Long before TV cameras arrived, Oregon Inlet Fishing Center was a year-round attraction for anglers and families. It boasts the largest charter fleet on the eastern seaboard – 28 offshore boats, another seven in the near-shore fleet. Whether it’s the filming of Wicked Tuna, its record-breaking catches, or the notoriety for being an elite outpost of the U.S. Coast Guard Surfmen, there is even more to the local landmark that makes it famous.

As a charter boat captain and avid outdoorsman, Kenneth Brown has navigated Oregon Inlet thousands of times. Each trip is ripe with history, with challenges, with possibility, for him and those on his boat.

“That’s really what we’re selling when we’re selling a fishing trip,” he says, “[it] is the adventure and the excitement of going through the inlet, going into the ocean, having the whole world in front of you, having no certainty as to the outcome of the day and letting the day unfold.” 

Later he adds, “I think that’s why they love it so much, because it keeps it interesting.”

“Interesting” often begins with the short passage through Oregon Inlet, the narrow, roiling water way between Bodie and Pea islands that is the sole ocean outlet in a 105-mile stretch of coast between Virginia Beach and Cape Hatteras. The inlet is a primary artery for a half-a-billion dollar economic engine that comprises passion, commerce, danger and politics.

Captain Kenneth Brown

“The really neat thing about Oregon Inlet, when it comes to fishing, is the consistency in which it provides something to be caught,” says Brown, who runs his boat, Trophy Hunter, out of the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center. 

“There’s nowhere that you can find a place that will consistently produce good fishing for different types of fish for 12 months out of the year.”

Brown, an affable 43-year-old, is almost genetically predisposed to tout the Outer Banks. His grandfather, Aycock Brown, was the well-known publicist and photographer whose name adorns the welcome center in Kitty Hawk. His father, Billy, was a top-shelf fisherman and respected charter boat captain, as well as a history teacher who passed on his love and knowledge of the area to his own children and countless others.

The Power (and Expense) of Wind and Water

Bonner Bridge has relatively narrow supports at each end where sand collects and makes passage treacherous.

Oregon Inlet was created by a powerful 1846 hurricane that pushed water well into the Pamlico and Albemarle sounds and farther inland. As the storm passed and the winds rotated, the inland water rushed back out to sea, overwashed the barrier islands, and created the inlet, so named because the Oregon was the first vessel to successfully navigate the new channel.
Since its formation, the inlet has migrated approximately two miles south due to strong currents and ever-shifting sands. Attempts to control the passageway have been only marginally successful, due to politics, money, and advocacy groups working at cross-purposes.

As far back as 1950, Congress authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) to dredge a navigation channel to a depth of 14 feet. In 1970, Congress passed a plan for the construction of two rock jetties and a 20-foot deep ocean navigation channel. The plan was never implemented.

Over the next 30 years, the corps conducted numerous studies about the feasibility of dredging and construction, eventually settling on a $108-million proposal that included two rock walls more than a mile long.

In 2003, the White House Council on Environmental Quality killed that proposal but with the promise that the ACE would receive funding to dredge and maintain a 14-foot deep navigation channel.  However, funding for dredging has been inconsistent in recent years. According to a Dare County report, since 1994, the corps has spent an average of roughly $2 million per year on dredging which has maintained the 14-foot depth only 15 percent of the time.

With almost daily dredging, the Army Corps of Engineers strives for a 14-foot channel depth, 15 percent of the time.

“(Last) winter was as bad as any other time that I’ve seen it,” says Greg Mayer, who runs the charter Fishin’ Frenzy and who has lived on the Outer Banks since 1991. “The major reason the inlet’s so bad is that we don’t have any federal funding. Federal funding for dredging more or less dried up. The way I look at it, if I lived on a dead-end road in Raleigh and I was the only house on the road, and it washed away in a flood, they’d rebuild the road. And Oregon Inlet is the major highway for all the commerce in Dare County. All commercial fishing. All charter fishing.”

Oregon Inlet passage and maintenance evoke predictably strong opinions from those whose livelihoods depend on the waterway. For them, consistent maintenance is a no-brainer, not only to preserve existing conditions, but to permit growth, particularly in commercial fishing and local boat building.

A 2014 study commissioned by Dare County on the navigability of Oregon Inlet and its economic impact concluded that its value “far outweighs the costs necessary to keep the inlet passable through dredging.” Even under recently limited boating access, the report said that the total effect of the fishing and boating industries was still $403 million to the county and $548 million to North Carolina.

Under what it termed “fully open” conditions – the federally mandated 14-foot depth in the inlet 85-100 percent of the year – the report projected that the fishing and boating industries would add almost 2,000 jobs, to more than 5,100 employees. The total economic effect would jump to $642 million for Dare County alone, and $693 million to the state. A return to flush economic times of a decade ago could push those numbers to more than $900 million in the county and more than $1 billion for the state, the report said.

Fish On Deck 

Oregon Inlet Fishing Center general manager Minta Meekins has worked there for 40 years and has seen boom and bust times. 

Minta Meekins

“We used to have more in-shore charter boats,” she says. “We were doing pretty good until 2008 when the economy went bad. People lost their houses, lost their boats. It’s just starting to come back.” 

The center bills itself as a “comprehensive fishing experience for the ‘old salt’ or the vacationing fisherman,” and most of the 50 boats that regularly run through Oregon Inlet are based out of Meekins’ fishing center.

