CAROLINA BEACH, NC (WWAY) -- They say a bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work, but whoever said that probably wasn’t a charter boat fishing captain.
"After this winter I need every day I can get right now,” said Caleb Batson, captain of the Cheerio Lady. “It was pretty hard January through April on the wind so yeah we're definitely hurting. We count on this time of the year to make it through the rest of the year."
After June kicked off with Tropical Storm Andrea and finished with more wind and rain area charter captains are left trying to catch up with the fish due to higher amounts of freshwater runoff.
"It's moved the fish around from their normal haunts,” said Robert Schoonmaker, of Carolina Explorer Fishing Charters. “Typically they would be upriver and down in the bays. With all of this freshwater it has pushed them to the fringe of the salt so to speak."
While all of the captains in the Carolina Beach fleet keep one eye on the sky and another on the fish finder they say each day is a reminder of why they call it fishing and not catching.
"Today is the first day I ran a half a day in the afternoon, and we caught some sharks, a grouper, a snapper and a bass,” said Batson. “It's a little less than what we usually catch, but for the conditions and all of this rain we had a great trip."
Many of the charter boat captains say they are booked through the next few weeks if Mother Nature cooperates, but that shouldn’t keep you from coming down to the docks and looking for daily deals.