[gentle orchestral fanfare] - Don't get it tangled.

- Oh, we are.

Up top.

- No, you're okay.

- Go ahead.

- No, I'm talking about up top.

- Nah, you're okay.

Just watch it, don't let it get loose.

Whoa!

[grunting] - [Man Off Camera] Just let it drag and back off.

- [Announcer] The production of Carolina Outdoor Journal is made possible in part by: - [Female Announcer] Wildlife in North Carolina Magazine.

ncwildlife.org/winc.

- [Male Announcer] And by EZ Bait and Tackle, family owned and operated.

We've been fishing since 2003.

Come see the crew in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and we can hook you up for all your fishing needs.

[light instrumental music] ♪ - Hello, welcome to the Carolina Outdoor Journal.

Well, today's program is about our blue water adventure.

Some great fishing, but also we tried to do some research that day, Joe.

- That's right.

This is kind of a continuation of what we did several years ago.

Don Hammond came up from Charleston, South Carolina, to be with us again, trying to put some satellite tags in some Gafford size dolphins, some large dolphin.

25 to 30 pound class dolphin.

Grady-White Boats has been a real big supporter of that program trying to learn a lot more about dolphin.

At the same time we wanted to go off the, the marlin fishing had been really good in the weeks prior.

So we decided to take some time and spend some time while we out there to go for blue marlin, and it really paid off.

We increased the size of our tackle, and the size of the lures, and you'll see, it paid off.

- And when you got the double header on, the tackle was real important.

We'll talk about that in Gear Time.

- Absolutely, we'll go back in the gaffle, will share with us how they scaled up.

And you have to when you go in to, for larger fish out there and it paid off.

- And Donna's recipe today is more of a preparation recipe.

- Right, right.

Sushi has become very popular worldwide.

And so she's showed us a different way to prepare sushi.

I'll just say, the Donna Reynolds way.

- All right, we got a lot going on.

Let's get to it here on the Carolina Outdoor Journal.

[low, anticipatory music] [upbeat music] - This one's really out there still.

- He took a lot of line.

- Make sure you don't stack it on.

- Yeah.

Are you still fooling with that same fish?

- [Don] There's nothing on there.

It's just a lure.

- You just probably aggravating it to pieces.

Hey guys.

- [T] You got him right there.

- Is that your fish?

- No, it's his, it's that one, we got a dolph.

- [T] Yep, that's a left shark.

- Oh, we're on again.

He's going all over the line.

- [Jim] Yep.

- All right.

- [Don] He just jumped right over me.

- Pretty fish, though.

All right, so we're gonna try to put a spaghetti tag in this fish.

If he looks like he's hooked.

He's gonna be healthy enough to release.

Got a small bull.

All right.

Okay, we got the tag in him.

- Got it in him.

- [Don] You get the dehooker, we'll get him unhooked.

All right.

- [Curt] It's a good looking little bull dolphin.

- [Don] This plug you got really tears them up.

They do not like it.

Don't like it.

- He hit that aluminum foil so he might be, he's probably hooked right in the mouth.

- Yeah.

- We've caught a bunch on that thing the last couple days.

Looks like a little silver bullet with red eyes.

Yeah, I think so, Don.

- [Don] Okay.

- I think he's gonna be hooked in the mouth.

- [Don] That lure works pretty good too.

- Yeah.

[laughing] Just bump the boat in gear would be good.

All right.

Come on.

- [Jim] Almost the good pump.

- [T] Keep coming out here, Don?

- [Curt] Hang on, one more down.

And up.

There you go.

- Let me get him to lay down.

Right when he decides to move.

- Yep.

Got a tag in him right as he threw the hook.

- [Curt] Good job.

- All right.

This fish ain't really run much.

And he's not as little as y'all making him out to be.

I'm sorry.

- [T] Tight.

- Do we have another belt?

Other than the one in the cabin.

- [Curt] Don, have you gotten a good look at him yet?

- [T] I thought that was our fish.

- Bass ackwards.

- I thought it was more important than letting him get away.

- Nice work.

Good job.

- You guys, we hit a, you know we've had a lot of action this morning.

We're fishing in there, what, 20, 30 fathoms?

- That's right.

- Now we moved out to 90 fathoms and moving out to deep water.

We pulled the naturals and the combinations of natural baits and lures that we've been pulling earlier in and we're gonna put out some big artificials, T. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what we got.

- We're gonna put some plastic out.

Speed up the pace a little bit.

Cover some ground.

See if we can find some larger dolphins.

And hopefully a blue one will come along.

- Yeah, good.

Man in the blue suit would be good to see today, right?

- That's right, that's right.

