Carolina Coastal Casts: Big Reds, Blues, and Flounder on Tap

Artificial Lure here with your September 3rd, 2025 fishing report for the North Carolina Atlantic coast—grab your coffee, it’s a good one!

Sunrise kicked off at 6:37 this morning and anglers can expect lines in the water until about 7:36 tonight, so there’s plenty of daylight to hunt that big one. Tides are rolling right: Atlantic Beach saw its morning high at 3:10am, a low at 9:08am, and another high around 4:00pm. Modest tidal shifts today mean subtle current—plan your bite windows around that incoming tide for best results, especially at dawn and dusk according to Tide-Forecast.com.

Weather’s as classic as Carolina barbecue—mid-70s before lunch, peaking in the mid-80s, mostly sunny skies and a light easterly breeze. Seas are calm with a gentle swell, just enough movement to stir up bait but easy going for nearshore and pier fishing.

Let’s talk fish activity and the bite. The surf and piers around Emerald Isle and Atlantic Beach are heating up with Spanish mackerel blitzing bait pods at first light, and plenty of bluefish mixed in—casters are reporting fast action on silver spoons and Got-Cha plugs. Local shops say finger mullet have started their runs, and that’s driving up red drum and flounder catches in the surf. Inshore, the September flounder season is officially open—squid strips and live mud minnows have been top producers for keeper flatfish, with 3-4 pounders not uncommon this week near the Bogue Inlet Pier according to SamWalkerOBXNews.com.

Headboats out of Morehead City are bringing back solid catches of sea bass and triggerfish from the nearshore wrecks, with a few citation cobia caught on live menhaden. King mackerel are shadowing the bait lines off Cape Lookout—slow-troll a blue runner or deploy a flashy Drone spoon for a shot at a smoker. Sheepshead are thick on bridge pylons; fiddler crabs and barnacle-encrusted areas are your friends.

Red drum are prowling the grass lines and docks at high tide. Wired2Fish recommends flipping Texas-rigged craws or pitching live finger mullet up into flooded cover—these drum are hammering well-presented soft plastics in roots and oyster mud.

For your tacklebox, best baits today include:
- Live finger mullet or mud minnows for flounder and drum
- Fresh shrimp (peeled) for everything in the surf, including pompano and black drum
- 1/2 ounce jigs with Gulp! swimming mullet for inshore hits
- Silver spoons and Got-Cha plugs when chasing Spanish or blues
- Fiddler crabs or fresh sand fleas for sheepshead around pier pilings

Top lure picks from Baits.com’s local guide menu: 5" Senko worm for bass and flounder around structure, and that Strike King Rage Craw for reds. The ChatterBait is still hauling in mixed bag action in both brackish and clear water cuts.

Hot spots this week include Bogue Inlet Pier for early morning runs of mackerel and blues, and the sandbars off Fort Macon for drum and flounder making the most of the bait flush. The bridges on the ICW are holding plenty of sheepshead and the backwaters behind Emerald Isle are stacked with reds at high tide, especially near the old oyster beds.

Heads up: NC State is forecasting an uptick in named storms this season, so keep an eye on the tropics—it only takes one.

Thanks for tuning in to Artificial Lure—drop us a line if you got a wild catch, and don’t forget to subscribe for tomorrow’s tides, bites, and tales. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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