Motorcycle Accident Injury Attorneys in Nags Head, NC

Stefan Turko had watched bluefin tuna migrate along the North Carolina coast for days, carefully planning how to catch one from his 12-foot Hobie pedal-powered kayak.

“I knew a couple of bluefin had been hooked and lost by fishermen on Jennette’s Pier near Nags Head,” said the 22-year-old Turko, a charter boat mate from his hometown of Kitty Hawk. “I figured if they were hooking them from a pier, I could get one from my kayak.”

So, early on April 4, Turko slid his kayak into the Atlantic Ocean at Kitty Hawk and headed offshore. He was alone and didn’t have to go far before he saw bait showering the surface. Leaping and boiling tuna were chasing and feeding on them.

“I was about a half-mile offshore and started seeing small schools of two to 10 tuna moving north fast, chasing baitfish,” he explained. “I was in about 20 feet of water, just off Jennette’s Pier.

“The fish were not far from an anchored weather buoy, which I think attracted a lot of baitfish. I used a ‘No Live Bait Needed’ 5-inch white swim bait that looked like the bait they were chasing. I’d get close to where I saw tuna boil the surface, then cast.”

Most of the tuna and bait were located between the end of Jennette’s Pier and the weather buoy, and he was about 500 yards off the pier and inshore of the buoy.

Turko used an 8-foot Rainshadow RX6 spinning rod, paired with a Van Staal 250 heavy-duty marine spinning reel, packed with 450 yards of 65-pound-test Power Pro braided line and a 6-foot, 150-pound-test monofilament leader.

He was into fish right away that morning, with the tuna readily striking his swimbait rigged to a jighead.

“I hooked four tuna in the 100- to 200-pound class that morning,” Turko explained. “I lost the first three. One tuna I had on for about 10 minutes before the line broke when the fish was just 20 feet away. There were a lot of baitfish and bluefish around, and one of those may have nicked my line, causing the break-off on the first three tuna.

“But the fourth fish I hooked that day was the charm.”

Around mid-day, he spotted a single tuna chasing bait and moving toward him in his kayak, which rolled on slow ocean swells, with a water temperature of 52 degrees.

“That single tuna would pop up every few minutes, chasing bait toward me,” Turko said. “When it came up just 20 yards away, I cast to it, let my lure sink a bit, started jigging it, and it hit.”

Turko had brought a 5-gallon bucket with him, tied with heavy rope to the rear of his kayak. When he hooked the tuna, he put the bucket overboard, filling it with water. He says the bucket helped wear out the tuna due to its weight when the fish took off, towing the kayak in a modern-day version of a “Nantucket sleighride.”

“The water-filled bucket helped stabilize my kayak as the fish zipped away, towing me behind,” Turko said. “It also helped wear down the bluefin.”

Turko had learned from other tuna anglers that the fastest way to beat a notoriously tough-fighting bluefin is to stay right on top of it and battle it hard and fast. That’s what he did.

“I was also lucky because there was an offshore wind blowing, and the fish headed shallow into the wind and toward land,” Turko explained. “Towing me, the kayak, and the bucket wore it down pretty fast.”

He had to get the bucket out of the water while fighting the fish so it wouldn’t snag on the line. That was tough while fighting the tuna, but he managed to get the bucket aboard his kayak.

After about 30 minutes of fighting the bluefin, the fish started to “pinwheel” — swimming in tight circles below Turko’s pedal-powered kayak. Finally, the fish surfaced near Turko, belly up and whipped. The young angler gaffed the fish in the head and drew it to his kayak. Then, he whacked the fish several times in the head with an old aluminum baseball bat he’d had since playing Little League baseball.

Once the fish was dead at the side of his kayak, he secured it with a rope through its gills and clipped a large diver’s float to the fish and kayak.

Next, he called his friends to alert them to what had just happened and started pedaling back to the Kitty Hawk beach.

His buddies were there to help him land the bluefin and kayak. People on the nearby pier watched in awe, and crowds gathered on the beach to see and touch the heavy tuna.

Later that afternoon, the fish weighed 136 pounds and measured 69 inches in length.

Bluefin tuna harvest is highly regulated, but the fish was under the 73-inch recreational maximum catch length. Turko also had a federal marine fisheries permit for harvesting tuna, but since the fish was caught in North Carolina state waters, federal regulations did not apply.

