Flat Bottom Girls
Eddie Hardgrove, Capt. Wayne Crisco, Gary Hurley, and Max Gaspeny, of Team Fisherman's Post, with four of 13 keeper flounder they weighed in on their way to second place in the Flat Bottom Girls Flounder Tournament. The flatties fell for live finger mullet at a ledge dropping from 10-20' in Banks Channel.
Narrowly eking out the win by just a tenth of a pound, Wilmington’s Dennis Durham scaled a 6.1 lb. flounder to take first place in the 5th Annual Flat Bottom Girls Live Weigh-In Flounder Tournament, co-hosted November 6-7 by the Triangle Lounge, Dockside Marina, and Crocker’s Landing. Durham’s big flattie earned him over $1,000 in cash and prizes.
Targeting big flounder in Snow’s Cut to start the day, Durham didn’t have to wait long for a weigh-in worthy flatfish on tournament morning.
“I started out in the Cut,” the winning angler explained, “and I had a 5.85 lb. fish by 7:30 that morning.”
A live finger mullet pinned to a Carolina rig fooled Durham’s first big flounder of the day, and he continued fishing Snow’s Cut after putting it in the boat.
“I had some 1-2 lb. fish and one about 3, and then I decided to go out to the river,” Durham continued. “But then I was thinking, ‘I’ve already got a five and a half, what am I doing here,’ so I went back to the Cut. That’s where your best odds of a really big fish are.”
After returning to the narrow channel separating the ICW from the Cape Fear River, Durham found his winning flounder around 1:00 that afternoon while fishing an area of rock and sand bottom east of the old bridge.
“There’s a dredge on the other side of the Cut, so I didn’t want to fish over there,” he explained. “I feel like that messes them up. You can hear that thing banging around from over at the bridge.”
Though the area he was casting to dropped off into more than 20’ of water, both of Durham’s big flounder came from the shallower water close to the bank.
“Both those fish were relatively shallow for Snow’s Cut,” Durham continued. “They were right up close to the hill, probably in 6-7’.”
Again, and against Durham’s usual flounder formula, a finger mullet fooled the big fish.
“I almost always like to use a pogy,” he said. “Those are actually the first finger mullet I’ve used this year. Truth be known, you might get a reaction bite with a mullet. They’re so much more active than a pogy, they just freak out once you hook them. I think maybe that makes a flounder eat them when they’re not really that hungry.”
With his big fish in the livewell at 1:00, Durham ran north to Wrightsville Beach and the scales to weigh in before heading home for the day.
“I hate that I couldn’t fish the rest of the day and make it to the awards,” he lamented, “but it was my son’s birthday party at 3:00, and I don’t feel like I’d have done much more that day anyhow.”
At the scales, Durham’s big flounder proved just heavier than the 6.0 lb. second place fish.
Team Fisherman’s Post, under the flatfish tutelage of Capt. Wayne Crisco of Last Resort Charters, hauled the second place fish to the scales to earn $500. With Publisher Gary Hurley, Sales Manager Eddie Hardgrove, and Editor Max Gaspeny aboard Crisco’s skiff, the crew found flounder action before even leaving the spot where they caught bait.
After filling the livewell with pogies, the Crisco baited up with one of a dozen finger mullet in the well, made a cast, and hooked up with a 2-3 lb. flatfish, enough to keep the crew in the area for a while.
Crisco’s rod was hot after the first fish, and he put three, each larger than the last, in the livewell before any of the other anglers could hook up. The final fish was nearing 5 lbs., and definitely enough to keep the boat in the area.
Soon after, Hurley hooked up on a solid fish that swam around a piling. After hauling the fish back around the obstruction, the newspaperman soon pried it off the bottom and to Crisco’s waiting net.
Gaspeny soon added another solid fish to the rapidly filling livewell, and the crew had six fish in the boat by 7:30, all hooked on finger mullet.
With plenty of pogies in the livewell, but a rapidly dwindling supply of finger mullet, the captain pinned one of the precious mullet to his Carolina rig and casted again.
Crisco soon bowed up on yet another flatfish, and was visibly excited as the rod tip bounced along with the fish’s head shaking.
“Get the net,” he exclaimed. “We’re going to want this one.”
When the fish surfaced, it clearly had the ones already in the cooler beat, and Gaspeny slid a net beneath it and brought it aboard. After a round of celebration and high-fives, the 6 lb., second place fish joined the others in the livewell.
Wilmington father/daughter crew Fred and Bethany Davis earned third place with a 5 lb. flounder they hooked offshore of Carolina Beach.
“We were fishing a reef in about 45’ four miles off the inlet,” Fred Davis explained.
After starting their day in Snow’s Cut, the anglers headed offshore and connected with their big flounder around 10:00 tournament morning. Yet another live finger mullet fooled the third place flattie.
“He hit pretty hard,” Bethany Davis said. “I knew what it was.”
“It pulled pretty hard,” her father added. “They pull hard out there in the ocean. You hook a five pounder out there and think you’ve got a ten pounder. I had the net in my hand the whole time she was bringing it up.”
Flat Bottom Girls is the first and only all live weigh-in flounder tournament in the area. The brainchild of local angler, tackle maker, and conservationist Tim Barefoot, the event donates live flounder to UNCW’s Wrightsville Beach Aquaculture facility, and proceeds from the tournament go to reef-building and other fisheries enhancement projects undertaken by Barefoot’s Fish For Tomorrow organization.
More information is available at www.fishfortomorow.org.
