Added on Thursday, June 4, 2009  Fish Post

Fisherman’s Post Spring Inshore Challenge 2009

With another flounder that would have kept him in the top three in reserve, Wilmington’s Dennis Durham scaled a 5.47 lb. flatfish to top the field in the flounder category of the 2009 Fisherman’s Post Newspaper’s Spring Inshore Challenge, earning first place and heading home with $2,345 of the over $11,000 paid out to the winners.

Durham’s fat flattie also earned the Club Cup prize (for the highest finishing fishing club member), the $250 Got-Em-On Live Bait club award, and the Sea Tow Prize (a $250 Tex’s Tackle gift card).

Durham, fishing alone on a 22′ Mitch Craft bay boat, started out the day looking for a speckled trout in the Cape Fear River, and he found some early on. Casting a clear sparkle Billy Bay Halo Shrimp, he had consistent hookups for about 15 minutes.

“I caught probably 10 fish back to back on a grass point with the current ripping around it near Snows Cut,” the winning angler explained. “All the fish were fairly small, though. I hooked one that was bigger and ripped a little drag, but he broke me off, and I never got another trout bite.”

After the early flurry of trout action, Durham decided to head into the river in search of a flounder. It wasn’t long before he had a strike on a live pogy near another grass point, and it turned out to be a quality fish.

“I caught a 4.5 lb. fish and was feeling pretty good about it,” Durham explained. “I knew I had my entry fee back at that point.”

With a sure money fish in the boat, Durham went back to trout fishing, trying to better the 1 lb. class fish he had in the boat, but he was unable to hook another speck.

“I had a lot of other colors of Billy Bay Shrimp,” he said, “but I never got another bite after I broke off that clear one with the flake.”

Deciding to try and upgrade his flounder after the specks proved uncooperative, Durham headed back to Snows Cut and began again casting Carolina-rigged pogies.

Working a grass bank, he caught a few smaller flounder, and then got a solid strike around 12:30.

“He hit it and took off like a drum,” recalled Durham, “and I didn’t set the hook. I decided to wait until it sat down. I give them about 10′-if he keeps going after 10′ I’ll set the hook, but this one ran 10′ and stopped.”

After letting the fish eat for around a minute, he set the hook.

“I felt like it was a decent fish, but I didn’t know he was bigger than what I had,” he continued.

Fishing with a fairly tight drag, Durham soon had the fish to the surface, where he was finally able to see it-and the tenuous position of his hook.

“He was just hooked in a little piece of white skin,” Durham explained. As soon as I saw where it was, I grabbed the net, lunged out, and got a quick shot on him. The hook fell out of him when I grabbed the leader.”

The only citation flounder caught during the tournament gave Durham room for a little cautious optimism.

“I knew that fish would put me in the top three,” he said, “but I wasn’t thinking winner because I always figure if I’m catching fish, somebody else must be, too.”

The 73 other boats in the tournament indeed caught fish, but none that would oust Durham’s from the top of the leader board. In addition to the prize money, Durham will also receive a free mount of the fish from Hunter’s Haven Taxidermy, a prize offered for the heaviest fish weighed in the tournament.

Topping the speckled trout category by a mere four hundredths of one pound, Jacksonville’s Capt. Ricky Kellum, of Team Speckled Specialist, hauled a 4.36 lb. speck to the scales to earn first place and $1,215. The big speck also earned both the Top Junior Angler and Top Senior Angler awards for the tri-generational team.

Kellum started out the day by anchoring up on some structure in the New River near Sneads Ferry. Fishing with his son Rendel and uncle Larry Hill, the trio didn’t have to wait long for some action.

“I think Rendel had a fish on his second cast,” Kellum said. The bite continued for much of the morning, allowing Kellum to tag and release 20 smaller trout for an N.C. State research project he’s participating in.

Around 11:00, something grabbed a live shrimp under a slip float on a rod Kellum had in a rod holder.

“That rod bent over and started giving up drag,” the captain explained. “I knew that was one we wanted to have.”

After a quick battle, Kellum brought the fish to the net. While some might have immediately gone flounder fishing to try and place in both categories, the Speckled Specialist crew decided to stick it out and search for a bigger trout.

“I told them we were going to wait until 2:00 to go flounder fishing,” Kellum revealed. “We ended up with five trout all about the same size as the one we weighed.”

When 2:00 rolled around, the anglers started fishing their way back to Wrightsville in search of a flounder, but they never picked one up.

Reeling in the tournament’s second largest check along with a 4.77 lb. flounder, Wilmington’s Ryan Tanner and Kelli and Matt Davis, aboard the “Plain Jane,” earned second in the flounder division, pocketing $1,366. Their near-5 lb. flatfish also earned Kelli Davis the tournament’s Top Lady Angler honors.

After fishing the lion’s share of the day without a legal flounder to show for it, the anglers had run all the way from Wrightsville Beach down to Southport and were on their way back north when they paused to fish some pilings in Snows Cut.