- Well, okay, well let's get some baits out guys.

I'm gonna put this in the icebox.

- Wanna use your lucky plug again?

- Yeah, we'll, just set that down for right now.

- We'll get these out.

Going across?

- [T] Yeah, just set that in that rod holder over there.

- Get sharks hooked there.

Stiff rig.

- So you've heard this morning on the radio to that they've been catching some bill fish out here?

- Yeah, a couple blue ones this morning.

- Good.

- Yep, that's always good to hear.

- All right.

Yeah, we got a double, I don't know what we got here.

This fish is going boy, oh, it's a, oh, man!

I see a bill.

- Did it go under me?

- It's going that way.

- There he is, oh man!

- It's a blue!

- Got a big one, got a blue.

- I got it, I'm hooked up too.

- Oh, we got a double.

Unreal, can I get a?

- [Curt] Look at mine back there.

- [T] I'm not getting it 'cause I'm not getting help.

- [Curt] Good lord.

- Oh, look at him, look at him!

- [Curt] This is just too cool.

- All right, we gotta pay attention here.

That's my fish in the air.

- [T] All right!

All right, I need somebody to help.

- [Curt] All right, Don [grunting].

- Look at him jumping!

- [Curt] Ah, it knows.

[slow, gentle music] - Man, that was quick.

We barely got the baits out.

- [Curt] I know.

That was a good-- - And we got a double.

- Good call moving out to this deeper water.

Really good call.

Mine was up on top for the first 45 seconds, and now he's gone down.

- Mine is just, he's still pulling line.

Oh man.

- That was incredible, though.

We barely had the wet baits in the water, and you guys started to make that move and boom.

- We had three out of, we had three baits in the water.

We didn't get the fourth artificial out.

[laughing] Had two of them hit, everybody.

- We're not going to have to go to the gym for a while.

- Oh, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to move.

- This thing is really pulling.

That was just spectacular.

Both of them.

- I know, my fish is just jumping-- - He did a acrobatic show for us.

Heard out.

- [T] Jim, where are you?

- I'm out here.

- [T] Who's further out?

- I am.

- He is.

- I'm getting it back little by little.

But I know he ain't done.

- I think if they knew we were gonna let them go they'd come on up peacefully.

[laughing] Strike it's going down.

- Put her in low gear.

Here.

Now try.

- I don't know if he's resting, but I need one.

[laughing] - How good is that, T?

How good is this?

Doesn't get any better.

Come out and tag a couple dolphin.

Put a couple in the fish box.

Decide, let's go deep and try to catch a marlin.

We get three baits in the water and before we get the fourth one out, we got a double hookup.

Of blue marlin.

Come on.

Get tight on him.

- All right, that's not helping me.

- All right, all right.

- I'm pulling mine.

- That help?

- I think, yep.

- All right, keep going, I'm going to get this one.

- All right.

- [T] Go ahead.

- I pulled the hooks on mine.

We'll clear the line and we can back down and get close and get a release.

Man, that was a nice fish.

He jumped tremendously.

All right, she's clear.

- [T] Take him out of low gear please.

- All right.

- [T] Now crank the crank.

- Crank.

Man, my arms are telling me I've been on the blue marlin.

- T, do you see anything?

Or you still see line?

- I've still got a little bit to go, yeah.

You're getting close though, Curt, you're looking good.

You got a lot of line back on it.

- All right.

- Hop up, then reel down on him, Curt.

Hop up, reel down.

- Not to drop and rock it without reeling, buddy.

- All right, I'm trying.

- You gotta reel to get line.

That's it, hop up, reel down.

Reel hard when you drop that rod tip.

- [Man Off Screen] Start down with that rod tip.

- Real light.

- Right.

- Little bitty to come down easy.

- I'm adjusting my belt.

- Nice and slow.

- Come on, bud.

- Just pump him up slow, Curt, nice and smooth.

Now get your had on that reel and reel down on him.

There you go.

Don't let that line stack up.

- I'll try not to.

It's like we're getting one or two inches at a time.

- Tug of war, it looks like he's coming up now.

- That's good.

- He's getting a better angle.

He is heavy.

- Reel down on him, fight him hard.

Come on, don't let up on him.

Put the pressure on it.

Get that leader up, let's get a release.

And when I touch that leader, you back that drag off half way.

- [Man Off Screen] I think you got him, it's inches now.

Fighting for feet.

There he is.

All right, we got lead and release.

Back off that drag halfway.

Watch your rod tip, don't get it tangled.

- [Curt] Oh, we are up top.

- No, you're okay.

- Go ahead.

- [Curt] No, I'm talking about up top.

- Nah, you're okay.

Just watch it, don't let it get loose.

