Hook and Bones Redfish Open
Capt. Ricky Kellum , of Speckled Sepcialist Charters, and Derrick Barbee–team “Run and Gun”–with the pair of red drum weighing 11.21 lbs. that earned them first place in the Hook and Bones Redfish Open.
“I figured it’d take 13 lbs. to win this tournament,” Capt. Ricky Kellum said. “I figured we’d place, but we got up there and weighed and nobody even had 10.”
Kellum and partner Derrick Barbee—team “Run and Gun”—scaled a pair of red drum weighing 11.21 lbs. in the 2013 Hook and Bones Redfish Open, held August 10 out of the Swansboro waterfront, to earn first place in the event and the guaranteed $5,000 first place prize.
Kellum, who operates Speckled Specialist Charters out of Jacksonville, had guide trips all week leading up to the event, but a client cancelled for his Friday trip, enabling him to get out and do some scouting.
“I don’t even fish anymore when I’m doing that,” Kellum explained. “I just go looking. If the reds don’t get bothered, they’ll stay in the same area.”
Apparently the school of fish he located Friday didn’t get bothered, as they were feeding in the same area when he and Barbee returned to the spot, a large flat off the New River, on Saturday morning.
“There were menhaden, shrimp, and mullet all over that flat, and the reds were busting them the whole day,” Kellum explained.
The fish were feeding in water so shallow that he and Barbee couldn’t quite get to them in their 19’ Sea Pro Bay Boat, but they were able to just get within casting range, at least with topwater plugs.
“We were throwing Zara Spooks,” Kellum continued. “It was the only thing you could cast far enough to get to them.”
On the pair’s second cast, they both hooked up with reds, with Kellum’s fish ending up the 6.84 lb., 26.5” red that anchored their winning aggregate and topped the event’s single big fish TWT. Barbee’s fish was a 24” red weighing just under 4 lbs., putting a double digit aggregate weight in the boat minutes after they began fishing.
“That took a lot of the pressure off of us,” Kellum said.
With the stress of putting a legal pair of fish in the boat behind them, the “Run and Gun” crew kept working away at the school of fish for the rest of the day, landing around 15 more to cull out their small fish.
“We should’ve caught 50,” Kellum reported. “They were acting funny, short-striking and knocking the plug out of the water. I’d normally throw a Gulp in after that and hook them, but we couldn’t cast the Gulps far enough.”
Most of the rest of the fish they hooked were all very similar in size to Barbee’s first, and the anglers had to put many on a scale before finding one in the mid-4 lb. range to complement their big fish.
At the scales, the double-digit weights Kellum expected to see on the board weren’t there, and the “Run and Gun” fish took the lead and stayed there until the scales closed.
“We got lucky fishing out of the wind in the river,” he said. “The Swansboro guys were on some big fish, but that SW wind blows right down the waterway up there and messed them up.”
Tied for second and third place with 9.64 lb. aggregates were the “Reel Moody” and “White Latinos” crews, but Floyd Moody, Jr., and Floyd Moody, III, scaled their fish first to earn second.
Capt. Allen Jernigan and Tim Chavez—the “White Latinos”—went home with third.
More information on the Hook and Bones event can be found at www.hookandbones.com.
