North Carolina Inshore Championship
Mark and Sam Daughtry with the 7.49 lb. red drum and 5.95 lb. flounder that earned them first place red drum and first place aggregate in the North Carolina Inshore Championship. They hooked the fish at some nearshore structure off Fort Fisher on live finger mullet.
The mood was high aboard the “Flounder Nuts” as it pulled up to the scales of the North Carolina Inshore Championship, and the reason was soon apparent—the 11.02 lb. flounder the crew weighed in easily secured first place on the event’s flounder leaderboard along with top Senior and Lady Angler honors as well.
Supply, NC’s Al Fulford, fishing with his wife Teresa and Lynn and DeeDee Creech aboard the 25’ Sea Chaser Bay Boat, also secured their spot as the 2012 Fisherman’s Post Inshore Tournament Trail Flounder Champions with the massive flatfish.
As the team’s name suggests, they’re serious flounder aficionados, and though they hadn’t fished in the week leading up to the event, they had a solid game plan in place.
“We decided to hit the grass beds in the [Cape Fear] river early and then move in the Cut on the slack tide,” Fulford explained.
The plan worked from the start, as the anglers landed a 5 lb. flounder around 8:00 that morning, topping it with a 6 lb. fish around midday.
Their doormat didn’t bite until they’d headed in Snow’s Cut to catch the slack low tide in the early afternoon.
“We were fishing off a grass bank in the Cut with a drop-off,” Fulford explained. “It went from around 9 feet down to 16 feet where we had the boat.”
A small, live finger mullet DeeDee Creech had dropped in the deeper water below the boat fooled the big flatfish, but the anglers didn’t know quite what they’d hooked at first.
“I was in the front of the boat running the trolling motor,” Fulford said. “We didn’t really know until she drug that fish to the top of the water. Teresa screamed as soon as she saw it, and I ran back to the back of the boat and grabbed the net.”
The fish ran back to the bottom again, and Creech worked it back up to the surface for another net attempt.
“He’d already jumped out of the net once,” Fulford said, “and I got him and he backed out again.”
The fish made a third run into the depths, and Creech again worked it back to the surface and into net range.
“I’d left the trolling motor on up front,” reported Fulford. “We were out in the middle of the Cut when I got him in the net, basically dragging that fish. Luckily it was hooked under the bone in the mouth. The only way he would have got loose would be to break the line.”
After netting the fish, the anglers immediately headed for the scales at nearby Inlet Watch Marina and weighed the huge flounder in to secure their victory.
Sam Daughtry and “Team Parker” took home the first place check in the Red Drum Division, scaling a 26.75”, 7.49 lb. fish.
Daughtry, of Wilmington, and his brother Mark fished the tournament aboard his 21’ Parker and focused their search for a winning fish in the ocean, where they also found a 5.95 lb. flounder that earned them the top spot in the tournament’s Aggregate category.
Also using live finger mullet, the anglers put together an impressive catch of flounder while fishing some structure near Sheepshead Rock on the morning of the event, including three fish over 5 lbs.
I caught the first four flounder,” Sam Daughtry reported. “Then Mark caught just about everything else. It got to the point where I was just tying rigs for him because there’s so much structure there, but I was happy doing that if he was going to keep catching fish like he was.”
Around noon, the Daughtry brothers headed south for a favorite drum spot, a ledge just off Frying Pan Shoals in 25’ of water.
By 1:00, they’d landed the near-27” red drum that earned them their biggest check.
“Those fish there are just always fat,” Daughtry explained. “He was just under 27 inches. I told Mark we probably weren’t going to do any better than that one, so we went back to flounder fishing.”
The fast flatfish action the brothers had found that morning had dissipated, and they didn’t land another legal fish until making the call to head back to Carolina Beach Inlet and the scales.
Once there they debated between several of their 5+ lb. flounder (on which was the heaviest) before scaling their catch and securing the top of the red drum leaderboard.
Dennis Spangler weighed in the second place red drum at 6.80 lbs., and Justin Eddins captured third with a 6.76 lb. fish.
Another big flatfish weighing 8.78 lbs. earned Jason McDowell second place on the flounder side, and David Jordan’s 7.68 lb. fish took third and brought Will Jordan the tournament’s Top Junior Angler honors as well.
More information on the North Carolina Inshore Championship and full leaderboard for both the event and the Inshore Tournament Trail are available at www.fishermanspost.com.
