Tournament Report – Flat Bottom Girls
Austin Barefoot with his winnning 8.71 lb. flounder at the awards ceremony of the Flat Bottom Girls Flounder Tournament. The big flatfish bit a live finger mullet under a Whiskey Creek dock.
Austin Barefoot picked a fine day to land the largest flounder of his life, as the 8.71 lb. fish he hooked on Saturday, November 8 was enough to handily top the field at the 11th Annual Flat Bottom Girls Flounder Tournament, held out of Dockside Marina, and to earn the young angler the event’s $1,000 first place check.
Barefoot didn’t even need a boat to earn his prize, as he landed the fat flatfish while fishing from a dock in Wilmington’s Whiskey Creek.
Fishing live finger mullet around the dock, he’d hooked and lost one flounder when the big fish bite around 11:00 that morning.
“When that fish hit, he took right off with it,” Barefoot explained. “At first I didn’t’ realize I didn’t have enough drag on him and he ripped off some line.”
Tightening his drag slowed the flatfish down, and Barefoot was soon able to work it to his waiting landing net.
“I was very excited when I got him on the dock,” Barefoot continued.
Flat Bottom Girls requires its participants to weigh their fish in alive as they’re used as brood stock to further North Carolina aquaculture research, and Barefoot already had a plan on how he’d keep a doormat flounder alive if he was to hook one.
“I had a big baitwell thing with a lid and put him in there,” he explained.
Though he was fairly confident the fish would put him atop the leaderboard, Barefoot had an hour to wait before the scales opened so he continued fishing to while away the time.
“I was pretty sure in my mind that fish would be a winner,” he said. “That was a pretty solid fish, but I kept fishing for a little while and didn’t do much.”
As noon approached, Barefoot drove his fish to Dockside and the scales to find out the official weight and add it to the UNCW aquaculture program’s waiting holding tank.
He was proven right as the scales closed at 5:00 that afternoon and the near 9-pounder remained atop the board by over a pound.
Donald Aiken and “Team Dockside” scaled a fat 7.61 lb. flatfish to take home second in the event. Fred Davis and the “Turnitup” crew earned third for a 4.41 lb. fish, and Sam Daughtry, on the “Parker” secured fourth with a 2.20 lb. flounder. Jake Holmes and the “Buckner Steel Erectors” team rounded out the top five with a 1.41 lb. fish.
More information on the Flat Bottom Girls Tournament and the flounder aquaculture research it supports can be found at www.fishfortomorrow.org.
