Thursday, February 09, 2012
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Less freedom at Hatteras for surf casters
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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My first beach vehicle for surf fishing the Outer Banks of North Carolina was a Chevy Blazer that I purchased new in 1971. I equipped it with wide, non-aggressive tires and made a rod rack to mount on the grill. It gave me the mobility to traverse a ribbon of white sand so close to the edge of the continent that in three or four leaps from the Blazer’s blue door I’d be knee-deep in the Atlantic.
Before I got my own vehicle, I rode with Bob Preston, a fulltime guide, and a good one. He could have spent his golden years in the rolling hills around Fincastle, where his ancestors settled, but he chose Nags Head as therapy following two heart attacks, cancer and a lifetime of fortunes made and lost. Bob was slim, and his weather-beaten face was even gaunter when he removed his false teeth, which he did while fishing.
He detested bluefish, revered speckled trout and was so good at red drum fishing that his skills were the subject of a feature in Sports Illustrated when he was 66. He was a master at pinpointing sloughs that held red drum in water so rough you wondered how they survived, much less fed. If a school of speckled trout hit the surf, Bob was on them in an instance, wading so deep into the crashing breakers that the salt spray threatened to extinguish the cigarette dangling from his mouth.
For a time, Bob had a World War II surplus Jeep he used as a beach vehicle. Later he owned a 4-wheel drive Toyota with a transmission that made so much noise it was difficult to talk above the growl. And Bob loved to talk. He was a master at filling the lulls between bites with intriguing stories, some of them true. If Bob couldn’t put you onto fish, he had a knack of making it appear to be the fish’s fault, not his.
At that time, Nags Head was a village of rustic houses on stilts. The year-round population was less than 400. There were no golden arches, or cheesy T-shirt shacks or miniature golf or towering condos. You stayed at the Carolinian Hotel, not just because it was nice, it was the only choice.
The bridge over Oregon Inlet was yet to be built, which meant the last ferry of the day had more to do with ending a fishing trip than the lack of bites. South of the inlet were miles and miles of lightly used beach along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
That’s how it was 40 years ago, when life was simpler.
Beginning Feb. 15, the hundreds of beach drivers using the national seashore will be required to watch a seven-minute educational video and purchase a permit that will cost $50 per week or $120 for an annual pass.
The permit and other requirements are part of new rules by the National Park Service to protect wildlife and the environment along the 67-mile seashore. Some 26 miles of beach will be off-limits to vehicles, a wildlife highway void of wide tires that can squash turtles and mash bird nests.
Environmental groups, including Defenders of Wildlife, the Southern Environmental Law Center and Audubon North Carolina, laud the new regulations, but they are a bitter pill to many anglers and businesses.
Bob Eakes, who owns the popular Red Drum Tackle Shop in Buxton, said the park service rules are a tremendous challenge for his business. “I just don’t know if I can stay in business,” he told the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.
Anglers have lost a good bit of freedom on this deal. It makes you wonder if the time will come when the only fishing on the Outer Banks will be pier fishing. Gone will be the joy of feeling the force of the sea come surging at you, sucking the sand from beneath your feet and tossing salt mist into your face. I know what my old surf fishing buddy, Bob Preston, would say about that.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead fishing from a pier.”
