Tournament Report – Carolina Redfish Series #2
Capt. Tom Roller and partner John Hadley—team “Smokey Burnout”—scaled an impressive pair of slot red drum totaling 13.30 lbs. to handily take home first place at the 2015 Carolina Redfish Series event #2, held June 13 out of Atlantic Beach’s Chasin’ Tails Outdoors.
John Hadley and Capt. Tom Roller with the 13.30 lb. winning pair of red drum in Carolina Redfish Series event #2. Their fish bit a Z-Man soft plastic and a gold spoon in Back and Core Sounds.
Roller, a local charter captain, had spent the previous week on the water, but he hadn’t been able to do as much redfish scouting as he’d have liked.
“I’d been fishing in the ocean,” he explained, “so the pre-fishing credit goes to John. He found three good schools we wanted to check out during the tournament.”
The preparation paid off, as the anglers were in fish shortly after cutting off their motor.
“We had our first fish by 6:30,” Roller continued. “We were fishing in Core and Back Sound since they closed gillnetting there. You see more and bigger fish and they’re easier to pattern when it’s closed.”
A solid tournament red, their first weighed just over 6 lbs. and fell for a Z-Man soft plastic. After putting that one in the livewell, the anglers struggled a bit to find its twin, landing reds from 16-24” and several over-slot fish, but none in the upper-slot window they were looking for.
After checking out another area without finding a group of upper-slot fish, they found some good fortune.
“We found the right school in the right place,” Roller said. “We had an extreme low tide that day, and these fish were in a place we could fish on that super low water.”
Their second scale fish attacked a gold spoon the captain was casting at their low tide spot, and Roller was a bit concerned about its size.
“I had to call a buddy to check how they were measuring the fish,” Roller explained. “It turned out I was pinching the tail too much and it was a 26.75 fish.”
After weighing the red at 7.25 lbs., Roller knew they had something to get excited about.
“I don’t fish many tournaments,” he said. “And I knew it would lose a little weight in the livewell but I knew the odds of winning were huge with a 7+ lb. fish. I almost didn’t want to keep fishing.”
The anglers did, however, finally heading back towards Atlantic Beach to get their boat into cooler water to help out the fish in their livewell and shorten the distance to the scales.
Jacob Gainey and Jerry Burns on team “Flatsmaster” secured second place in the tournament with a pair of reds weighing 11.99 lbs., and the “Trueline” crew of Rick Patterson and John Hislop rounded out the top three with 11.59 lbs. of drum.
More information on the Carolina Redfish Series and a full leaderboard are available at www.carolinaredfishseries.com.
