Cape Fear Home Builders Fish Tales Tournament
Butch Davis, of Wilmington, with the 6.0 lb. red drum that won the drum divsion of the Cape Fear Homebuilders Fish Tales Tournament.
Held Friday, August 16, out of Dockside Marina at Wrightsville Beach, the Wilmington/Cape Fear Homebuilders Fish Tales Tournament offered participants the ability to win money and prizes over four categories of inshore and nearshore target species—flounder, speckled trout, red drum, and king mackerel.
Capt. Wayne Crisco, of Last Resort Charters out of Hampstead, NC, took home the top prize in the trout division with a 2.2 lb. speck he hooked while fishing with partner Michael Clark. The anglers started their day on Wayne’s home waters around Surf City, and they didn’t have to wait long for some trout action.
“We started out at Surf City Bridge,” Crisco explained, “and caught a few trout first thing.”
Live shrimp drifted under floats and Betts Halo Shads fooled the specks, and the anglers soon headed south to search for a drum. They returned to Surf City later in the morning.
“We came back to Surf City to look for a bigger trout,” Crisco explained.
The strategy worked, as Crisco soon landed their 2.2 lb. fish on a shrimp. The captain also hooked a 2.9 lb. flounder while dragging a live finger mullet along the bottom near the bridge that captured second in the flatfish category.
Wilmington’s Jamie Blanton earned the top spot on the event’s flounder leaderboard with a 3.3 lb. flatfish. Fishing with his second cousin Austin and father John for the event, the anglers chose to target Snow’s Cut in their search for a big flounder.
Michael Clark and Capt. Wayne Crisco, of Last Resort Charters, with the winning 2.2 lb. speckled trout and the second place 2.9 lb. flounder in the Cape Fear Homebuilders Fish Tales Tournament. Crisco landed the trout on a live shrimp and the flatfish on a live finger mullet near the Surf City bridge.
“We were fishing right down from the bridge,” Blanton explained, “and it was rainy. We’d broken a few fish off earlier when that fish bit.”
A live, 8” menhaden fooled the crew’s big flounder.
“You’ve got to fish big baits for big fish,” Blanton continued. “A lot of people don’t get that.”
Austin Blanton was napping when the big flounder bit, but the young angler woke up in time to hook and land the event’s winning flatfish.
Butch Davis, also of Wilmington, topped the tournament’s red drum leaderboard with a 6.0 lb. red he caught near Wrightsville Beach.
The sole crew to fish the offshore side of the event, Mike Burnett and coworkers from ABC Supply, chartered the “Large Time II” out of Carolina Beach. The anglers hauled a 6.50 lb. king mackerel to the scales to take the bounty in that category.
Trolling around some bottom structure 25 miles offshore, Burnett and company stayed busy catching amberjacks, dolphin, and some smaller kings before their winning fish bit shortly after noon. A ballyhoo trolled on the downrigger fooled the kingfish.
More information on the 2013 Fish Tales Tournament and the Wilmington/Cape Fear Homebuilders Association itself is available at www.wcfhba.com.
