2024 Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge
The 2024 Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge is Fisherman’s Post’s first surf fishing event each year, bringing teams to Carolina Beach, Kure Beach, and Fort Fisher where up to four anglers per team compete.
The leaderboard species for this tournament are red drum, bluefish, black drum, and sea mullet, with winners based on a team’s three-fish aggregate for each species. The Pleasure Island Team tournament also offers a Team Aggregate TWT (based on the weight total of a team’s single heaviest fish from each of the four divisions), and a Hall of Fame Awards (based off of a team’s total weight of all fish from all four categories).
This year’s winner of the Team Aggregate TWT was also the winner of the Bluefish Division. Team Reel Good, with anglers Wayne Ayers, Rob Domico, Tim Harrison, and Scott Sessoms from Southport/Oak Island and western North Carolina, took the Bluefish Division with a three-fish aggregate weight of 10.8 lbs. However, the three-fish aggregate was dominated by their single heaviest bluefish (which was also the tournament’s single heaviest bluefish) at 9.7 lbs.
The 9.7 lb. bluefish came Sunday morning when the team had finally found some cleaner water, as the weekend’s windy conditions brought dirty water onto the beach for most of the weekend. Wayne Ayers landed the bluefish around 9:00 am on an incoming tide using a bluefish rig with a float and baited with cut pinfish. He and his team were fishing Fort Fisher where the rocks meet the beach.
Sunday morning also produced one black drum weighing 1.6 lbs., but the team’s other black drum (2.0 lbs.) and their two modest sea mullet came on Saturday on Fishbites and cut shrimp.
Reel Good’s Team Aggregate TWT winning weight was 12.6 lbs., and that came from the 9.7 bluefish, the 2.0 black drum, and a 0.9 sea mullet.
Reel Good also finished in second place in the Hall of Fame competition with a total weight of 15.90 lbs.
The Hall of Fame winner was also the Black Drum Division winner. Team Rigged for Pleasure weighed in a tournament best 16.60 lbs. to earn Hall of Fame honors—team name, anglers’ names, and total weight on a forever plaque to be on display at all future Pleasure Island Team events.
Anna Edney, Joe Edney, Brianna Smith-Overman, and Mike Walter, of Team Rigged for Pleasure, won the Black Drum Division with a three-fish aggregate of 14.4 lbs., coming from three black drum weighing 5.4, 3.7, and 5.3 lbs. All of their black drum came on Saturday between 3:00-4:30 pm.
The team was fishing about 3/4 of a mile from the end of Fort Fisher’s drive-on beach, where they had scouted out a nice hole earlier in the weekend. When clearer water started pushing in in a wedge right over the hole (dirty water to each side of the wedge), they began landing fish quickly on their hi-lo rigs baited with cut shrimp.
In addition, the team landed three bluefish (0.3, 0.2, and 0.1) and three sea mullet (0.8, 0.5, and 0.3). All of the blues and sea mullet came on Fishbites and cut mullet, and the bites happened sporadically throughout the day on Saturday.
Team Rigged for Pleasure, made up of Anna Edney, Joe Edney, Brianna Smith-Overman, and Mike Walter, won the Black Drum Division in the 2024 Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge with a three-fish aggregate weight of 14.4 lbs. (5.4, 3.7, and 5.3). The team also took Hall of Fame honors.
Team Gotcha, out of Winston Salem with anglers Cory Weisner, Chris Oldham, and Bill Nance, took the top spot in the Sea Mullet Division with a three-fish aggregate weight of 3.9 lbs. The team weighed in 1.1, 1.1, and 1.7 lb. sea mullet.
The team was fishing the Carolina Beach area, and they picked up two of the three sea mullet they weighed on Saturday during a west wind. Then their biggest sea mullet was hooked Sunday morning during an incoming tide and after a wind shift.
All of their sea mullet came on bottom rigs baited with sandfleas.
The single heaviest sea mullet in the tournament, though, came from The Palmers, who weighed in a 2.1 lb. sea mullet.
Bill Nance, Chris Oldham, and Cory Weisner, of Team Gotcha, took the top spot in the Sea Mullet Division of the 2024 Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge. Their three sea mullet, totalling 3.9 lbs. (1.1, 1.1, and 1.7), came from the Carolina Beach surf using sandfleas.
The Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge is also the first event in the Surf Series, a season-long competition where anglers fish as many of the Fisherman’s Post surf fishing events as they wish, and then the top five anglers are decided after the fifth and final surf fishing event of the season, the Topsail Fall Surf & Pier Fishing Challenge. The winners are determined by their five heaviest fish over the course of the up to five surf fishing events.
There were 35 anglers that entered the Surf Series prior to the Pleasure Island Team event, and at the conclusion of the weekend, Dale Traxler sits atop the Surf Series field with a standing weight of 7.5 lbs. (a 0.4 bluefish, a 6.1 black drum, and a 1.0 sea mullet). The 6.1 lb. black drum was the single heaviest black drum weighed in during the Pleasure Island Team event.
Currently in second place in the Surf Series is Jeff Palmer with 4.9 lbs. (a 0.1 bluefish, a 2.7 black drum, and a 2.1 sea mullet).
Anglers can still enter the Surf Series prior to the upcoming Topsail Spring Surf & Pier Fishing Challenge on May 3-5.
In total, 45 teams entered this year’s Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge, and as is the tradition, all of the fish weighed in are donated to First Fruit Ministries. First Fruit Ministries began in 1998, and it 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.
For a more complete leaderboard, please visit www.FishermansPost.com. You can also find out more information on the website about the upcoming Topsail Spring Surf & Pier event, as well as the Surf Series.
