Best Times to Fish out of Wilmington North Carolina

Date: April 8, 2026

This is one of the most frequently asked questions from our charter guests, when is the best time to go fishing? My answer is; it all depends on what you want to target so im gonna try and break it down by what trips we offer and when I would take those trips.

4 hour – The 4 hour trips start getting good around the beginning of April when the Atlantic Bonito are migrating through, this will usually last a couple weeks then the spanish mackerel start to show up on the beach and the barracuda and occasional king mackerel start to show up on the artificial reefs from 3 to 5 miles, usually around beginning to middle of May and stay through October.

6 and 8 hour – If its gag grouper you’re targeting then May and October are the best months. October is hands down the best for nearshore gag grouper fishing but unfortunately the season now closes around the end of June, hopefully that changes in the future, so for now May is definitely the second best month for gag grouper in the 15-20 mile range that you can keep. Aside from gag grouper, we also target king mackerel, cobia, jacks, snapper and the occasional mahi on these trips which can be good from May through November. August can be a pretty tough month for this range but generally we can still find some life around the wrecks in the 20-30 mile range.

12 hour trolling – One of my favorite trips to run. For the 12 hour were targeting Mahi Mahi, Blackfin Tuna, Wahoo, Sailfish, and the occasional Yellowfin Tuna. If you’re looking to target wahoo I would recommend any time from late August all the way through March with October being my favorite month. When targeting wahoo you want to be within 3 or 4 days of the full moon if possible. This is also a great time for sailfish, we usually see quite a few of them while were trying to target wahoo in the fall and winter months as well as blackfin tuna. If you’re looking for Blackfin Tuna, Mahi and possibly Yellowfin then May into early June is usually prime time for these species.

12 hour bottom – May, June and October are great months for the full day bottom trips. You can get big trigger fish and vermillion snapper pretty much year round but the grouper fishing tends to be a little better in the early spring and fall. Especially the jumbo gag groupers up to 40 pounds on the deeper bottom as well as scamp and red groupers.

Of course all of this has to coincide with good weather and water conditions. We have had some extremely awesome days on all of our trips at the worst times of the year and every year is different! as the old saying goes “don’t know till you go”