It was there that Tanner got a strike on a live pogy that ultimately became the second place flounder. After putting the fish in the boat around 2:00, the anglers left for the scales at Wrightsville Beach Marina around 2:30.

A 4.16 lb. flounder earned third place in the flatfish competition and $452 for the “Sonny Days” crew of Lindley White, Andy Tolhurst, and John Jarvis. Like the second place team, they had to endure some tough fishing during the morning hours before hooking their valuable flatfish.

“It was a long morning,” White explained. “A lot of hard work, and nothing on the boat.”

After fishing their way down from Wrightsville Beach, the anglers were anchored up on a deep hole in Carolina Beach Inlet when they finally started to catch some fish.

“We caught three that were real close in weight,” White explained. “John hooked the first one, and we felt good about it. Then we got a second one and felt even better. I got the third one, and then we were feeling really good.”

White’s fish fell for a Carolina-rigged finger mullet and proved to be the largest of the three. Jarvis netted the fish once White worked it to the surface.

After three solid flounder in around half an hour, the anglers figured they were on a good enough spot that they opted to continue fishing until they had to head for the scales, hoping for a larger fish. It never came, but their big one was good enough to finish third overall.

Troy Phillip, of Wilmington, scaled a 4.06 lb. flounder to earn fourth place and $873 (earning $513 for third place in the flounder TWT). Neil Clark, on the “Bling Bling,” took home fifth place and $308.

“If my fish had stayed alive, I think I’d have edged him out,” Capt. Brent Banks, of Specktacular Charters out of Jacksonville, said about being bumped into second place in the trout competition by little more than half an ounce. His 4.32 lb. trout may have died on the way to the scales, but that didn’t stop it from earning $765 for Brent and brother Len Banks.

Targeting the jetties protecting Little River Inlet, SC, Banks anchored up in a favorite spot early Saturday morning, and he enjoyed fast action, hooking up with plenty of trout and some red drum over the course of the morning.

It wasn’t until 1:00 that Len Banks got a fateful bite on a live shrimp drifting beneath a float.

“Yeah, he caught the big fish,” Brent Banks explained, “but I caught more of them. I don’t think we had a trout under 18″ today.”

When his brother worked the fish close to the boat, Brent slid a net under it and brought it aboard. After boating the second place fish, the anglers kept fishing for a short time, then hop scotched their way north to Wrightsville Beach, stopping at several spots off the ICW in order to search for a flounder to add to their speck. Time ran out before they could find one, and the brothers headed for the scales.

Boasting the only fish in the top three of either category caught on an artificial lure, Mike Clark, manager of Wilmington’s Wild Wing Café (Tournament HQ), weighed in a 4.16 lb. speckled trout to take home third place and $270.

Clark, fishing with his wife Barbara and Dean Scrooby, hooked his fish around 10:00 while casting a Billy Bay Halo Shrimp beneath the 172 Bridge over the New River. After fishing there for anther hour and a half, the anglers decided to look for a flounder to get them into the aggregate competition, and Scrooby caught one, a 2 pounder, under the North Topsail Bridge at 2:00, but it wasn’t quite enough to make the leader board in this year’s highly competitive aggregate competition.

Adding the 4.02 lb. fourth place trout to the 2.91 lb. thirteenth place flounder, Capt. Bruce Fields Jr., of Flat Dawg Charters out of Carolina Beach, took first in the flounder/trout aggregate weight category with 6.93 lbs. Fields and Christina Boston edged winner Dennis Durham out of topping yet another category by just two hundredths of one pound. The aggregate win plus their flounder and trout prizes totaled $722.

Fields and Boston caught trout along with red drum and ladyfish while fishing a rock pile in the lower Cape Fear River early Saturday morning. Live shrimp fished under floats fooled all their fish.

Deciding to go flounder fishing at 10:00, the anglers had a tough time at first.

“We just couldn’t find a flounder for a while,” Fields explained. Finally, while fishing a grass point in the lower river, Fields had a good strike on a pogy he’d pinned to a secret rig.

“He hit it pretty hard,” he said. “I fed it to him and fed it to him. It felt like big fish when I set the hook.”

At 2.91 lbs., it wasn’t a monster doormat, but it proved enough to edge out the competition in the aggregate competition.

In keeping with the tournament’s conservation-minded goals, additional $20 payouts are made to anglers who weigh their fish in alive. All the live trout and some flounder are returned to the water. Representatives from UNCW’s Aquaculture facility take many of the flounder back to their labs to further their research into raising flounder in captivity, a practice that will ultimately reduce pressures on wild stocks while providing jobs at the same time.

The event also serves as a fundraiser for Cape Fear Community College’s Sea Devil Club, the athletic booster organization for the school.

For a list of all the top finishers, you can visit www.FishermansPost.com and click on the Spring Inshore Challenge link.