Whoa!

- [Don] They're finally dragging back off, dude, you got to.

- All right.

- How you dragging?

- I didn't back off much though.

- [Jim] Don't get too [muffled].

Show them where you're at.

Do you want to use gaff to bring him on up?

- Curt, you got the drag back down, right?

- [Curt] Yeah, I've got the drag back down.

- If you need to.

- [Curt] You got him?

- [T] Trying to get his head up.

- [Don] Nice little blue.

Man, is he pretty or what?

[laughing] - [Curt] He's beautiful.

- [T] All right, guys, can you get the hook out of him?

- [Jim] Will do, [muffled].

There he is.

- [Curt] All right, got him released.

How's he looking?

- [T] That's her.

Straining to go.

- All right.

- All right, guys.

Way to go!

- [Jim] Good show!

- Good job, bud.

- [Jim] Good show!

- That was my water bill fish.

- Three lures in the water, get two hookups, we pulled the hooks on one pretty quick, thank goodness all the hassle.

But nice blue marlin, man.

Two blues, with three lures in the water.

Man, what's the chances of that happening?

- Incredible.

- That's incredible.

You guys are great.

I really appreciate this.

- It's good North Carolina, late May, early June fishing at it's best.

- Yeah it is, no doubt.

- Joe, truly, a blue water adventure.

- Absolutely.

It turned out to be that.

I mean catching dolphin's a lot of fun, but when you have a double hookup with blue marlin within minutes of putting your baits out like we did, and those sea conditions like we had, for me, as far as filming it was just real special.

And the guys were, you know, fought the fish in stand-up tackle which is a whole different ballgame than sitting in a chair with a gimbal.

And they'll tell you that.

- [John] Curt's still talking about that.

- He's still talking about it.

And rightfully so.

He, that was a catch of a lifetime.

And he's ready to go back out and do it again.

But what an adventure.

- Speaking of adventure, let's go find out more about the tackle.

Let's go to Gear Time.

[cheery guitar music] - Curt, I was thinking we had a really good day today.

But then I decided it was great.

I mean how often you go offshore, catch some dolphin, tag some dolphin, saw a couple blue marlin hookups, so.

I mean we headed out, we stopped in about 120, 130 feet of water.

We fished for dolphin trying to get one to put a satellite tag in.

We couldn't find him.

But we did put a few spaghetti tags in some fish.

Threw a few in the box.

So, this is one of the lures we're using.

It's just an islander.

We were rigging it with ballyhoo.

We were also swimming naked ballyhoos.

Another bait we use is this machined aluminum cedar plug, basically.

It's just made out of aluminum.

It's been really effective with, you know, the three or four years I've been fishing I've done real well with dolphin on that plug.

You know, we caught those dolphin and tagged some.

And then we headed offshore.

We picked up and ran out to the hundred fathom line.

And it was a beautiful day weather wise.

I mean it was just great.

And we were able to go out there and we decided to fish artificials for blue marlin and lo and behold we got two baits in the water, putting a third out and had a blue hit this one, two hundred pound class fish.

And then we had a second, so we had a double header.

And we fought those fish for quite a while before I pulled the hooks on the one I had on.

And then you managed to get yours in and release it.

- It was unbelievable experience.

I've never caught a blue marlin before.

And standing up doing it with this, what do you call this?

- The fighting belt.

- The fighting belt.

This thing really helped.

And it was a heck of a fight.

And that last five or six minutes every few inches were hard to come by.

Because that was one tough fish.

And it was one incredibly beautiful fish when we got it upside the boat.

- You know, it gives you a lot of respect for the resource and it's important to try to release those fish and enjoy them and leave them there for the future.

And it's great to be able to hook up to a couple 200 pound plus marlins at the same time.

That's quite a Chinese fire drill, but I really thoroughly enjoyed it.

And I've had a great time today.

- Oh, I did too.

I, just one of the best offshore trips I've ever been.

Probably the best offshore trip I have ever been on in my life.

And I really do appreciate it.

- Well we need to do it again sometime.

- We will.

We will.

- Okay.

- Well, as always, we hope you can use that valuable information.

And now Donna is preparing in the kitchen for sushi.

Let's catch up with Donna in the kitchen on the Carolina Outdoor Journal.

[cheery guitar music] - Hi, today in the kitchen we're doing something a little bit different.

We are gonna make sushi.

We've had lots of requests for this so we decided we would do a show on sushi.

And when I was doing some research on it, I always thought you had to roll your sushi and that kinda made me a little nervous.

But then I did some research and we can do a pressed sushi which a lot of Japanese housewives do.

So that's what we're going to be doing here in the kitchen.

