Tournament Report – CB Inshore Challenge
Seven proved to be a magic number at the Carolina Beach Inshore Challenge, as a pair of seven pound red drum and a near-seven pound flounder propelled their respective teams to the tops of the event’s two separate leaderboards. Wilmington’s “Total Liability” crew took home top spot in the red drum division, and fellow locals “Turnitup” outdid their flounder competition to earn first place honors in the event, held September 12 out of Inlet Watch Marina.
Capt. Jake Kight, Adam Meyer, Capt. Rob Koraly, and Liz Wells with the 14.43 lb. pair of red drum that earned them first place on the redfish leaderboard at the 2015 Carolina Beach Inshore Challenge. Both fish fell for live finger mullet off the ICW near Swansboro.
Piggybacking on their win at the Topsail Inshore Challenge, the “Total Liability” crew of Adam Meyer, Liz Pitts, and Capts. Rob Koraly and Jake Kight chose to fish the captains’ home waters near Swansboro in their search for heavy fish, a quest that culminated in the 7.36 and 7.07 lb. red drum that secured their victory in the two-fish aggregate event.
“We followed the same game plan we did for Topsail,” Capt. Rob Koraly explained. “Just fishing a lot of shallow spots along the ICW.”
The crew found reds at nearly every spot they fished, but working through the over-slot and smaller fish to put together the pair they weighed took some work.
“We had a 27.5 incher on our first cast,” Koraly continued, “and then nothing over 24 at our first spot.”
Casting live mullet at their likely areas, the anglers upgraded with a 26” fish at their second spot, but Koraly knew they’d need some stronger reds to fight the stiff competition in the event.
While casting to a point around 9:30 that morning, the anglers had just landed another pair of over-slot reds when Koraly hooked a third fish he thought would also be too big.
“When we got him up to the boat I thought he’d be over, too,” the captain recalled. “It turned out it was just a pretty, round fish that ended up measuring.”
Bouncing to several more spots as the morning wore on, the “Total Liability” crew continued hooking reds but weren’t able to upgrade the fish they had in their livewell until it was nearly time to make the long ride to Carolina Beach.
“We had a flurry right as I was looking at some weather behind us and thinking we needed to go,” Koraly continued.
After missing a fish, Meyer pounced on another rod that drew a bite and was soon fast to the crew’s second 7-pounder.
“Adam was eating a sandwich when he missed a bite,” Koraly explained. “I was giving him lip about that when another rod went down and he beat me to it.”
The anglers quickly got the fish to the boat, measured it, and realized it was the near-perfect 27” red they needed. They quickly took off down the ICW for Carolina Beach, making a short stop to look for a flounder at the Figure Eight Island Bridge before steaming down to the scales with time to spare.
Capt. Jason Dail and the “Silverspoon” team found their way into second place on the red drum side with two reds weighing 13.75 lbs. Capt. Jeff Wolfe and the “Gray Wolfe” anglers rounded out the top three with a 13.66 lb. aggregate.
Fred Davis, fishing with his daughter Bethany on the “Turnitup,” paired a 3.48 lb. flounder with their 6.98 lb. fish to secure the top spot on the tournament’s two-flounder leaderboard.
After doing some pre-fishing before the tournament, Davis thought he knew where some fat flatfish would be hiding, and he didn’t have to wait too long before hooking the one that secured the pair’s win.
The anglers started their day in Snow’s Cut, and it wasn’t long before Bethany had a solid bite while casting to a grass bank in the waterway. A live finger mullet fooled the big flounder, and the anglers were able to land it without much drama.
“We had that fish in the about around 8:30,” Davis explained. “Beth caught it like usual, but I didn’t really think it was that big at the time. It wasn’t a very long fish, but I grabbed his head and I thought he had some thickness to him. I was calling it a 5-pounder when I talked to people over the course of the day.”
As the tide rose, the father/daughter crew made their way into the Cape Fear River and began hopping between a series of shallow grass islands and shorelines while looking for a fish to pair with their big one.
“We were catching fish pretty quick once the tide started falling,” Davis said. “We actually had several 3-pounders, and I picked what I thought was the biggest when we got to the scales.”
As it played out, any legal flounder would have sufficed for their kicker fish, as the Davis crew needed less than a pound on top of their 6.98 lb. flounder to top the leaderboard.
Luke Donat and the “Donat Marine Solutions” crew secured second place in the flounder division with a 7.75 lb. pair of flatfish, and Al Fulford and the “Flounder Nutzs” earned third with a 7.65 lb. aggregate.
More information on the Carolina Beach Inshore Challenge and a full leaderboard for the event and the season-long Inshore Tournament Trail can be found at www.fishermanspost.com.
