OIFC Thanksgiving Inshore Classic
Brandon Sauls and Clay Morphis, Jr., with two of the three speckled trout that earned them the win in the Thanksgiving Inshore Classic. They hooked the specks at the Little River Jetties on float-rigged live shrimp.
If speckled trout near Ocean Isle Beach don’t know the name “Bone Crusher,” they ought to. Brandon Sauls and the aforementioned 18’ Bone Boat represent one of the biggest threats to their safety and well-being around, and they proved it yet again by taking home the top honors at Capt. Kyle’s Thanksgiving Inshore Classic, hauling an impressive 13.9 lb., three-trout aggregate to the scales at Ocean Isle Fishing Center on November 28.
Sauls fished the tournament with friends Clay Morphis and Clay Morphis, Jr. aboard the “Bone Crusher,” and as they have in past years in the event, the trio ran to the Little River jetties before dawn, bent on staking out a good piece of real estate along the rocks before another boat could beat them to it.
They succeeded, and Sauls even caught one of the 4 lb. specks they weighed a half hour before the sun rose, but he had no idea what was coming at first light.
“As soon as the sun came up, it was on,” Sauls explained. “That was one of the best bites I’ve ever seen.”
Casting live shrimp on float rigs towards the jetty rocks, the trio hooked up consistently as the high tide ebbed out the inlet. Most of the specks they were hooking were 3+ lb. fish, and Morphis, Jr. landed the 5.8 lb. trout that anchored their aggregate weight.
The action lasted for approximately two hours before slowing down around the middle of the tide.
Confident that with the morning’s hot fishing, there were plenty of trout in the neighborhood, the anglers stayed put even after the bite died, hoping the fish would turn on again at some point over the course of the day. While they never had the wide-open fishing they did in the morning hours, the trio continued to pick at the trout and some puppy drum over the morning, landing an estimated 30 trout and 6 puppy drum over the course of the day.
On the way to the scales, the anglers put their fish on a Boga Grip scale, and Sauls got a pleasant surprise.
“I was feeling pretty good about those fish,” he explained, “but I was also thinking the 4’s were 3’s and the 5 was a 4. When I saw they were 4’s and a 5, I was feeling even better. Our buddy Robert Hughes had a 6.3 lb. fish, but we were just able to nudge him.”
That 6.3 lb. fish won the event’s single big fish TWT for Hughes and fishing partner Todd Helf, who also took second place overall with a 12.7 lb. three-fish aggregate.
Hughes and Helf started the morning inshore fishing some creeks near Little River Inlet, and, like the winners, they found a hot bite early while floating live shrimp.
“We caught about 35 fish in an hour,” Hughes explained, “but most were under 3 lbs.”
Deciding that they needed to find some larger fish in order to stay competitive, the anglers headed out to the jetties a bit later in the morning.
“When we got out there,” Hughes continued, “our first fish was a 4 pounder and our second was the 6.3, so I thought easily we’d catch another 4 pounder and have it.”
Unfortunately, the third big trout never came, though the anglers stayed put at the jetty until it was time to head for the scales.
Capt. Kyle Hughes and his father Nathaniel rounded out the top three with a trio of trout weighing 10.0 lbs. Like the other anglers, they targeted the jetties with live shrimp in their search for specks.
“We didn’t have that wide open bite in the morning like the other guys were talking about,” Hughes said, “but we picked at them all day and ended up catching about 20 fish.”
After spending the morning at the jetties, the Hughes headed inshore to look for a kicker fish and hooked one of the three they weighed on a live shrimp in one of the area’s backwater creeks.
