NC AJs, Mahi and others 6-18

[Guy]

Traveled to North Carolina to visit mom and dad and get a little fishing in. Chartered with Living Waters Guide Service and captain Rick Croson on his 27' Onslow Bay. Launched at 0600 with my dad Kent and some friends, Scott, David and Rick senior and made our way over to the flats to make Menhaden for live bait, and in one throw of Ricks net we had more than the bait tank could hold.
Headed out Masonboro inlet for a King Mack spot, the plan was to let the 5 to 6 foot seas die down a little as the forecast predicted before making the run farther out, all the way to the gulf stream if time and seas permitted. Dropped the first trolling rigs out on the spot around 0700, water temp 74.8 pretty good swell and ten to twelve knot wind, no takers, pick up and move to the next spot, troll around with two surface rigs and one deep on a downrigger. After trying that for a while we decide to move to another spot so as Rick is bringing in the other lines I picked up the downrigger line to pop it loose from the rigger and boom zing! fish on we are thinking King Mack the thing is taking line as captian Rick is explaining to me that fighting King Macks is a finess sort of thing, you don't want to horse them or the hooks will pull. After 15 minutes or so I have color, dooooop 15lb Amberjack, lip gaffed and released in good shape.
So now everyone is pumped up so Rick says lets go to a Amberjack spot. At the first artifical reef nobody home, second spot its on, I don't know how many we caught but we left them biting with everyones arms sore. The ocean was starting to laydown a little so we started to work our way offshore again.
We came accross a nice weed line and everyone is thinking Mahi, then David says "I would really like to catch a Mahi" two seconds later Rick spots one throws the perfect live bait in front of it and boom fish on! he hands the rod to David and a little while later David has his Mahi in the box.
We trolled up and down the weed line for a while longer but no more takers.
The next several spots were Grouper spots, where we managed to catch a number of different fish including one Gag grouper for David several Seabass
Pinkys a Dusky shark for me that I thought was a giant grouper and a nice King Mack for my dad.
After that we made one more stop at another AR for some larger grade Amberjack action, we had the fish breaking at the back of the boat and again left them biting with everyones arms sore.
Great day of fishing for me with some new people, I learned some new stuff and caught some good fish.

[Tues]

Nice catching!