Redfish Action #2
Capt. Rob Koraly and Joey Cartwright--the "Sandbar Safari" fishing team scaled this pair of red drum weighing 13.27 lbs. to take first place in Redfish Action Event #2. Their fish fell for Gulp shrimp in a marshy channel near Swansboro's Queens Creek.
“We were one of the first boats to the weigh-in,” Capt. Rob Koraly, of Cape Carteret’s Sandbar Safari Fishing Charters, reported, “and we saw we had 13 lbs. I told Joey that was going to be tough to beat with these conditions.”
Tough indeed, and the pair of reds Koraly and fishing partner Joey Cartwright hauled to the scales at Town Creek Marina weighed 13.27 lbs., enough to earn them the win in the 2011 Redfish Action Cup #2 event, held July 16.
With the redfish bite widely reported as slow from Cape Fear to Cape Lookout, Koraly located a school of fish while on a charter a few days before the tournament.
“I was running between some bays in Swansboro,” he explained, “and I saw a school push up in a channel. It was 50-100 fish, and you could tell by the headwater they were pushing that they were good fish.”
Leaving the reds alone till tournament day, it didn’t take Koraly and Cartwright long to relocate the fish in the shallow marsh channel near Queens Creek where the captain first spotted them.
“We ran right to where they’d been,” the captain said, “and started working the bank. We ran into them in about 15 minutes.”
Casting 4” Gulp shrimp in new penny and natural colors, the anglers began hooking fish after fish.
“We had to move one time to get a little closer to the fish,” Koraly continued, “but that was it.”
With a fat 25” fish on the first cast, the anglers knew they were on the right school, but it took a while after their first to find the upper-slot fish they were looking for.
“After the first one,” Koraly said, “we caught one just a tiny bit oversized, and I was thinking it was going to be easy. But the next few fish were all 22-24 inchers.”
After working the school for much of the morning, the anglers had 25.5” and 26” fish in the well when Koraly landed a perfect tournament fish.
“I measured that fish about eight times,” he explained, “and it was perfect every time. When they put it on the board at the weigh-in, you couldn’t have gotten a finger between the fish’s tail and the 27” mark, but he didn’t go over.”
The big red ended up weighing 7.36 lbs. and topped the tournament’s White Swan Big Bite of the Day single big fish TWT.
With a strong east wind blowing directly down the ICW, the anglers decided to head for Beaufort to ensure they got their perfect fish to the scales.
“After that fish, I figured it was time to head back,” Koraly explained. “A lot can go wrong in a boat in an hour, and I wanted to get back before it got any windier or the tide started falling against that wind. The ride there from Beaufort wasn’t bad, but that ride back was awful.”
Watching and waiting while the other crews weighed in, Koraly and Cartwright were still on top of the board when the scales closed. It was the third redfish tournament they’ve fished this year, and their third win.
“Joey caught both our fish in the last tournament,” Koraly said, “so I was joking that it was my turn in this one, and that ended up being how it worked out.”
Just behind the winners with a pair of reds weighing 13.1 lbs., Dean and Muriel Brock—the “Brock Boys” fishing team—took home second place and the prize for Top Amateur Team in the tournament. The “Dingbatters” crew of Capts. Rennie Clark and Drew “Hurricane” Arndt earned third with 12.11 lbs. of reds.
More information on the Redfish Action Series and a full leader board for this and all other Redfish Action events are available at www.redfishaction.com.
