Tournament Report – Riley Redfish Shootout Series #3
Posting a pair of red drum totaling 12.35 lbs. on a tough fishing day, Capts. Lee Parsons and Mike Hoffman—team “GottaCorona”—secured victory in the third leg of the Riley Rods Redfish Shootout Series, held September 19 out of Surf City’s Soundside Park.
“We had pre-fished a little bit,” Parsons reported, “and we thought we had an idea where some good fish would be.”
The Redfish Guys, Chasin’ Gingers, and GottaCorona fishing teams took home the top three spots in the Redfish Shootout Series #3 event, held out of Soundside Park in Surf City.
Hitting some bays near North Topsail Beach, the anglers indeed found some fish, but they had much tougher fishing conditions than they were hoping for.
“We could almost see the fish but not quite,” Parsons continued. “The wind was up and the water was murky, so we were just blind-casting in an area that I knew was holding them.”
After a brief bit of topwater action slowed down that morning, the anglers tried a variety of lures before finding one that the reds responded to in the murky water.
“We were throwing spinnerbaits, everything,” Parsons said. “Mike had a big spoon with him with one side gold and one side painted black, and that keyed us in to go to spoons.”
Though they’d put a few fish in the boat, the pair didn’t land the first red they weighed until that afternoon.
“We didn’t move around too much,” Parsons explained. “We hit three spots all day and caught six fish. We ended up culling twice.”
Their first cull fish struck around 1:00, and the anglers gladly replaced a smaller red with the 26.5” fish.
After moving to another spot, they hooked another 26”+ fish around 1:30, but Parsons wasn’t too confident in their bag even though the reds were within an inch of NC’s maximum 27” keeper size.
“We thought we had skinny fish,” Parsons said. “Knowing that field, we thought someone would have us with some fatter fish. It wasn’t until we saw other people bringing fish in that we realized how bad the fishing had been that day.”
Scaling their reds didn’t make the captain any more optimistic.
“When I saw we had 12.35, I kind of figured somebody would have 13 lbs. out of that group,” explained Parsons.
As the competition trickled in to the scales, it became apparent that the majority of the field had struggled with the wind and water conditions on tournament day, and when the scales closed, the winners’ nearest competition had less than 11 lbs. total.
The “Chasin’ Gingers” crew of Corey Durako and Richard Gilligan secured second place in the event with a 10.85 lb. two-fish bag. Lee Padrick and Dwayne Smith—“The Redfish Guys”—earned third with 9.94 lbs. of reds.
More information on this event and the rest of the Riley Rods Redfish Shootout Series can be found at www.redfishshootoutseries.com.