He’s planning to have an ink print made of the tuna’s wide and distinctive tail and display it with a picture of himself, his bluefin, and the lure he used to catch it. He also made a bracelet from part of the heavy leader used to catch the fish.

“I said a prayer on the way out that morning for a safe day, and God blessed me more than I could have imagined,” he said.

Bob McNally has been around fishing and the outdoors all his adult life. He has fished throughout the much of the world pursuing the globe's important gamefish. He's written over 5,000 feature magazine articles, and for many years also was a full-time metropolitan newspaper outdoor writer, and is the author of 11 outdoor books. His writing, broadcast and photography work have won dozens of state, regional and national awards. For years he hosted a daily syndicated fishing radio show, and was a weekly on-camera host of a fishing TV show for Fox Sports Outdoors.

Updated April 9, 2025: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has shut down bluefin tuna fishing at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, North Carolina. A pier spokesperson confirmed to Outdoor Life that a NOAA officer visited Jennette’s Tuesday morning. This was after several local anglers had hooked or caught bluefins there, both from the pier and from their personal kayaks, over the weekend. The officer advised pier management that customers could not legally fish for bluefin tuna under federal law.

“We were advised to remove all references to the bluefin bite from our social media platforms because it is considered promoting an illegal activity,” Jennette’s Pier announced in a Facebook post.

Current Atlantic bluefin tuna regulations apply to fishing activities conducted from vessels. There is no specific federal regulation that specifically limits the landing of bluefin tuna from shore, because the species is typically caught well offshore. However, all anglers must comply with federal regulations that govern landing and retention limits for bluefin, and they are required to have the proper licenses, whether the fish are hooked miles or mere yards from the beach.

According to NOAA’s Code of Federal Regulations: “It is unlawful for any person or vessel subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to fish for, catch, possess, retain, land, or sell Atlantic highly migratory species without the appropriate valid vessel permit with the appropriate endorsements.”

April 7, 2025 8:03PM EDT: Fishing is usually hot on Jennette’s Pier this time of year, with anglers hooking plenty of croaker, bluefish, and sizable red drum. But landing deep-sea fish like bluefin tuna there is unheard of. Bluefin don’t typically show up 1,000 feet from the sand. But someone apparently forgot to tell the fish that.

For more than a week now, anglers fishing from Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, North Carolina, have been hooking sizable bluefin tuna right off the end of the pier — an unprecedented streak that has stunned locals and lit up the Outer Banks fishing community.

Seeing them almost within casting distance of the beach is incredibly unusual. But a confluence of conditions — the spring migration, ideal water temperatures, and massive schools of menhaden (also known as bunker) packed tightly to the coast — appears to have drawn the tuna to within spitting distance of the shoreline. Jennette’s Pier staff and local anglers have recently confirmed that big menhaden schools in the area.

The action kicked off the morning of March 31, when anglers hooked multiple bluefin. Videos from the scene show spinning reels screaming and rods doubled over as anglers tried to keep up with the freight-train strength of a bluefin. Greg Allen was lucky enough to hook up twice. The first one spooled him, and the second broke his line. In the end, nothing more exciting than some shad and small croaker hit the planks that day, according to Jennette’s.

Fighting tuna is addictive, though, and Allen wasn’t about to throw in his bait towel. He was lucky enough to hook yet another bluefin while fishing from the pier on Sunday. After a 2-hour 30-minute fight, he managed to wrangle the tuna next to the pier, which is considered a catch. Jennette’s Pier staff estimated the fish weighed between 150 and 175 pounds.

“Allen said he ‘popped it off’ and it swam away,” Jennette’s Pier said in its Monday fishing report.

On April 4, Stefan Turko of Kitty Hawk landed an impressive 140-pound bluefin from his kayak while fishing off the end of Jennette’s.

“I think it’s gonna be hard for me to top this one for a long time,” Turko said in a Facebook post. “Said a prayer on the way out for a safe day, and god blessed me more than I could imagine.”

Another kayak angler, Aki Min, hooked a 154-pound bluefin just yards off the pier on April 5. After going for a 3-mile ride courtesy of the massive fish, Min landed on the beach with the tuna, which was longer than he is tall, next to Jennette’s Pier.

“It will be hard to top this one,” Min said in a post. “Let’s all hope the fish stick around for a while, and some more people can get one. And maybe they’ll be back in future years, too.”

