Fish Tales Tournament
The winners of the four categories--flounder, speckled trout, red drum, and king mackerel--in the first annual Wilmington Homebuilders Fish TalesTournament gather after collecting their prizes.
Featuring competition for speckled trout, flounder, red drum, and king mackerel, the Wilmington Homebuilder’s Association held the first annual Fish Tales Tournament on September 12 out of Dockside Marina.
The big inshore winners, Wilmington’s Steve Mattis, Jim Davis, and Bobby Steiger, fishing on the 18’ Hydra-Sport “Liquid Assets,” took home the prize money for the event’s heaviest speckled trout and flounder.
The anglers hooked a pair of flounder early on in the day while fishing a dock between Carolina Beach Inlet and Snow’s Cut, but they didn’t find the 3.7 lb. flattie that earned them the win until 11:30.
Mattis hooked the big flounder beneath the dock on a Carolina-rigged finger mullet.
“I felt him bite and I knew it was a pretty good fish,” Mattis explained. “I let him eat for a while as I always do. When I set the hook, I felt some pretty good weight.”
Mattis fought the fish to the boat in a short time, and the anglers were happy to see a decent flatfish.
“When we saw him, I felt like he had some length,” Mattis continued. “We got him in the boat, and I could see he had some solid thickness to him, too. I felt like it could place, but I didn’t think that fish would be a winner.”
With a decent flounder in the boat, the anglers continued fishing the same dock, and a short time later Mattis got another solid bite on a Carolina-rigged mullet. This fish turned into the 2 lb. speck that topped that competition, and Mattis worked it to the boat without much difficulty.
When the trout came to the surface near the vessel, Steiger was ready with the net and put the team’s second winning fish in the boat.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful for the team, and the anglers headed for the scales without any inkling they’d be the event’s big winners.
“We just had those two little fish,” Mattis said. “I didn’t think we’d do much, but we had to weigh them in.”
Fortune smiled on the crew, and the “two little fish” held up.
Dave Thomas, of Wilmington, with the 9.5 lb. flounder that fell for a blue/silver skirted cigar minnow and took first place in the Fish Tales Tournament.
Taking second place in the flounder competition and topping the event’s red drum category, Jeff Stokley and Patrick Mollican, from Wilmington, hauled a stout 7.4 lb. red drum and a 2.3 lb. flatfish to the scales aboard the 24’ Scout “Triple Crown.”
The anglers fished some rocky structure in the ICW near Masonboro Inlet and had their money-winning fish in the boat before 8:00.
“We were fishing a drop-off near some rocks,” Stokley said. “All our fish fell for pogies.”
Shortly after 7:00 Saturday morning, Mollican hooked a 6.5 lb. red drum on one of the pogies, and the anglers knew they were in a good hole.
Stokley followed the red up shortly thereafter with the team’s 2.3 lb. flounder, and the big red bit just after the flattie hit the deck.
A live pogy fooled the Stokley’s next fish, the 25” red they weighed, around 7:30, and he brought the fish to the net after a brief struggle.
“That fish had some shoulders on him,” he said.
The anglers hooked another pair of flounder before their bite shut off around 8:00 as the falling tide changed. They moved around the Wrightsville area for the remainder of the day, but they were unable to find any fish to top the reds and flounder already on the boat.
After weighing in, the anglers released both their red drum.
Wilmington’s “Ono” crew topped the king mackerel competition with a 9.5 lb. fish, and the anglers had to fish far to the south to find it. Fishing aboard a 26’ Regulator, Dave and Joseph Thomas, Cord Hieronymous, Tom Gibson, and Frosty Tolin headed down to the Cape Fear River Channel to search for a tournament-winner.
“We went south because we knew the guys up here who knew what they were doing hadn’t been catching many kings lately,” David Thomas explained.
The anglers headed for McGlammery Reef, arriving at 8:00, and had their king hooked up by 9:00.
A cigar minnow under a blue/silver skirt that Hieronymus designed fooled the king mackerel, and Gibson was on the rod.
The king succumbed to the live bait gear after a brief fight, and Hieronymus sank the gaff and brought it aboard.
“It’s not a big fish, but we were feeling pretty good about it since there haven’t been many caught recently,” Thomas explained.
The “Ono” anglers continued trolling around the river channel for a few hours, catching some large spanish mackerel, but no more kings. After moving inshore and offshore without any more action, they headed for the scales, and had the only king weighed in during the event, making their run to the south seem like a wise one.
