Twister Charters - Fishing Reports

Were heading out at 5:00am tomorrow for Biloxi, Missippi. This is the site for the SKA National Championship. I’m sure i’ll have a great story and some great pics to post when I get back. As for the weather here at Holden Beach, it has been horrible. The wind has been blowing a constant 15-20 all week. Hopefully the wind will die down and allow for some fishing when I return. Stay tuned for more reports and pics.

Here is a pic from my trip out with Josh Ward and . Also Brandon Garner on the Loophole sent some pics from a recent king Mackeral trip at the Shark Hole. They had a great day cathing their limit of kings before lunch time. Here is Brandon with a nice 25 pound king. Looks like kings aren’t the only thing Brandon has been trolling for lately!!

Sorry its been so long since my last post. Over the past month the Twister has not been doing much fishing due to the terrible weather. We have fished on several of the pretty days and had great success on King Mackeral, Grouper, B-Liners, and Amberjack. I am going to post several pics from some of our commercial trips and tournaments.
I tried to fish all of the local October king mackeral tournaments and had pretty good success in all three we fished. The first was the U.S. Open, held on the first weekend of October. The seas were beautiful during this tournament, thus bringing out a rather large field of boats. Derek Savage, John Patterson, and myself caught a ton of fish and managed a 28 pounder, just big enough to make the board.
Next we went to the final SKA Pro event held at Little River S.C. This event allowed us to fish in our home waters which was a huge advantage. Our team had some good local information and it paid dividends. We ended up catching a 22 on the first day and a 25 on day two. We totaled 47 points, good for 4th place. These two fish really helped our overall standings and help us finish better than middle of the pack.
The final tournament was the Fall Brawl. This is a favorite for our team because of the great finish we had in 06, barely missing a win by ounces. The tournament was postponed a week which moved the fish off the beach out into deep water, a huge advantage for the Twister. The plan was to check out as many spots as we could searching for a good fish. We found plenty of big fish, but were always the wrong species. Alex, Derek, Austin, and Myself were worn out battling with Big Aj’s, Barracudas, Boneheads, and small kings. We had almost given up when I got a call from Mike Kennedy on the “Simply Storage” who had just caught several 20 pound fish. It was a easy decision to pick up our baits and make a quick run to the Horseshoe to join Mike for a last minute effort.
Once all the baits were deployed we trolled the spot for 30 minutes before our first strike. Derek grabbed the rod and begin to fight the fish. It wasn’t a minute later two other fish hit the long and medium lines, talk about a Chinese Firedrill. I grabbed the long line and Alex grabbed medium. I was under the impression at first that my fish was off, but she was just running toward the boat. This is one of those situations when reeling like crazy paid off. Once I got the line tight the fish was already under the boat and smoking it offshore. By this time Derek had his 22 pound fish to the boat and I sat my rod in the holder to make a quick gaff. I didn’t pay to much attention to this fish, because my rod still had over 200 yards of line straight out. Once dad got the boat on top of my fish it was a pretty easy battle, I believe the long run took all the energy she had. I slowly pulled the 25 pounder to the boat and Derek stuck her cleanly with the 8′ gaff. All of us were really excited that this was a great fish to weigh, but still believed that “luckly” Alex had a even bigger fish because it was fighting deep and making lots of circles under the boat. It took him another 10 minutes to get this fish into range and we quickly saw that is was another 20 pounder that was hooked in the side of the head, making it fight extremely hard. We were still pumped knowing that there was a good chance at top 10. Once all the fish were weighed the leader board had us in 12th place, not bad for a last ditch effort.
I’m going to the Nationals in Missippi on Sunday with Team Holdn’ On. Were leaving a week early to hopefully do some pre-fishing and find those big Gulf Slab king mackeral. When I return I will post the story from the week, which I’m sure will be very interesting!!

These are some photo’s from last Saturday. Susanna and I went out on a mission to find some large Amberjacks. We didn’t do to bad managing to catch 21 fish averaging around 40 pounds. I’m quite impressed with Susanna, she caught two Amberjacks both weighing 63 pounds. Amberjacks are pound for pound one of the toughest fighting fish in the ocean, and if your lucky enough to catch one, you too will strongly agree with me. I was lucky enough to get several of these battles on video, the link will be below. Not only was she wearing out the grande Aj’s, but also caught the only two Gag Grouper of the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpqmgGJu91M

Sorry its been so long since my last report, but due to some technical problems with my website I was unable to log onto and write a new report. Since my trip back from Costa Rica the fishing has been pretty good. Throughout August and into September there have been some large 2-3 pound Spanish and bluefish hanging around the beach eager to eat a silver or gold Clark Spoon. Also good numbers of King Mackeral are showing up on the beach and on local artificial reefs. Most of these fish are in the 15-20 pound range with a few fish topping 30. Kings are targeting huge schools of mullet that are making their fall migration south.

