Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks — The Show That Really Was Filmed Here

Two television shows carry the Outer Banks name, and only one of them was made here. Netflix’s Outer Banks is shot around Charleston, South Carolina. Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks was shot on the Outer Banks — out of Oregon Inlet and Wanchese, on the winter bluefin grounds about thirty-five miles off the beach, with a charter fleet you can still walk down the dock and book.

National Geographic ran it for eight seasons and 102 episodes, from August 17, 2014 to November 21, 2021, as a spin-off of the Gloucester, Massachusetts original. The first season aired as Wicked Tuna: North vs. South before the name changed. In 2022 the franchise came back as Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks Showdown — eighteen episodes, billed as the ninth season — and has been quiet since. Everything below is the real geography behind it, and how to see it for yourself.

Where Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks was filmed

Oregon Inlet. The home dock is the Oregon Inlet Fishing Center, at the north end of the Marc Basnight Bridge on Bodie Island, about eight miles south of Whalebone Junction and inside Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The marina itself belongs to the National Park Service — a 60-slip facility run under a long-term lease — and it has been sending charter boats out of the inlet since the 1950s. Greg Mayer’s Fishin’ Frenzy, the boat at the center of the southern side of the show, runs its charters from here. The Marc Basnight Bridge opened in 2019 to replace the old Bonner Bridge, so the span the early seasons ran under is gone; the inlet is the same. The Oregon Inlet boating page explains why every captain in the show talks about the bar.

Wanchese. The other home port is the working fishing village at the south end of Roanoke Island, ten minutes from downtown Manteo. Britton Shackelford’s Doghouse fished out of Wanchese, and it is where the commercial side of the island lives — trawlers, packing houses, the boatyards. It is not a tourist harbor, which is exactly why it looked the way it did on camera.

The fish. Off Oregon Inlet the bluefin are found about thirty-five miles out, and they are most plentiful from January through March and into April, with a second run in November and December. Most of the fish encountered off North Carolina run 150 to 600 pounds; the state record is 805. That is why the show filmed in winter — the 2014 season shot through March — and why the water in it is grey and the crews are in bibs.

The boats and the captains

The southern side of the show was the Outer Banks fleet. Fishin’ Frenzy (Greg Mayer, who moved to the Outer Banks in 1991 and runs charters out of Oregon Inlet) anchored it for nearly the whole run. Doghouse (Britton Shackelford, from a Gloucester, Virginia fishing family and working out of Wanchese) was there for the first five seasons and the last. Little Shell (Nick Gowitzka, North Carolina born and raised), Reel E’ Bugging (Bobby Earl, a New Yorker who fished the Outer Banks every winter for years) and Rasta Rocket (Zack Shackleton, a local who had his captain’s license at eighteen) filled out the later seasons, with Reels of Fortune, Wahoo, Kahuna, Offshore Outlaw and Hog Wild appearing along the way.

The northern side came down from the original Wicked Tuna: Pinwheel (Tyler McLaughlin), Hot Tuna (TJ Ott), FV-Tuna.com (Dave Carraro) and, in the early seasons, Hard Merchandise (Dave Marciano). The premise was the rivalry — Gloucester boats fishing a southern winter fishery on the locals’ water — and the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau still keeps the captains’ bios up, which tells you how the county felt about it.

Is there a new season? The Showdown, explained

Kind of. The original Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks ended with season eight in November 2021. The following summer National Geographic brought the same boats back under a new title, Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks Showdown: eighteen episodes, premiered July 17, 2022, presented as the ninth season of the Outer Banks franchise, with the last episode airing October 9, 2022. So the “season 9” people search for is the Showdown. As of September 2026 no second season of the Showdown has been announced and the series is listed as on hiatus.

Where to watch: the seasons are sold season by season on the usual digital stores, and streaming availability comes and goes, so check a current listing rather than counting on any one service.

See it for yourself: bluefin season on the Outer Banks

This is the one show set here where the answer to “can I do that?” is yes. The charter fleet at Oregon Inlet and the marinas in Hatteras Village run offshore trips through the year, weather allowing, and in the winter months that means bluefin: a long ride out in the dark, cold, and a fish that can outweigh everyone on the boat. A private boat needs a NOAA Highly Migratory Species permit to fish for them, and the size and retention rules change by the season; on a charter, the permit and the rules ride with the boat. The charters guide covers the types of trip and whether you need one; the offshore tide windows cover why the boat leaves when it does.

If you would rather see the fish than fight one, the docks are the show. Boats come back to Oregon Inlet in the afternoon and the fish come off at the cleaning tables; in the winter the crowd is small and the tuna are enormous. The fishing report says what is running this week, the water temperature page shows the cold water that brings them, and best time to visit covers what the islands are like in bluefin season, when the beach houses are cheapest and mostly dark.

Wicked Tuna vs. Outer Banks: which one is real?

Both are real shows; only one is on the real coast. Netflix’s Outer Banks borrowed the name and the geography and filmed them in South Carolina — where the show is actually filmed has the season-by-season answer, and Kildare Island, explained takes its made-up name apart. Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks is documentary television shot on Dare County water with Dare County boats. If you want to stand where a show was made, this is the one where you can.

Wicked Tuna: Outer Banks, asked and answered