Jolly Mon Update 2008
Keith Logan and Tracy Holmes hold the 36.65 lb. king mackerel that earned them the first place spot in the Jolly Mon King Classic after the disqualification of the previous winner. The king fell for a horse ballyhoo at the General Sherman.
As anyone who’s been involved with planning a fishing tournament knows, creating a good set of rules is a time consuming and vital facet of a successful event. Even more important is enforcing the rules that have been laid out. Capt. Brant McMullan, the longtime tournament host at the Ocean Isle Fishing Center, was put in the position of enforcer last week, as he had to make the call to disqualify Cameron Bowers and Raleigh’s “Takin It Easy” fishing team from the winning position in the 2008 Jolly Mon King Classic, held June 20-22.
The DQ thrust Keith Logan and the “Logan’s Love” crew into the winner’s circle nearly six weeks after the awards ceremony.
“Brant called me last Tuesday and let me know,” Logan said of his new position. “I was very excited. I felt like we deserved it, since we went though that storm in one of the smallest boats our there.”
Logan and partner Tracy Holmes, from Longs, SC, caught the 36.65 lb. king that earned them a belated first place on a skirted horse ballyhoo while fishing at the General Sherman wreck of North Myrtle Beach in a 21′ Kenner Bay Boat. They fished Saturday, the day a nasty storm developed in the area, affecting most of the boats in the event.
Suspicions arose early when no one from the “Takin It Easy” crew showed up to the awards ceremony the night they weighed in a 39.75 lb. king mackerel to top the field, very unusual in competitive king mackerel fishing.
Four weeks before the Jolly Mon, Bowers’ crew, relative newcomers to tournament leaderboards, had earned second place and a new boat by weighing a 30.80 lb. king in the Swansboro Rotary King Mackerel Tournament. With Bowers then scaling the winning fish in the very next tournament and not appearing at the awards, red flags were raised in many anglers’ minds.
“The only way I’d have missed the awards was if I was in the hospital,” the tournament’s new winner said.
The day after the event, Bowers declined to return a reporter’s phone call with questions about where and when they caught the king.
McMullan finally decreed the team in violation of the tournament’s rules over a month after the end of the event when no member of the crew had submitted to a required polygraph test.
David Henderson and the “Ain’t Life Grand” fishing team, from Charlotte, were bumped up to second place in the Jolly Mon.
Henderson, joined by Barry Kirkman and Tommy Oliver, weighed in a 36.50 lb. king on Saturday during the event to earn second. A live pogy fished near the Shark Hole fooled their big fish.
Jeremy Harrelson and the “Reel Action” crew out of Hope Mills, NC, weighed in the now third place 34.95 lb. king.
“Oh yeah, I was excited,” Harrelson said after learning the team had moved up to third. “I was kind of shocked really.”
Harrelson, fishing with Ron Harrelson, Ricky Long, and Tim Bell, found their valuable king offshore of the Jungle while slow-trolling a dead cigar minnow.
In a posting on the Ocean Isle Fishing Center’s website on the matter, McMullan wrote: “As a tournament fisherman as well as a tournament operator, I feel I have the highest level of responsibility to insure the rules of my tournaments are followed…Adjusted winnings will be paid out in accordance with the order of finish.”
