It's All About The Water
Sliding a kayak into the water from our own back yard is part of the dream that convinced us to live in Carteret County from 2006-2021. The date that I put the kayak in the water each year was a special time. In 2018, the kayak went in Raymond’s Gut on April 26. The picture at the top of the post was taken from my kayak anchored in the White Oak River just outside of Raymond’s Gut.
Certainly the water was what attracted me to the Crystal Coast. There were a lot of other things that were important, but it really was all about the water.
Water and fishing go hand in hand for many of us who grew up in the South. Fishing has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. I caught my first memorable fish when I was three years old. Much later in life I found that my uncle Henry had put that catfish on my hook just to make sure I was hooked on fishing. Long afternoons fishing with my childhood friend, Mike, were part of what made growing up in the fifties and sixties so special. I even fished in Alaska with my college roommate, Gus. The front license plate on my car says, “Work is for those who do not know how to fish.”
I have fished all my life, and when I wasn’t fishing, I wished I was fishing. In 2003 I brought my wife to Beaufort, NC for our thirtieth anniversary. The anniversary didn’t have anything to do with fishing, but Beaufort is on North Carolina’s coast, and I fell back in love with saltwater and the coast. A couple of years after that I did have perhaps the most memorable fishing trip of my life on a trip to Beaufort in the fall of 2005.
We have lived on the water or close enough to look at water for much of our married lives. As my career at Apple was winding down, we started searching for a place to create some new memories in a life that has been blessed with many of them.
The trip to Beaufort in August 2003 was the unofficial beginning of our search. We didn’t have to go far to find a place on the shores of the White Oak River.
Carteret County along the waters of the White Oak turned out to be a very good place for us to spend over a decade along the water for a number of reasons. Our home was on a gut of water that leads to the river. It was just a little over 25 feet from my garage to my kayak or my 20 ft skiff which sits on a lift waiting for the opportunity to fish. I caught plenty of fish within sight of our our home. Sometimes I took an extra hour for lunch, paddled out, caught a flounder, paddled back, cleaned the flounder and cooked it for lunch.
When the weather was nice, going fishing was not a complicated decision. I could be fishing less than ten minutes after leaving my dock, or I ccould spend twenty minutes and be fishing in the marshes behind Swansboro or in Bogue Inlet. Taking the kayak out for an hour of fishing after work was something that remained just part of my normal summer.
The second reason Carteret County was the spot for us also involved water. The beaches of Emerald Isle and the surrounding area are hard to beat. Whether you search for an isolated stretch of barely above water beach, my personal favorite beach at the Point or are content with the beach at Western Regional Access in heart of Emerald, it was hard to complain about the beaches here on the Crystal Coast.
We could be at a beach in ten minutes by car, or we could anchor off one of those more isolated ones in Bogue Inlet in fifteen to twenty minutes. The water was great at any of the local beaches.
It is probably no surprise that the third reason we love it here is that our local waters provide some wonderful seafood. Some fish I catch and some seafood we buy fresh from the water.
The water provided one more benefit to us. The area waters also kept us cool in the warm North Carolina spring and kept us warm for much of the early fall and winter.
On top of all that, our area waters remain crystal clear. There was nothing quite so enjoyable as surf fishing while standing ankle deep in slightly cool water.
On the Crystal Coast, it truly is all about the water.
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