Thread: Feeling the thump in NC:Report

I visited with my family for the last two weeks in the Wilmington NC area. Dad & I went bream fishing in the NE Cape Fear River out of Castle Hayne. This was my boyhood backyard & fishing hole. We brought home 24 the first day. A couple days later my Brother and I went back for some more bream. We came to a patch of grass & a crappie snatched my beetle spin. The light bulb went off & I spent the rest of the day long poling a jig on the edges of grass beds. The problem was I had to make do with the 4' pole that I had to do the long poling. I ended up catching about a dozen crappie that day.

After we got home the search for a suitable long pole began. With a plethora of poles in the work shop I just knew there was something to use. I found a 12' pole and used it the next day. That sucker was heavy & I could barley feel the thump. I did manage 7 crappie but I also knew that I needed to find a better pole. When I arrived back home my Brother came up with a 10’ for sure jig pole. After some more searching we found a 9’ flyrod for my dad to use for the next day’s adventure.

The next morning Dad & I went forth with our jig poles & a bag of tube baits. Dad’s first Thump was some kind of sea monster that had swum the short distance from the Atlantic Ocean upriver to where we were fishing. Dad put up the good fight but soon the line parted. From the crazed look in Dad’s eyes I knew the Thump had taken root deep inside his brain. To solidify the addiction Dad soon caught a crappie. By the end of the day another Thump addict was totally & helplessly hooked.