Moving On

 It has been a wonderful summer, but the days are getting shorter and the temperatures are dropping.  It is time to start heading south. We tried to make the most of our last week on Ocracoke.

There were several trips to Portsmouth Island with the dinghy.

Pengi riding to Portsmouth

There was some very good fishing and shelling this past week there.  We caught several species of fish.

Keith caught several nice flounder, but they are out of season and had to be released.

One of the large flounder Keith caught this week (remember your lesson, this is a left eyed flounder).

He also caught several Atlantic sea bass (aka blackfish).  We did not keep these guys, but they are cool looking fish.  They are a smaller fish reaching up to 24 inches long and 6 to 9 pounds.  Any blackfish over 4 pounds is considered a citation.  One curious thing about this fish, it is a hermaphrodite.  Most are females when they first spawn and then as they grow, they become males.  Most of these fish under 8 inches are female.  Once they grow larger than 8 inches most become male.  This is not actually all that uncommon in the fish world.  About 2% of the world's fish  display some type of hermaphoritism, which represents 500 species worldwide.  Some start as females and becomes male as with the sea bass.  Others start as males and become female, and still others can switch back and forth and even self fertilize their own eggs.

Here is one of Keith's sea bass

This fishing thing is so easy even a retired veterinarian can do it.  I caught a gray trout and a black drum.  To keep drum they must be "in the slot".  This means that they are between a minimum and maximum length.  Here in NC black drum must be at least 14 inches and no more than 25 inches to keep.  Each angler may keep up to 10 black drum that are in the slot daily.  The NC record black drum was caught in the Cape Fear river in 1998 and weighed 100 pounds.  

My black drum

This was my gray trout (aka weakfish).  They get the name weakfish as their mouth is much softer then many species of fish.  You do not need a hard hook-set with this species.  If to much force is put on the line and hook, it can pull right out of their mouth.

One of Keith's gray trout

I also walked the beach in Portsmouth ( because it's what a shell-o-holic does).  This was some of my loot from the week.

Here are some other pictures of Portsmouth Island I took while walking the beach for the last time.

The wind had made some cool formations in the sand around the point of the inlet.

Here are a bunch of coquina clams.  There are thousands of these on the beach at Portsmouth.   These colorful, little clams are only a fraction of the size of your finger tip.  They live in the sand right at the surf line and when a wave recedes, they can be seen wriggling back down into the sand.  They are also called the butterfly shell clam because when the colorful shells are empty and open they look like tiny butterflies.  You can tell the age of the clam by counting the lines in the shell.  A new line appears with each years growth.

Wednesday of this past week was the best day off-shore, so we decided to make one final fishing trip.

It was "Slick Cam" on Wednesday

Dolphin playing in our boat wake

 The weather was great, but the fishing was a struggle.  Even the professional fishermen we know out of Ocracoke were having trouble getting bites.  They all decided after several hours to go bottom fishing.  We headed farther north along the area we often fish and kept trolling hoping for some decent sized wahoo or tuna.  We caught several junk fish such as barracuda and bonito, but finally at 1:30 PM we hooked a wahoo.  He was slightly bigger than our previous one from several weeks ago.  He weighed in at 29 lbs.  I vacuum sealed the meat into dinner sized servings for the two of us.  It made 14 packs.

Keith and his Wahoo

It was a good thing we went fishing on Wednesday, because Thursday the winds began.  We experienced sustained winds of 25-27mph and gusts up to 47mph.  Keith and I drove north up the island to see the road where the ocean often washes over in heavy winds.  We thought it was likely the road would be closed for a day or two with the winds predicted to be so bad.  There was a gale warning issued for the Pamlico Sound starting Thursday afternoon through Friday.

The road north of the village in Ocracoke.  Sand blowing off the dunes and water off the ocean looks like snow.

The Atlantic Ocean is literally right on the other side of the dunes.  This picture is out the Jeep window.

It has been a truly magical couple of months here on Ocracoke.  We cannot wait to return.

Sunset on Ocracoke's Silver Lake Harbor

However, as wonderful as the summer has been on Ocracoke, it has come time for us to move on.  We are heading to Wrightsville Beach, NC for the month of November to get a few small boat projects done and then it is onto Florida for the winter.  We have made so many great friends over the summer and we can't wait to come back in the spring.