Havelock-Cherry Point Trout Tournament
Jason Yates weighs in part of the 13.7 lb. speckled trout aggregate that earned he and Kendall Bullington the win in the Havelock/Cherry Point Rotary Speckled Trout Tournament. Photo Courtesy of Ken Buday/Havelock News.
Topping their nearest competition by over 3 lbs., Morehead City’s Kendall Bullington and Jason Yates earned the victory in the 2011 Havelock/Cherry Point Rotary Sound of Freedom Speckled Trout Tournament. The pair hauled a quartet of speckled trout weighing 13.7 lbs. to the scales at Havelock’s Crabby Patty’s to secure the top spot on the leaderboard.
“We pre-fished a little,” Yates explained, “but not where we ended up catching our fish.”
Deciding to look for hefty specks in Hancock and Slocum Creeks off the lower Neuse River on the tournament morning turned into a good decision for the pair.
“We caught fish pretty much spread out all through the day,” Yates continued. “They seemed to be along the shorelines, but we weren’t really fishing any structure you could see.”
Keeping on the move with their trolling motor, the pair caught over 30 trout on the day of the event, enabling them to work their way up to the four fish they eventually weighed.
“We caught most of them on live shrimp,” Yates said. “We threw MirrOlures a little bit and caught a few on them, but most of the big ones were on shrimp.”
The “big ones” included the 4.83 lb. fish that also earned the pair the top spot in the tournament’s single big fish TWT, landed by Bullington after it struck one of the angler’s live shrimp.
“We were feeling pretty good about what we had,” Yates reported, “but you always question it because you don’t know what everybody else did. We definitely didn’t expect to take the big fish with that one.”
At the scales, the good feeling was confirmed, as Bullington and Yates’ catch handily pushed them into first place.
With four trout weighing 10.64 lbs., Russ Davis earned second place in the Sound of Freedom tournament, and Capt. Ricky Kellum rounded out the top three, scaling a four-fish, 10.47 lb. stringer.
The Sound of Freedom Speckled Trout Tournament raises funds for the Havelock/Cherry Point Rotary Club, an organization devoted to serving those in need and improving the area through community initiatives and programs like the Boys and Girls Club, Wounded Warrior Program, and much more. More information about the club and the event is available at www.havelockcherrypointrotary.org.
