Calcutta Wahoo Challenge 2008
The “Piracy” crew pulled off a hometown win in the 2008 Calcutta Wahoo Challenge, catching a 79.9 lb. wahoo on the tournament’s final day to win the event by over 20 lbs. A skirted ballyhoo on top fooled the team’s big fish around the 800 line in 34 fathoms.
Dominating the field at the 2008 Calcutta Wahoo Challenge, held November 5-8 out of the Morehead City Waterfront, owner Curtis Struyk and Capt. Chris Russell, aboard the 61′ Shearline “Piracy,” weighed in a 79.9 lb. wahoo to earn first place and over $20,000, and they wouldn’t even have needed the nearly-80 lb. fish, as they had another around 70 lbs. in the box that also would have topped the field.
Electing to fish Friday and Saturday of the two out of three possible fishing day event, the Morehead City crew headed south on Friday morning, trolling from the 300 loran line down to the 230 with very little to show for it.
Finding nothing worth returning to on Friday, the anglers decided on a new game plan for Saturday.
“There was a good area on the Roffer’s report (a fishing forecasting service) around the 805 line,” Russell reported, “so we went way north. I pulled it back, and we set the lines out at the 820 in 30 fathoms.”
Attentive anglers may remember several trophy wahoo (up to 100+ lbs.) caught by king mackerel anglers this fall at spots just east of Lookout Shoals, inshore of where the “Piracy” got their day started, and these monster fish weren’t far from Russell’s mind either.
“A couple weeks ago we were hearing about those hundred pounders,” he said. “Well this ain’t my first rodeo, and we went right where those fish are supposed to be now, and guess what, they were there.”
Around 10:30, the anglers were fighting a wahoo on the planer rod right in 34 fathoms of water due east of Drum Inlet, and they had another strike.
“That fish made a bad mistake,” Russell said. “He bit the captain’s pole.” With the boat barely in gear while they were cranking on the planer fish, Russell saw a flash under the left long rigger, a rod that resides on the bridge aboard the “Piracy.”
“I saw that flash,” Russell recalled, “and he tried it and knocked it out of the clip. I gave it a couple cranks, and he flashed up and ate it.”
A ballyhoo underneath a secret lure Russell referred to only as the “Patriot Missile” fooled the ‘hoo, and the captain passed the rod down to the cockpit and angler Matt Compton as the fish ran.
Compton went to work on the fish, and after several long runs, he had it near the boat around 20 minutes after the bite.
When he’d worked the big wahoo within range, Doug Paulus leaned over and sank home the gaff.
After putting the big fish in the boat, the crew reset the spread and continued trolling.
They worked the area for another hour and a half before deciding to head home in building seas driven by a rising southerly wind.
“We were in a bad position for that ride home,” Russell said. Their positioning for the haul back to Beaufort Inlet may have been poor, but no one could argue with the 79.9 lb. wahoo’s position on the leaderboard after they reached the scales. At the awards, Russell was clearly ecstatic at his first time finishing in first place in a tournament in 25 years of fishing the area.
Posting a 55.9 lb. wahoo to take the lead in the event after Friday’s fishing, the “Bac-in-Five” crew wound up with second place in the event, taking home a check for $11,885. Local Capt. Andy Crews fished the event with mate Nate Lucov, Pete Lucov, and Jeff Shapiro aboard the 64′ Viking from Barnegat Light, NJ, and owned by Michael Mitrow.
The “Bac-in-Five” crew also took clues from a Roffer’s forecast, deciding to head south Friday to a good looking area near the Swansboro Hole. Crews began seeing some strong bait marks very quickly after the team began fishing, and the anglers decided to stay in the area.
“We just kept working over the bait marks,” Crews explained. The marks surrendered a pair of wahoo in the 30 lb. class as the morning wore on, further convincing the team to stay where they were.
At 11:00, the “Bac-in-Five” got a solid strike on the planer bait, a ballyhoo behind an undisclosed lure. Pete Lucov took the rod after the bite, and he began fighting the fish.
He was able to work the fish to the boat in around 15 minutes, and Nate Lucov planted the gaff and brought the wahoo aboard.
Continuing to stay with the bait for the rest of the day, the anglers landed another wahoo and several blackfin tuna before heading back to Beaufort to weigh in. On Saturday, they returned to the area and again found excellent bait marks, but were unable to hook up, which Crews blamed on the rough seas.
“The weather really affected the fishing today,” Crews said at Saturday night’s awards ceremony. “It was pretty bad for us.”
After winning the 2006 fall Calcutta Wahoo Challenge event, the 2007 spring tournament, and the 2007 two-tournament aggregate prize, the “Weldor’s Ark,” team has become something of a legend at the tournament. They didn’t win the 2008 event, but they stayed in the money, posting a 47.6 lb. wahoo to finish third.
Owner John Roberts ran the 56′ Jarrett Bay for the tournament with his brother Lou, Capt. Justin Cleve, and friends Glen Krofschick and Doug aboard. The crew got into some sailfish action on Friday, but they didn’t land anything worth weighing until 10:15 Saturday morning, when their third place fish bit a ballyhoo under a blue/white Ilander on the planer rod.
They found the fish while working a current rip in 50 fathoms near the 400 line, and landed it after a brief battle.
Cape Carteret’s “Magic Marlin” took home fourth place in the tournament with a 46.9 lb. fish. Capt. Daniel Lee, Michael Tickle, and Ricky White fished the event aboard Lee’s 32′ Jarrett Bay center console.
The “Magic Marlin” fish bit a planer ballyhoo under an Ilander on Friday morning around 9:30, and White quickly fought it to the boat and Tickle’s waiting gaff.
A 44.85 lb. wahoo secured fifth place for Capt. David Barber on the “Cardinal Sin,” and also earned angler Monica Molohon the event’s Top Lady Angler prize.
Kris Day, fishing with with Capt. Tim Day aboard the “Fishin Days,” landed the 34.80 lb. wahoo that topped the Junior Angler competition.
Calcutta Wahoo Challenge participants not only get to fish a unique tournament with world class hospitality, they get the knowledge that they’re helping out the tournament’s two charitable beneficiaries: the Take a Kid Fishing Foundation (dedicated to exposing underprivileged kids to the joys of fishing) and the Carteret County Hospice House (a fund dedicated to building a hospice care facility in the county).
