Salty Memories Part 1 - The Beginnings

I want to dedicate this series of blog posts to the memory of my mother, Betsy Hord, who lost her battle with cancer on July 13, 2011. This was one of her favorite places in the world, and I can only hope that Heaven has it's own version of Oak Island that Mom can enjoy. This is part one of  a series of blog posts that will reflect on Oak Island, NC and some fond memories I have of it. These posts were inspired by a trip that I took with my wife and father over the July 4th holiday weekend, and the more I thought about all of the memories associated with this particular place, the more I felt led to write about it. I am planning for this to be a series of three posts. The pictures in these posts will mainly be a combination of ones I've taken over the years, and some from my wife (who is a much better photographer than I am).   Thanks for indulging me in a trip down memory lane. 

- Joseph

Mom and Dad on the Southport- Fort Fisher Ferry

It all began with a last minute decision to go somewhere for the July 4th holiday weekend, and a phone call from my Dad. He suggested that he, my wife Trina, and I all go somewhere to take advantage of Trina having Friday off for the Fourth of July. We talked over a few different ideas, and finally settled on trying to find a place near Southport and Oak Island so we could attend the NC Fourth of July Festival that is held at the Southport Waterfront each year. Luckily we were able to get the last room left at a hotel about 20 minutes away, since everything in Southport and on the island itself was full. Before I talk about this past weekend however, I'd like to go back a few years to the beginnings of my outdoor obsession and the role that Oak Island played in this.

The Beginning

Oak Island has been a place that my family has vacationed at for as long as I have been alive. My mother's family had been vacationing on the island since my mom was a little girl, and two of my grandmother's brothers and their wives had houses on the island, along with other cousins and kinfolks of my grandmother. We would always combine a trip to the beach with visiting relatives that we only got to see a few times a year at most, and this made a trip down to the island special in itself. My earliest memories of the island are pretty fuzzy, however there is one memory that is clear in my mind. I remember Dad telling me once we got down there that he was going to take me fishing. I was probably 3 or 4 years old, but I can distinctly remember that bag of bait shrimp sitting in an old yellow refrigerator in the beach house, and the anticipation I had of the next day's fishing trip to the surf.

I'm not exactly sure how old I was at the time, but I must have been pretty young because I remember having to have Dad help me with casting the rod, and letting me know when I had a bite and how to reel in the fish. My grandparents were down there with us, and it was one of my grandfather's fishing rods that I was using. Everybody made a big deal out of my first fish, which taking my best guess from looking at the old picture was a pompano. I'm not sure looking back why I had never been fishing before that trip to the beach, but that first fish had me hooked for life. I couldn't tell you much else about that year at the beach. I don't know what else I did, or where we went, but there are two things I remember very vividly - a bag of shrimp and the feel of that fish tugging on my line.

Oak Island Surf

As the years went on, we took a family trip down to the island almost every summer. As I got older, I would spend the majority of my time at the beach surf fishing and catching small pompano, spot, and whiting, with the occasional small shark thrown in to keep things exciting. I graduated from bait shrimp to bloodworms, and I used to know every place on and around the island that sold them and who had the best price for them. It was always a little exciting to fish with bloodworms, because they had a head with pincher-type jaws and could bite you if you weren't careful. Any time we were at the beach and weren't doing something as a family, I was on the sand with a surf rod trying to catch fish. I spent a lot of time freshwater fishing, but I always looked forward to our beach trips because I knew that for a week, I could fish almost every day without having to worry about where to go or who was going to take me. The Atlantic Ocean would be right out our door, and to me it seemed absolutely full of wonderous possibilites.

There were always other things to do besides fishing at Oak Island, and I enjoyed swimming and playing in the waves, and riding the ferry from Southport to Fort Fisher to visit the NC Aquarium. Dad and I would walk the beach at night with flashlights and look for ghost crabs and other wildlife, and there were always the shore birds to watch and try to identify. Even as a child, I had a fasinaction with nature and loved discovering new things. Mom and Dad bought me a nature guide for the Carolina coast, and I would take it with me each year and spend time reading it to see what types of birds, fish, and other animals were around us. Another activity that Dad and I both enjoyed was walking on the piers on the island and talking to the fishermen. It was a chance encounter on one of these piers that would change the way I fished at the island and open up a whole new chapter in my fishing life.

To be continued......

- Joseph