Pleasure Island Fall Surf Challenge Welcome

October 17 – 19, 2025

WELCOME

The fall season will soon be arriving and, along with it, so will the fantastic fall surf fishing action along the shores of Carolina Beach, Kure Beach, and Fort Fisher. So break out the long rods and join Fisherman’s Post for our seventeenth annual Pleasure Island Fall Surf Fishing Challenge, southern NC’s largest surf fishing tournament.

Previous tournament anglers will find our familiar format, a 36-hour round-the-clock fishing event with leaderboards paying out for the area’s most common surf catches (plus a Red Drum TWT).

The heaviest bluefish, trout (speckled or gray), pompano, black drum, and sea mullet weighed in will be earning anglers some fat checks, and with five places per species, that means 25 happy anglers will be walking away with stout checks following Sunday’s Awards Ceremony.

In addition, the very popular Red Drum TWT (optional) will award potentially record-payouts to the anglers weighing in the heaviest slot red drum (18-27”) during the tournament.

The Pleasure Island Surf Fishing Challenge has always hosted some excellent family participation, and we’re proud once again to offer Junior, Senior, and Lady Angler guaranteed prizes to encourage everyone to bring the whole clan down to the beach for the tournament weekend.

All told, there are over 30 ways to get in on some of the event’s prize purse (over $30,000 given away last year!). All of our participants will be receiving a complimentary ticket (at Registration) to our big prize raffle on Sunday, as well as complimentary food and drink at the Awards Dinner immediately preceding the presentation of checks and prizes. And Island Tackle & Hardware will also be hosting their annual prize raffle again this year.

For your convenience, anglers can once again weigh their catches in at any time during the course of fishing at any of our three 24-hour weigh stations—Island Tackle & Hardware, Freeman Park just past the start of beach driving and located midway between the dunes and the ocean, and at Crossover 1 on the Fort Fisher State Recreational Area drive-on beach.

Also returning this year will be our beneficiary, First Fruit Ministries. First Fruit Ministries began in 1998 and has grown to serve over 20,000 hot meals, provide emergency groceries to over 5,000 households, and shelter over 24 homeless women and families annually.

So please show (or tell) some of our invaluable sponsors that you appreciate their support of this event, and come see us in the public parking lot nestled between the Sea Witch Café and Carolina Beach Municipal Yacht Basin (224 Canal Drive, Carolina Beach, NC 28428) on Friday, October 17, to register and get in on the action.

Gary Hurley / Tournament Director
(910) 452-6378
surf@fishermanspost.com