Surf fishing has been a part of my life for forty-seven years. It started when I was a young boy in the early 1970’s during my family’s vacation trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In between playing in the sand and surf, we fished the beach all day, catching Spot, Croaker, Flounder and Blues. Summer fishing was great with lots of small fish to be had close to shore. We always ate our catch for dinner which made the experience even more satisfying. In the cottages where we stayed, there was a promotional brochure with a picture showing a man walking down the beach, by the Hatteras Lighthouse, holding his surf rod in one hand and the biggest fish I’d ever seen, a Red Drum, in the other. I’ve been hooked on surf fishing ever since I saw that brochure. In fact, to this day I imagine hooking that huge fish every time I cast. Surf fishing can be as simple as walking on to the beach with a few pieces of equipment or as challenging as driving off road over remote beaches for a marathon fishing session, it’s completely up to you and what you enjoy. Over the years I’ve done quite a bit of research to learn to surf fish well and increase my enjoyment.

This blog is my way of sharing my research and experiences and hopefully helping others getting into the sport to avoid mistakes I’ve made and get more enjoyment out of their fishing experience. I enjoy my entire experience when fishing and am convinced that the fish of my dreams is going to take my bait every minute of every hour that I’m fishing. Having a session when I catch few or no fish does not dim my hope that the next cast is the one that will catch that fish. Even when the fish are not biting I enjoy the sights sounds and wildlife of the coastal waters and there is no place that I would rather be than on the beach fishing. The hopeful, expectant feeling I have while surf fishing makes me happy and keeps me coming back to the shore.

I realized a few years back that while I enjoyed surf fishing, I was not putting a lot of effort into being good at it. I had all of the gear thanks to Birthdays, Fathers Days and Christmases but I was not using it well or even understanding how to fish well other than being at a well known surf fishing beach at the right time of year. Beaches are big and fish are fickle so it wasn’t enough. At the same time I was finding myself thinking about surf fishing during the off season and I wanted to do something to increase my enjoyment during the months between trips. I organized my efforts into the categories shown on this site and my blog posts will cover topics within each category. I’ve spent many enjoyable hours reviewing as many surf fishing topics as I could think of and developed a healthy inventory of information, links and recommendations that you will find helpful and probably save you quite a bit of time searching for yourself.

During this process I questioned everything about my fishing efforts from basic knot tying to locating the best fishing spot and everything in between. If you are new to surf fishing, you’ll find coverage of all the basics along with the more advanced topics.