During the mid 70's I was surf fishing the Ocean Isle side of Shallotte Inlet about every weekend. There was always a group of regulars fishing there every weekend.
Early one Sat. morning we were all there fishing, not catching. I was sitting on a bucket with my cast net loaded waiting on a school of big mullet to swim by, when a Land Rover drives up. An old tall thin pale gentleman gets out and walks down beside me. He doesn't look at me and never speaks. The strangest part of it all is that he was dressed in a jungle Safari outfit complete with khaki shorts,hiking brogans and jungle hat( looked like he had just left a Tarzan movie set ). He's carrying a brand new Zebco 202 still in the package and a brown paper bag. He takes the Zebco out of the package, opens bag removes a bottom rig with a 6 oz. sinker with at least size 9/0 hooks. He baits up with shrimp. He plops rig out about 10 feet, immediately rears back and drags out a 3 lb. speckled trout. He removes fish and throws it in the paper bag. Then he repeats same procedure. He then picks up his Zebco 202 and paper bag, with fish still flopping, returns to his Land Rover and drives off in a cloud of dust, leaving behind some flabbergasted fishermen, staring at some high dollar idle fishing equipement.
I thought maybe I was dreaming, so I turned to one of the regulars and asked him if I had just seen what I thought I had. His reply was, "Yep afraid so".
I find fishing about 95% anticipation and about 5% luck, so you have to pay attention to other's tatics. After witnessing this episode, I've tried to apply this gentleman's procedures for catching trout. I've tried the Zebco 202, brown paper bag, I can't afford the Land Rover, I've got a Safari outfit all but the jungle hat. I feel that if I can ever find one of those hats, I'm really gonna catch some speckled trout !!
