Cape Fear Riverwatch Striper Tournament
Dale Nixon, Buzz Maloney, and Capt. Cord Hieronymus, of Hieronymus Fishing Charters, caught, tagged, and released 13 striped bass in the Cape Fear River to take home the win in the Cape Fear Riverwatch Striper Tournament. Most of their fish fell for soft plastics rigged weedless in the NE Cape Fear River.
Catching, tagging, and releasing 13 striped bass over the course of the event’s one fishing day, Capt. Cord Hieronymus and anglers Dale Nixon and Buzz Maloney easily took home the title for most releases in the 2012 Cape Fear Riverwatch Striped Bass Tournament. The anglers’ two largest fish (28 and 29”) also earned them the top aggregate honors in the event.
Hieronymus didn’t have an opportunity to pre-fish for the event, but it didn’t seem to handicap the trio’s success.
“I’d been commercial king mackerel fishing out of Hatteras for the past month,” he explained, “I told the guys we might not catch much. Then we ended up hooking a fish five minutes after we got started.”
Though they’d broken the skunk on the boat, the anglers didn’t have much action for the next few hours. Things changed around noon, as the anglers found an active pod of fish feeding along a grassy shoreline in the Northeast Cape Fear River.
After catching a fish while trolling diving plugs, the anglers put away the trolling gear and began casting.
With the boat in 40’ of water and his anglers working the bank, Hieronymus soon had his hands full.
“Dale and Buzz were pretty much going fish for fish,” he said. “They caught about five back to back, and it was pandemonium. I had to put two tags in each fish, get a photo, release it, and fill out paperwork for each one.”
A secret soft plastic bait rigged on weedless hooks produced their other eleven fish of the day.
“You can fish jigheads and catch just as many,” Hieronymus explained, “but you’ll go through about 30 in a day. They also probably would’ve bitten other lures, but that bait was working so we kept throwing it.”
Continuing to work the area as the afternoon went on, the anglers steadily picked away at the fish, landing around a half dozen puppy drum amidst the striped bass.
“That was actually a spot where I’ve never caught them before,” the captain continued, “and I’ve been back there since the tournament and haven’t caught another one.”
With time running short before the tournament’s 3:00 lines-out time, Hieronymus gave his anglers one more cast, and Nixon managed to hook up yet again, adding a final fish to the team’s total.
Through entry fees, a silent auction, and a fundraising banquet, the Cape Fear Riverwatch Striped Bass Tournament raises funds to help enhance the river’s fisheries. Their biggest project involves placing rock “fish ramps” at the Cape Fear’s locks and dams to enable anadromous fish, like striped bass, herring, and sturgeon, to work their way past the hard structures and reach their upriver spawning grounds.
Through proceeds generated by the Striper Tournament and other venues, the group has already completed a rock ramp at Lock and Dam #1, but two more of the obstacles stand between the fish and their preferred spawning habitat.
More information about the project is available at Cape Fear Riverwatch’s website www.cfrw.us/restore.
