Was blessed with an opportunity to finally get back to NC to spend time with family and on the water after being away for 8 months. The majority of my time revolved around spending as much time as possible with the kids on the water. That said, one night while home around 10 pm my better half tells me that I should wake up and go fishing by myself until early afternoon. The kids hadn’t done their school work in a couple of days (homeschool is awesome) and needed to catch up. Not one to argue with the boss, I woke up the next morning with the intent of fishing a lone for a little while after I picked up a gallon of XD100 for the boat. I had plans of going to Beaufort and seeing if I could find any reds to play with. I’d had the kids out and had them on rats (report to come on that soon) but I wanted some bigger fish. 
I woke up around 7 the next morning to get ready so I could be at the store by the time they opened at 8 to get my oil. It was then that I remembered my good friend Steve is retired and unless he was already fishing would be willing and able to go. So I gave him a call and low and behold his boat was in the shop for routine maintenance and he was available to fish.  After a quick conversation, we decided to meet at the ramp around 9 am. 

We splashed the boat and headed out in search of a few gray trout while waiting for the tide to get right and found what we were looking for, though they were picky and had a strong preference for my sting silver over his (I think he was being nice since I hadn’t fished in a while). Once the tide got right, we decided to go in search of Mr Redfish. We found them and quickly put 10 or so in the boat, but they were all rats. While fun, they were not what we were hoping for. Running out of time to make something awesome happen, I decided to hit the port wall in hopes of a few flounder. 
It didn’t take long to fill the bait well with good sized finger mullet, and we got setup to drift for flounder.  On the first drift, Steve came tight with a good fish and we finally had something to stink up the cooler with. Next it was my turn, but this one was a tad smaller than Steve’s though still a legal fish at 16 inches. Steve then put another one in the boat at 17 inches, and it was my turn again. I felt the thump and knew right away it was going to be a good fish. Using live finger mullet 6-8 inches long I had to give her a second to eat. I waited about 3 seconds and checked to see if she was still there. I slowly lifted my rod tip and felt it pull back. I lowered the rod, taking up slack and then let her rip! At first, nothing budged and Steve thought I was hung. I knew better. This is a good fish, get the net! After a few moments I saw color. She rose to the surface and her head tried coming out of the water but Steve made quick work with the net job and I had my largest flounder to date in the boat. I took it to Chasin Tails for a weight after the trip and she came in at 6.94 pounds. 
We finished the trip shortly after that fish as I’d already pushed my window to get home to the family, but we managed 4 nice flounder. We fished the first hour of the falling tide and used live finger mullet on Carolina rig as bait.