By Carter Stokes

Over Spring Break in March, my father Jimmy Stokes and younger brother Andrew Stokes, a sophomore at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg, ventured with me to Cape Hatteras off the Outer Banks in North Carolina, to fish the Gulf Stream for tuna. For the weekend, we stayed in a condominium overlooking the marshes of Slash Creek and its plethora of avian life. We purchased a slew of junk food Friday evening at the local Red and White Market, and we were set for the weekend.

Saturday morning, we awoke around 5:30 to make the short drive southward to Hatteras Landing Marina. There was our boat for the day: a 53’ custom Carolina sportfishing boat built by Bobby Sullivan called The Release. The boat was captained by Romulus “Rom” Whitaker, a man my father had fished with decades ago for various billfish species in Venezuela. The mate, Andy, was a native of Hatteras Island. My father has since referred to Andy as being “a machine” because of his rigging skills and speed. After hopping aboard the large charter boat and making ourselves comfortable, it was time to embark on our voyage into the mighty Atlantic.

The Release, our vessel for the day.

The boat slowly moved out of the marina and towards the tumultuous Hatteras Inlet. Captain Rom aimed the bow of the boat towards the path of least resistance, and we powered through the gigantic swells created by a 25-knot north wind. These monstrous swells ranged between eight and twelve feet the entire day, which even drove the mate to seasickness, which is incredibly uncommon. The fresh, icy breeze was the only thing that could stave off my impending motion sickness.

For roughly an hour and a half, we ran through cold air and choppy seas to reach our fishing grounds for the day, about 25 miles off the coast of Hatteras Island. Andy set out the spread of almost a dozen rods, equipped with skirts made out of crimped nylon, accompanied by a rigged ballyhoo, a very popular bait worldwide for catching pelagic fish species. Within mere minutes, we hooked up on two fish, but neither were the species we were looking for. Both were false albacore, which are labeled as trash fish because they carry no food value and are often kept by the mates to use as bait on later trips.

For the next hour or so, we continued to waste expensive ballyhoo on these fish until Captain Rom decided to make a move. He piloted the boat a few miles to an area where we would jig for blackfin tuna, our ultimate goal. However, we were again met by another undesirable species: amberjacks. Amberjacks fight extremely hard when hooked and have been given the nickname “reef donkeys” for this very reason. Amberjacks, much like false albacore, also carry little to zero food value. However, each of our respective bouts with these muscular fish turned more interesting once 90” sandbar sharks were thrown into the equation. Each time we hooked an amberjack, it was an all-out battle to get it to the boat without having a shark attack it. Numerous times, all we could retrieve was a head, but a handful of times we were able to bring the fish into the boat completely unscathed.

After a half an hour of these battles, Captain Rom declared he was tired of wasting all these lures on sharks, and we again ran for a few miles to a new spot. This time, we would utilize a new technique altogether: kite fishing. Kite fishing consists of a short rod with an electric reel controlled by the captain from the bridge. This rod has the kite on the end, with multiple clips attached to the kite line. These clips carry the lure far away from the boat while keeping them on top of the water, where the lure periodically dunks into and out of the water, replicating the path of a flying fish. Thus, a flying fish imitation lure, known as a Yummee, is used for this technique.

Almost instantly, the blackfin tuna began to explode on the surface, trying to eat the Yummees. We finally figured out the pattern to catch the tuna that day through intensive persistence. However, there was still battle to be done with these. Blackfin are strong fish, and trying to wrestle them away from sharks with light tackle in ten foot seas on my bum knee is quite the challenge. However, we ultimately succeeded and landed nine tuna, including three in the thirty-pound range.

The catch.

Despite adverse conditions, the day was a success, and my father, brother, and I had an exquisite tuna dinner the next two nights.

All photos by Carter Stokes.