Cape Fear Home Builders Fishtales Tournament
Christian Wolfe and Luke Tippett, of Wilmington, with the 6.0 lb. second place red drum and the 1.7 lb. first place speckled trout in the Wilmington-Cape Fear Homebuilders Fish Tales Tournament. Both fish bit soft plastic baits in the backwaters off the lower Cape Fear River.
With divisions for several popular inshore and offshore targets, the Wilmington-Cape Fear Homebuilders Association held their Third Annual Fish Tales Tournament out of Wrightsville Beach’s Dockside Marina on August 20.
Though a slow king mackerel bite conspired to keep that leader board empty for the event, the inshore fishing more than made up for the lack of kings (and the king mackerel money will be rolling over into next years’ event).
Topping the event’s most popular division, Wilmington’s Butch Davis scaled a 6.7 lb. red drum to take home the $500 first place check. Davis, fishing solo on a 14’ Alumacraft jon boat, located some fish in the week preceding the tournament.
“I fished three days last week,” he explained, “and I knew where they were. I caught one fish each day and just left the rest alone.”
Returning to his spot on tournament morning, a grassy bank off the ICW, it didn’t take long for Davis to get back on his fish.
“I had the winning fish in the boat at 6:05 that morning,” he explained.
A D.O.A. soft plastic in the rainbow trout color fooled the fat red.
“They call it rainbow trout,” Davis continued, “but it’s got a pearl belly and looks a lot like a mullet.”
When he put the fish on the measuring boat, it went 26.75”, exactly what Davis was looking for.
“I wanted a quarter inch of safety in there just in case their ruler measured him a little different than mine did,” he explained.
Butch Davis, of Wilmington, with the winning red drum in the Wilmington-Cape Fear Homebuilders Fish Tails Tournament. The 6.7 lb. red took an interest in a D.OA. soft plastic at a grassy bank in the ICW near Wrightsville Beach.
With an upper-slot red in the boat, Davis kept working the school, looking for one that might weigh a little heavier.
“I caught 25 or 30 reds,” Davis said. “About 10 were over-slot, and I had two more the exact same length, but they didn’t come close on the weight.”
Having to get off the water early on tournament day, Davis was waiting when the scales opened at 2:00 that afternoon.
Scaling a 6.0 lb. red drum good for second place, as well as the event’s heaviest speckled trout at 1.7 lbs., were Wilmington’s Christian Wolfe and Luke Tippett.
The pair, fishing on a 17’ Ranger Banshee, targeted the lower Cape Fear River in their search for trout, flounder, and drum, and they found plenty of action.
After also doing some pre-fishing for the event, Wolfe had located a few speckled trout in the lower river, and he hit that spot early on tournament morning.
“We were fishing in the third bay, down across from Southport,” Wolfe explained.
Casting green and chartreuse soft plastics, he and Tippett landed a pair of specks, with the larger the 17.5” tournament winner.
“Luke caught that fish,” Wolfe explained. “I’d caught a small flounder on my first cast at that trout spot. Luke caught a 15” trout about five minutes later, and then he caught the bigger one. When we put that trout in the boat, I was pumped because I knew one trout could win it.”
Scrapping the trout plan shortly thereafter, the anglers got on to a school of slot reds, catching around 15 of them. Wolfe landed the 26” fish they weighed in on a chartreuse D.O.A. jerkbait.
Christian Wolfe’s father, Capt. Jeff Wolfe of Seahawk Inshore Fishing Charters, took the top spot in the tournament’s flounder category with a 4.5 lb. fish caught by angler Kevin Gray.
Gray, J. Wolfe, and Jason Sellers (who landed the 5.7 lb. third place red drum) teamed up and fished on Wolfe’s 21’ Kenner bay boat.
They had an excellent day of flounder and drum fishing. By the time the winning flounder came over the gunnels, they already had 3.0 and 3.5 lb. fish in the boat and had caught a number of reds.
“I made up my mind early on,” J. Wolfe explained, “that we were going to fish lures. I’d caught several citation and near-citation flounder on Gulp baits lately, and I thought we’d do better by covering some ground and casting Gulps.”
Jason Sellers with the 4.5 lb. flounder that earned he, Kevin Gray, and Capt. Jeff Wolfe the top spot in the Flounder Divsion of the Fish Tales Tournament. The flatfish fell for a rootbeer/chartreuse Gulp shrimp in a creekmouth off the Lower Cape Fear River.
Working a large cove off the Cape Fear with a creek feeding it, an area where J. Wolfe has had good flounder luck recently, paid off when Gray hooked the big flatfish around 10:30. A root beer/chartreuse tail Gulp shrimp fooled the big fish.
“That fish fought real hard,” J. Wolfe said. “I saw it before I could net it and thought it was even bigger than it was. They always look bigger in the water, though.”
The Wilmington-Cape Fear Homebuilders event also featured a sailfish TWT, and Craig Stevens, on the “Blue Dog,” took home the honors with one sailfish release.
