The fish are not arriving. They are leaving.
Every November people in Hampstead line up for a plate of fried spot and almost nobody knows what they are actually celebrating. The assumption is that the spot show up in the fall. They do not. They are on their way out.
Spot spawn at sea, October through March, out over the edge of the continental shelf. What happens in the fall is that the adults stack up near the inlets and along the beaches before they run offshore and south to do it. That is the fall run. The fish are staging, not settling. Their babies drift back into the sounds and creeks between December and April, spend their first year in the estuary, and only then move out to deeper water.
So the Spot Festival is a going away party. That is a better story than the one most people tell.
The festival itself
November 7 and 8, at 14221 US Highway 17 in Hampstead.
Admission is five dollars. Children six and under get in free. The spot dinner is twelve dollars and it is two whole fish, hushpuppies, fries and coleslaw. An all day wristband for the inflatable rides is twenty dollars. No pets and no coolers. Bring a lawn chair, because you will want one.
They have been doing this since 1963, which makes it the longest running festival in Pender County. They serve somewhere around six thousand plates. The money goes to Hampstead and Surf City schools, and in a recent year that came to thirty six thousand dollars, which makes it the biggest single fundraiser those schools have.
One thing I would do before you drive over. The festival lists the dates on its own site, but hours for this year were not posted when I looked. Check before you go.
What a spot actually is
Marine Fisheries calls it the most caught recreational species in North Carolina. More people catch spot here than anything else.
It is a small silvery fish with a dozen or so wavy dark bars and a black spot behind the gill cover about the size of its own eye. That spot is where the name comes from. The nickname is yellow belly, and it earns it in the fall, when the bellies turn bright yellow at spawning time.
They top out around fourteen inches. What you will actually catch is seven to ten. They live about five or six years, mature at two or three, and they feed on the bottom, gulping sediment and sorting out worms, small crustaceans and whatever else is in there.
If you want to catch your own
There is no minimum size on spot in North Carolina and the limit is fifty per person per day, which is more than anybody needs.
You do need a Coastal Recreational Fishing License if you are sixteen or older, and that includes fishing from shore. Twenty dollars a year for a resident, forty for a non resident, or nine dollars for ten days. Buy it online at the state’s licensing site or at any wildlife agent.
On a commercial ocean pier you usually do not need your own, because most of them hold a blanket license that covers everybody who buys a ticket. Ask when you pay. On a public sound side dock or a bank, the blanket does not apply and you need your own.
Two hook bottom rig, shrimp or bloodworms, fished off the bottom. Surf City Ocean Pier lists spot as a May through November fish on their own seasons chart.
Where to go
Surf City Ocean Pier, 112 South Shore Drive in Surf City. Built in 1948, 937 feet, tackle shop and grill, free parking.
Jolly Roger Pier, 803 Ocean Boulevard in Topsail Beach. About 850 feet, tackle shop and restaurant.
Seaview Fishing Pier, 124 Fishing Pier Lane in North Topsail Beach. Open around the clock.
Kure Beach Fishing Pier, 100 Atlantic Avenue. Open 24 hours a day from April 1 through Thanksgiving Sunday, so this year it shuts on November 29. It is the oldest pier on the Atlantic coast. L.C. Kure put a 120 foot pine pier out there in 1923 and followed it with reinforced concrete the next year.
Johnnie Mercers, 23 East Salisbury Street in Wrightsville Beach. Six in the morning to eleven at night, midnight on Friday and Saturday. Eight dollars a rod for a day.
Call ahead on pier fees. Several of these have not updated their published prices in a couple of years and the numbers floating around online disagree with each other.
If you would rather not pay, Soundside Park at 517 Roland Avenue in Surf City has a boat dock and fishing access, and Batts Family Park at 911 South Topsail Drive has a marsh walk and restrooms. Bring your own license to either one.
Cooking them
Whole, bone in, fried. That is the tradition and the festival plate is the evidence for it. Two fish, hushpuppies, fries, slaw. Nobody fillets a spot.
If you catch a mess of them off Seaview, the restaurant there will clean and cook what you bring in.
Why it is worth going
Six thousand plates of fish, in a field on Highway 17, funding the schools your kids or your neighbors’ kids go to, built entirely around a fish that is leaving town. That is about as Pender County as it gets.