Margaret Rudd Bishop, CRB, CRS, GRI

There are many opportunities to go charter fishing out of Southport, including but not limited to Blue Water Point Marina and South Harbour Marina. My neighbor Mike Helms who is Captain of the Salty Dog Charter Boat recently was named as the Best Charter Fishing Boat in the 2009 Brunswick County Peoples Choice Awards. You can reach Mike at 910 278-9834 to arrange your trip.

As an alternative there are markets that proudly sell local "Brunswick Catch" seafood. A great grouper dinner can be had by anyone who's willing to pay the price!

When the Tuna are running many of our skilled Captains land these fish that are quickly flown to Japan within hours of being caught. That is quite an export!

There is a wonderful map of coastal NC in the Coastal Boating Guide that is produced in partnership with the www.ncwaterways.com. One useful link if you're planning a tour of the region, on the water or on land, is the Intracoastal Waterway Drawbridge schedules which you can find by following the links from www.ncdot.org/doh/, then Operations, Division of Highways, Bridge Management Unit, then Drawbridge Schedules. The Coastal Boating Guide Also gives information on purchasing a fishing license, www.ncwildlife.org, go to purchase licenses. Coastal Fishing information is under the NC Division of Marine Fisheries at www.ncdmf.net. North Carolina is a great state to get on the water and get fish in the boat or in the bucket.

Many years ago, in the evening, at the beach, the conversation with the locals boys and girls would invariably get around to either "turtle egging", which was the equivalent of "parking", or to crashing the gate at Fort Caswell, which happened to be the site at the end of Caswell Beach which was the N C Baptist Assembly. Depending on who was doing the talking, they either had crashed the gate themselves, or knew somebody that had done it, or were planning on crashing it! These conversations would arise either at the old Juke Box stand at Yaupon Beach, or at the Long Beach Pavillion. The reward if you actually got inside was to swim in one or both of the two artesian well fed swimming pools that were there. I will admit that we were able to get in, although I think maybe the gate just wasn't locked properly, and swimming in the pools, which was quite fun by moonlight. Now my grandchildren practice with the swim team at the new pool inside the gate at Fort Caswell. I'm sure they enjoy their swims there too!

Oceanfront Living at Caswell Beach was great fun with my friends Billy & Lois. We would have cookouts followed by late night swims, and once when we had a rare snowfall I skiied down the Sand Dune (not politically correct now) and got my photo in the State Port Pilot. It helped that I had my own skiis. Just as a point of interest, there wasn't enough slope on the Oak Island Bridge to get going in snow. If it had been ice it probably would have worked.

In the summertime we would wade out to about waist deep to chest deep water at low tide and then feel with our feet what was on the bottom. When it felt round we could dip under the surface and gather sand dollars. A lot of us used sand dollar ornaments on our Christmas Trees. They were pretty plentiful then and there are probably more there now. The house has been sold and since I never really tried to find them at other locations on Caswell I don't know if it was just a fluke that there were beds of them in front of their house or whether they were all up and down Caswell Beach.

I drove by Potters Market this morning and they have a chalk message on a blackboard mounted outside on their wall, that they don't have any shrimp yet because the shrimp aren't here yet. Potters market is the one directly on the Old Yacht Basin and its painted yellow. I'm looking forward to seeing the sign that the shrimnp are there!

In the sixties I remember watching the shrimp boats unloading and watching the ladies quickly head the shrimp and fill their buckets. I also remember watching the Idle On charter boats come in at the Old Yacht Basin, where they would display their catch on boards for photos with the anglers to testify to a good day fishing.

The old Yacht Basin has always been a working waterfront, and over the years I've sold many boat slips there. One quirk of that area was a "floating" 5 feet of waterfront that presumably is no longer an issue. It seems that in the past someone deeded what they thought they had, or what they thought would be correct, but somehow a 5' measurement was either added on where it shouldn't have been or deleted from where it should have been. I remember talking to Lewis Hardee about this because I believe I sold one of his slips along there.

Another odd fact that I gleaned by talking to one of the shrimp boat captains was that when they needed to dredge out their slips a bit they would just back up their twin diesels and goose the engines and the props would do a good job of the dredging for them.