The Right Ride
It’s a late October morning, and we’re on the hunt for false albacore with a weather-bedamned attitude. “Hold on tight, it’s about to get nautical!” the captain shouts as we punch our way through a 4-foot chop at the mouth of Barden Inlet in North Carolina. A stiff west wind stirs up a long fetch, and an outgoing tide piles on the pain. It’s a day when most recreational boats stay home.
We play in the snot, so to speak, weaving our way through foaming curlers while ducking blobs of blowing spindrift. The Jones Brothers 23 center console delivers us to thick pods of feeding false albacore just offshore and then keeps us in the game for the rest of the day.
Much like an artisan woodworker might rely on a fine hand planer, anglers have trusted center consoles as the tool to get the job done for 60 years. The center console is the go-to fishing craft for a majority of coastal and offshore fishermen. Picking one of these rugged boats can be challenging. You could belly up to a bar in any number of fishing ports and get an abundance of opinions, or you could ask fishing pros who guide clients for a living.
That’s what we did.
Bay Boats
Capt. Jay Withers started fishing for bass and crappie with his grandparents in southwestern Ohio at age 3. Today he