Jennette’s Pier confirmed Monday that another bluefin was hooked and released from the pier. Staff shared footage of James Carroll of Oceanview, Virginia, fighting the fish, as the large bluefin had his reel screaming.

Jennette’s is a 1,000-foot-long concrete pier located in Nags Head. While water depth at the offshore testing area, which is just over 300 yards from the seaward end of the pier, is approximately 36 feet deep, water depths off the northern and southern sides of the pier only average 10 to 20 feet. The pier is just 10 miles north of Oregon Inlet, where a fleet of charter and recreational fishing boats head each morning to the Gulf Stream some 35 miles offshore to catch tuna.

Regulations around bluefin tuna remain strict. Monday’s fish was properly released according to federal regulations. Jennette’s Pier staff emphasized that anglers cannot legally keep bluefin caught from a pier or the shore.

“These fish are usually 30 to 50 miles offshore,” one seasoned OBX angler told Outdoor Life. “To see them caught right off the beach is insane.”

Atlantic bluefin tuna are the largest of the tuna species. They can grow up to 13 feet and weigh over 2,000 pounds. These deepwater giants live in the western Atlantic and range from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico, where they typically spawn in mid-April.

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If anglers keep hooking these deep-sea bluefins right off the pier, Jennette’s could become a tuna hotspot, drawing anglers from up and down the East Coast.

Alice Jones Webb is a staff writer for Outdoor Life, covering everything from breaking news to in-depth gear reviews. She lives in rural North Carolina with her non-hunting husband, a codependent dog, and a well-stocked chest freezer.

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The 34th edition of the rain-or-shine Kelly’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade takes place March 16 in Nags Head, North Carolina.

More than 10,000 Irish and Irish-for-the-day folks are expected to line S. Virginia Dare Trail (the beach road) for the 1-mile processional that will feature about 100 units and 1,500 participants (animals and people).

For many years, it was billed as the largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade in North Carolina, but recently Raleigh and Charlotte began staging Irish-themed cavalcades.

“We may not be the biggest anymore,” said Mike Kelly, the famed Outer Banks restaurateur who sponsors the event. “But we have a big impact.”

Expect to see marching bands, scout troops, dogs, musicians, floats, horses, bicycles, pipes and drums, veterans groups, civic organizations, fire trucks, jeeps, and antique cars on the day (officially March 17) that honors Ireland’s patron saint.

Rangers and staff at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, will serve as grand marshals.

For many locals, the long-running parade is a rite of spring (almost).

“It’s a real community event,” said Bob Muller, a former mayor of Nags Head who has served as the parade’s public address announcer since 1996. “People are coming out of hibernation.”

The parade kicks off at 1 p.m. at Bladen St. at milepost 11.5 and will roll north to Driftwood Street at milepost 10.5. A panel of local judges will hand out awards in the following categories: best overall, best float, best unit and best musician/band.

The parade started in 1990, co-sponsored by Kelly’s Restaurant and Tavern in Nags Head and a local radio station. Until 1993, it was billed as the “Kelly’s-Beach 95FM St. Patrick’s Day Parade.”

It was canceled in 2020 and 2021 over safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was postponed for a week in 1993 when a nor-easter blew in. The inaugural parade was on Saturday, March 17. It was a sunny, windy and unseasonably warm day and no one knew what to expect.

But a couple thousand people showed up to view the more than 75-unit sea of green roll down the beach road.

The late Dennis McGinnis, a columnist for the Coastland Times newspaper, was the first grand marshal, and he was followed by disc jockeys from the radio station who made up the “Almost Irish Marching Kazoo Band.”

“People were so excited,” remembers Kelly. “It far exceeded our expectations.”

The day concluded with an after-party, which over the years got bigger and livelier with a band playing under a tent behind Kelly’s Restaurant. Free soft drinks and hot dogs were part of the celebration, which ended in 2017 when the restaurant closed.

In 1991, the parade moved to Sunday, March 17, to coincide with the official St. Patrick’s Day.

Since then, it’s been on the Sunday closest to the 17th.

“It’s not the Macy’s Day parade,” Kelly said. “But it’s a Norman Rockwell scene.”

___

If you go

When: 1 p.m. March 16

Where: Starting at Bladen St. at milepost 11.5 on S. Virginia Dare Trail (the beach road) and moving north to Driftwood St. at milepost 10.5, Nags Head

Cost: Free

Details: kellysobxcatering.com