On the offshore side, i have been catching some fat 10-20 pound Red Grouper on the East Side of Frying Pan shoals. Most of these fish have been in the 80-120 foot depth range. The majority of my fish have been caught on live bait, but a few are still falling for big pieces of cut bait. The Scamp and Gag Grouper are also making a pretty good showing. My charters have been managing limits of Gags and Scamps on a full day trip.

If you would like to get into this action feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call anytime!! I’m going to post a few pictures from some recent trips.

This will be my last post from Los Suenos, Costa Rica.  As I noted in an earlier post on Thursday we had a great trip on Roosterfish.  George Brookins from Lincolnton, N.C., my father Austin, and brother Alex, joined me on the “Fandago” a 31′ sportfisher.  We headed North out of Los Suenos about 10 miles to fish some rocks in shallow water.  Once we arrived at the spot, there were acres of Bluerunners, a great sign that the fishing was going to be on fire.  It didn’t take long to hook up our first Rooster.  Over the course of the next two hours we didn’t go more than 15 minutes without a strike, catching 6 Roosters and several other species of Jack’s.

This is not the first time that we’ve fished on the Fandago, with Captain Thomas, and he never fails to put us on some world class fishing.  If you interested in coming down to Los Suenos, feel free to contact me and i’ll make sure your connected with this great crew.  Our flight leaves at 1:00 P.M. Sunday, and God willing i’ll be at Holden Beach on Monday ready to get back on the Twister.

My brother Alex has made a great video of the Rooster fishing on the “Fandago”.  The video is around 9 minutes long, so sit down and be ready for great action.

Click on the Link to view the video of three good looking and talented anglers going to battle with some big pacific Sails on YouTube.

Sorry I haven’t been posting about our trip to Los Suenos located in Playa Herradura, Costa Rica, but we’ve been having such a great time its hard to sit down at the computer.  So far we’ve fished two days, Tuesday and Thursday.  On Tuesday we fished on the “Marlin Muyer” a 48′ Custom Sportfisher.  We were targeting Sailfish and the Captain warned us that it was probably going to be a slow day.  We ended up the day catching 3 sails, missing 6 or 7 other fish.  The mate on board was very experienced, but was just having one of those days.  The guys decided that this was a ladies day because we were fishing later on in the week, and let them catch all the fish. 

Today we fished a 31 foot sportfisher for Roosterfish, Snapper, and Grouper.  In the morning the Roosters were biting like bulldogs and went 6 for 6 with my brother Alex catching a nice 50″ fish around 40 pounds.  The Snappers and Groupers didn’t cooperate as well, but the AJ’s were willing to bite everything.  I’m going to post several pictures from the fishing over the past two days.  We’ve got some great video, but are in the process of condencing it down to small clips that will be interesting to watch.  Stay tuned for more great pictures and videos in the coming days. 

If you still want to go fishing back at Holden Beach feel free to shoot me an email or give my cell phone a call. Capt. Ryan Williams will take your call and make sure you get a date secured for some great fishing. 

Capt. Patrick Bryant

The past few days the winds have been blowing hard out of the SouthWest.  These strong winds have been made fishing very hard, especially near shore.  The constant wave action in the shallow water has really stirred up the water, moving the Spanish offshore in the 5-10 mile range.  If you can get out that far, the Spanish bite has been fairly consistent in the late morning hours up until the middle of the day.  I am currently getting ready to head down to Costa Rica for a few days to do some fishing.  Susposedly the Yellowfin Tuna are chewing really good and a few scattered Marlin are in the mix.  While there i’m also going to try to find a captain that will take us out and do some bottom fishing for Snapper, Grouper, and maybe a Roosterfish.   I think the place where i’m staying has internet access so i’ll try to post some reports from way down south.  While I’m gone, my charters are still up and running with some of the best captains in Brunswick County, so give me a call and leave a message.  Your business is important to us and i’ll try my best to make sure you get to go fishing.  Tight Lines!!

Capt. Patrick Bryant

I had a 1/2 day Spanish trip today with some guys from the Hickory, N.C. area.  They brought along two children for their maiden voyage on the big pond.  The weather was alittle bumpy early and we decided to fish the beach.  The shallow water bite was slow, and the seas gradually decreased so we decided to push out around 7 miles.  Once there the Spanish were eager to bite and ended the day with around 15 keepers.  I brought my camera but soon found out that the batteries were to dead to take any pictures.  I have two half days tomorrow so stay tuned for more reports.  Tight Lines!!!

Capt. Patrick Bryant