, the Oregon Inlet and Avon on the way to Buxton is quiet, with lot’s of memories from my childhood vacations here as well as excitement about fishing. We were staying at the Comfort Inn this time so we checked in, got some dinner and called it a night.

In the morning we hit the restaurant across the parking lot from Red Drum Tackle for breakfast then headed over to Red Drum Tackle for weights, hooks, Blue Rigs and bait. I always buy some tackle when I go fishing, it is over priced at the tackle shops, but it helps keep them in business which is important to us visitors. Loaded with gear, tackle, bait and food we head for the point.

You’ll have to make a visit for yourself to the Point in Buxton to experience the ride out. A long while back they moved the light house off the beach using a miraculous contraption built specially for the job. Once on the point it’s not like any where else I go surf fishing. It is crowded, particularly as you get closer to the point which is an elbow sticking out into the Atlantic. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of trucks and SUVs as far as you can see. Mike and I made our way to within four hundred feet or so of the point. We were north of the point and felt pretty good about our spot.

Getting the gear out and setup takes no time. Over the years I have learned to pack the Jeep in a way that makes it easy to get the gear out in the order it’s needed. In a blur, sand spikes were anchored into the sand, rods and reels were put together, terminal tackle was attached and lines were cast into the ocean. Once the lines were in, we broke out the beach chairs and began the weekend long routine of changing bait, casting out and talking about work, family and life in general.

During the morning we were catching Rays, not sunshine, though we were catching those as well because the weather was beautiful, sunny in the high seventy’s. Anyhow, these Rays were an interesting catch, like training for a big fish because they weighed twenty-five to thirty-five pounds and they didn’t like getting caught. But they didn’t put up a very dramatic fight, they just kind of hovered behind the waves using the back wash to keep from being landed. After a while the Ray action died down and things were quiet. Mike put on a fresh Bluefish rig, the fireball type with the Red and Yellow floats, loaded fairly small cut bait onto each hook and cast that little Blue rig into the surf.

At this point the guy next to us got out of his truck and came over to chat for a while. He was an experienced Buxton Point Drum fisherman and he gave us some great information. He told us that Point itself was a sand bar that extended out from the elbow where the crowd of trucks was just south of us. That sandbar ran, underwater, quite a ways out and that the real action was out there for those brave enough to wade out and cast their lines south to the deep drop off. He gave us good advice about keeping the Jeep locked up because there were people who would rob your truck while you were busy fishing. And lastly he explained that big Red Drum did not come up where we were, the north side of the point. At that moment Mike’s rod gets pulled out of its sand spike and goes racing down the beach in front of us. It was shocking, I was stunned, the guy talking to us was stunned and Mike raced after his fishing rod as it headed for the ocean.

He caught the fishing rod before it went into the surf. I’d like to say that I watched Mike fight the fish, but I only saw parts of his fight as I had one of those Rays on while he was moving up and down the beach bringing the fish in. Mike sure looked like he was having fun. I did see him land the fish and it was the biggest fish I’ve seen caught in the surf. When he picked the fish up and held it at chest level, its tail still reached the sand. The mouth was so big he could have put his entire arm up to shoulder into it. We weighed the fish (a big Red Drum) at fifty pounds. It was an amazing catch and a trip Mike and I will never forget.