Tournament Report – 2016 Wrightsville Beach Inshore Challenge
A 4.03 lb. flatfish brought to the scales by Kyle Jefferys and Team “Hemmed Up” earned first place in the Wrightsville Beach Inshore Challenge’s flounder division. Kyle Stewart, of “Team Stumpjumper,” took first in the redfish division with the 7.19 lb. red drum they brought to the scales at the 11th hour. The two fish topped the leaderboards at the event, held July 15-16 out of Wild Wing Café and Wrightsville Beach Marina.
Team “Hemmed Up,” consisting of Kyle and Dylan Jefferys and Chase Leblanc, went into the tournament without much pre-fishing. “The fishing had been slow leading up to the tournament, so we just decided that we were going to fish the Cape Fear River. It is familiar territory for us,” explained K. Jefferys.
The team caught their first fish around 7:30 am, but found early on that they had to move around to find the fish. “We picked through them until about 11:00, and the bite just stopped,” said Jefferys. However, the hard work and moving around paid off, as Leblanc caught the winning fish on a finger mullet on a Carolina rig around 9:30.
“We thought the fish was around 4 lbs., but we didn’t think it would be a winner,” said Jefferys, whose fish held on to a tight leaderboard for first place.
Jamie Obermeyer and Team “No Name” came in second with a 3.98 lb. flatfish, and Will Callihan and Team “Scales” clinched third with a 3.83 lb. fish.
Dylan Jefferys and Chase Leblanc, of team Hemmed Up, with the 4.03 lb. flounder that won them the top spot on the flounder leaderboard at the 2016 Wrightsville Beach Inshore Challenge.
“Team Stumpjumper,” consisting of Josh Giffith, Philip Hincher, and Kyle Stewart, cut it close to the 4:00 weigh-in cut-off time, as they were one of the last boats to weigh in. However, their 7.19 lb. red drum proved to be the big winner. “We fished the Topsail Inshore Challenge and came up empty handed. We weren’t familiar with the Topsail area, and we had the same problem going into the Wrightsville tournament,” explained Stewart. “We just had no idea where to fish.”
The three anglers headed out tournament morning in the waters around Wrightsville until they found some deeper holes.
“We worked through a few of the deeper holes, chunking crab out on a couple of lines during the outgoing tide, and around 8:30 am we had a red hit the bait,” said Stewart. “We were really surprised that we had a good fish. We caught a lot of stingrays before we hooked up with the reds.”
The team caught a few other reds, but one was overslot and the other was only 22”.
Josh Griffith and Philip Hincher, of Team Stumpjumper, with a 7.19 lb. drum they caught in the waters around Wrightsville Beach. The fish fell for a chunk of crab, and was enough to win them first place on the red drum leaderboard for the 2016 WBIC.
“After 10:30 once high tide hit, we switched to trolling for flounder, but we didn’t have any luck,” laughed Stewart. They headed to the scales, getting there right before the cut-off. “We felt pretty good about the fish after looking at the reports from last year. We hoped we would be in the top 5,” said Stewart.
Jason Dail and “Team Silverspoon” took second in the red drum division with their 7.12 lb. fish. Jamie Obermeyer’s team complemented their strong flounder finish by also taking third place in the red drum division with a 6.73 lb. fish.
More information on the Wrightsville Beach Inshore Challenge and a full leaderboard for the event (as well as the ongoing Inshore Tournament Trail) can be found at www.fishermanspost.com.