Prime viewing time to watch the charter fleet return and offload the day’s catch is late in the afternoon – usually between 4 and 5 p.m. Mahi mahi and the occasional yellowfin tuna show up in early spring, then yellowfin from mid-May through June, mahi mahi, wahoo and bigeye tuna in late summer, yellowfin in the fall, and bluefin tuna in February and March.

The National Park Service (NPS) oversees the fishing center as what it calls a “concession operation.” As at any other national park, the NPS regulates prices and services to make them comparable to other marinas and affordable and accessible to the public. The service also refurbished the five boat ramps behind the fishing center that are free and open to the public.

Fishin’ Frenzy ~ Wicked Tuna

Captain Greg Mayer’s boat, Fishin’ Frenzy, helped him take the first place prize money on the famous TV show, Wicked Tuna.

Though Oregon Inlet’s charter fleet routinely appear on lists of prime fishing destinations, Mayer and his fire engine-red boat, among others, have broadened the area’s audience as part of the National Geographic Channel hit show “Wicked Tuna – Outer Banks.” Even before he took home the show’s top prize of $47,000, people stopped by Mayer’s slip at the fishing center daily. Also noteworthy is the fact that second and third place went to the local captains of Reels of Fortune and Doghouse. (The challenge of navigating the shoaling around Bonner Bridge and the inlet passage proved to be too difficult for the northern contestants.)  

 “This is as good as it gets, really,” Mayer says. “If you want to fish, you’re charter fishing and you’re booked; you’re busy every day. It’s a lot of time and it’s very time consuming. I miss a lot of weddings, but there’s very few people that look forward to going to work like we do.”

Mayer posing with a U.S. Coast Guard representative

Mayer and his compadres wish there were fewer obstacles to going to work, but they have hope. Dare County commissioners last spring pledged $3 million toward dredging the inlet for the coming year – along with the state’s matching funds – for a total $7.2 million allocated to allow for almost year-round dredging. (Compare that with zero funding on the county level for the 2014-15 fiscal year.)

Lee Nettles, Executive Director of the Dare County Tourism Board explains their decision to approve up to $1 million from their budget to help keep Dare County’s inlets opens.

“Forty-six percent of the total economic impact of Oregon Inlet ties back to the tourism industry, so the board recognized the need to keep both of our inlets open,” Nettles says. “This will be the first time we’ve instituted proactive dredging…instead of addressing just critical situations.” 

Nettles reiterated that their pledge is contingent on several conditions “so that ours weren’t the first dollars used.”

From High Surf to Shallow Waters – Surfmen of the U.S. Coast Guard 

The Oregon Inlet Fishing Center sits alongside a U.S. Coast Guard station, one of just 20 in the country and six on the east coast, that carry the designation of Surfmen stations – units that experience at least 10-foot seas for 10 percent of the year or more. Surfmen are the Coast Guard’s most highly trained rescue boat handlers, and their challenges are the narrow, shifting inlets, along with the often unpredictable and choppy Atlantic surf.

Chief Boatswain’s Mate James Laird

“When I arrived here, it was a different kind of stress than I’ve ever felt before in the Coast Guard, because I had to worry about running a boat aground,” says Chief Boatswain’s Mate James Laird, one of just 500 Surfmen in the history of the Coast Guard. 

He admits there is a lot of stress behind operating a multi-million-dollar Coast Guard asset. “What it comes down to, is really learning these channels intimately.”

The station receives weekly printouts of the depth of channels and sounds from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but the Guardsmen’s constant training includes going out in shallow boats and taking their own soundings to be as current as possible.

“Most areas I’ve been stationed in the Coast Guard, if you’re in 10-foot water, you’re getting into some pretty shallow water,” says Laird, a 15-year veteran. “A lot of times around here, 10 foot of water is great water to be in. Having that shift of being around really shallow water was my biggest challenge when I got here. Even to this day, and I’ve been here 2½ years, it’s always in the back of your head when you’re running a boat around here.”

Turbulent Waters 

“We’re at a critical time,” Kenneth Brown says. “Oregon Inlet was about to become un-navigable. With budget crises and whatnot, we’ve spent a lot of time with reactive dredging instead of pro-active dredging, [but] for the first time in a long time, they’re very close [to coming up with a pro-active plan].

In addition, a new bridge over the inlet is also expected to aid navigation. The existing Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, opened in 1963, has relatively narrow supports at each end where sand often collects and makes passage even more treacherous. The new bridge will have broader spans and, knock wood, a design to ensure safer navigation.

Oregon Inlet’s future requires not only responsible stewardship and consistent maintenance, Brown says, but increased exposure. He pointed out youth fishing tournaments and eco-tours for dolphin sightings and nature excursions. 

“There’s all kinds of ways to move in the future and embrace more people that might not have an opportunity to take advantage of the area,” Brown says. “The inlet’s dynamic and the people around it are dynamic; and if they’re not, they wouldn’t survive.” ♦

After 33 years as a newspaper reporter, writer Dave Fairbank recently relocated to the Outer Banks.

Photo credits: David Fairbanks, abovethecoast.com, Route 12 Photography.com, Fishin’ Frenzy, Eva Beach

Author: Dave Fairbank

Dave Fairbank is a freelance writer living in Kill Devil Hills. Dave was a sports writer for 30 years at the Newport News (Va.) Daily Press prior to relocating the the Outer Banks.