It is quick and easy and your kids can do it with you.

I had some friends' kids who helped me with mine and they had a blast.

So let's go ahead and get started.

First of all we're gonna need to buy some sushi rice.

And you can buy that in the grocery in a package and it specifically says sushi rice on it.

Follow the package directions and make your rice.

This is what it looks like once it's cooked.

It's really a, or it's also known probably as a sticky rice.

It's a very sticky, sticky rice.

We're going to make ours in a 9 by 13 pan.

So we're gonna get all of our ingredients out.

We're gonna make sure it's the freshest that we can find.

We are going to do some salmon, some tuna, and then we also have some asparagus, we have some cucumbers, which I had used a vegetable peeler, or my friends' children used the vegetable peeler and just peeled it off so it's nice and thin.

And then we have some fresh shrimp as well that I bought in the seafood section that was already cooked, deveined, and peeled.

How easy is that?

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our pan, you can use a square pan, or whatever you have, and we're just gonna start layering it however we like.

So I love avocado, so I'm going to use some avocado in mine.

I'm also gonna use some of this tuna.

It's called yellow fin tuna.

Or it'll say sushi grade tuna.

So we're just gonna make some slices in our tuna.

And place that, and you can make all kinds of different designs that you like.

Which is kinda fun.

And you can do all different types of sushi combinations in your one pan which is nice too.

And then we're gonna do some, cut some of our salmon too.

And this is really beautiful salmon.

This bright orange color.

I'm just gonna lay that out.

Maybe put a piece of asparagus in there.

And maybe some cucumbers.

And the thing I've found is a lot of grocery stores have sushi, so you can buy all your accompanying dishes that you need for your sushi.

Which is kinda nice too.

Like I bough some wasabi, and some pickled ginger at the store.

And then all I had to do was put it on my plate, which is great.

You can also put some shrimp in here if you want.

And then what we're gonna do once we have our plate all, or our pan here all decorated, then we're gonna pack on our rice.

So we're gonna take our sticky rice and we're just gonna place it on top of your toppings here.

And you want to build it upside down like your making an upside down, a pineapple upside down cake.

And then you just press it, you put it in.

And then you just press it.

And I had my friends' kids help me.

And we just used some plastic baggies.

And then we just pressed it down.

And this way it doesn't stick to your hands and it releases easily.

And make sure your rice is warm 'cause it will help stick better.

And you can make this in the morning and then serve it in the afternoon or at the evening.

I like to chill mine so it's nice and chilled.

And you would just do this throughout your whole pan.

And then you're ready.

And then, when you're ready to go, I just put some wax paper on top and some foil.

Put it in my refrigerator and then when I was ready I just flipped it upside down on a cutting board.

And then you want to take a really sharp knife and you can either oil it with some olive oil or some nonstick spray 'cause it will help cut a lot easier and won't stick to the rice.

And this is what it looks like when it's finished.

You can do all kinds of creations that you want.

You can also form your sushi by hand if you want.

I just formed some different little shapes.

And then you can just top it with a piece of shrimp, and maybe some avocado, or something that you have.

And you have great sushi that you've made at home.

It's quick, it's easy, and it's a lot of fun.

So I hope you enjoy this and try it at home and let me know what kind of combinations you come up with.

And I'll look forward to seeing you here next time on Simple Cooking.

- Thanks, Donna.

She's always got something good in the kitchen.

Joe, I wanna go back.

We had good fishing that day.

But I want to talk more about the research.

That is so important.

- It really is.

And yeah, we've always advocated on this show learning as much as we can about every fish that we have here in North Carolina.

And Don just continues to do some great work and learning more and more about the dolphin fish.

And if you want to become a part of that program, we'll give you a telephone number and a website.

If you have a boat, charter boat that you run, or if you just pleasure boat, if you go out fishing for dolphin and wanted to be a part of that program tagging the fish, and it's just, again, the more we learn about the fish, the better off we are.

We can set measurement plans up for everything.

And so give them a call, or go to his website, and become a part of a really great conservation piece.

- And nothing like that big blue water out there.

- Well, I think Curt will be talking about that for quite some time.

- All right, for Joe Albea, I'm John Moore.

Thanks for joining us today on the Carolina Outdoor Journal.

- [Announcer] Make sure to visit our website for more information.

- [Announcer] The production of Carolina Outdoor Journal is made possible in part by: - [Female Announcer] Wildlife in North Carolina Magazine.

ncwildlife.org/winc.

- [Male Announcer] And by EZ Bait and Tackle, family owned and operated.

We've been fishing since 2003.

Come see the crew in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and we can hook you up for all your fishing needs.

[light instrumental music] ♪