IFA Surf City 2008
The Inshore Fishing Association (IFA) had never hosted a tournament in North Carolina prior to their Surf City event, held June 7 out of Beach House Marina, but with results like the 29 teams weighing fish in the Surf City event posted, they’ll surely be back. With two-fish weights over 12 lbs. stretching all the way down the leaderboard to 12th place, there’s no doubt that the area waters are fertile redfish havens. There’s also no doubt that our area’s anglers are proficient at tracking the fish down, as winning Capt. Bill Slaughter and the other top-5 teams, all local anglers, can attest.
Slaughter, of Wilmington, and partner Gary Wysong, of Daytona Beach, FL, brought in a stout pair of near-27″ reds weighing 7.50 and 7.37 lbs. to take home the overall first prize, a fully rigged 2008 Ranger Banshee with a Yamaha outboard, and over $1000 in other prizes.
The winning anglers undertook some serious pre-fishing before the IFA event, as Slaughter explained.
“We started a week ago Thursday. We were on the water Thursday and Friday, then Monday to Wednesday of this week with a couple hours on Thursday and Friday. We were just babysitting our fish Thursday and Friday, though.”
Confident they had a line on some good schools of fish in creeks off the New River, Slaughter and Wysong, fishing aboard a Mercury-powered 17′ Yellowfin, returned to the area the Saturday morning of the tournament and were greeted with immediate action.
“We caught four fish before the sun came up this morning,” Slaughter said.
They hooked up with the pre-dawn reds while fan casting topwater plugs, and one of their early drum turned out to be one of the fish that ended up earning them a new boat. After the sun rose, the pair used their trolling motor to locate fish, and then sank the Power Pole to cast to them.
Casting Exude RT Slugs and Bass Assassin jerkbaits on weighted hooks, Slaughter and Wysong picked at the reds for the rest of the morning and early afternoon.
“We caught 11 or 12 over the day,” Slaughter recalled, “and we upgraded our other red at 1:00.”
With two reds each well over 7 lbs. in the live well, the anglers headed for the scales in time for the first group’s weigh-in at 3:00. As one of the first boats to weigh in, the anglers’ 14.87 lb. aggregate weight held on to the top of the leaderboard until the scales closed.
Their 7.5 lb. big fish also took the top spot in the largest individual fish TWT, and the 7.37 lb. red took second.
Swansboro charter captains Jeff Cronk and Mike Taylor took home the event’s second place check for over $2700, weighing in 7.21 and 6.81 lb. reds to tally an aggregate of 14.02 lbs. They also earned an additional $750 in the Ranger Cup as the highest-finishing team fishing from a Yamaha-powered Ranger.
The Swansboro locals pre-fished for the tournament for two days, locating several schools of fish that seemed promising. The schools didn’t pan out on tournament morning, though.
“We had some schools lined up, but they moved,” Cronk explained. That loss didn’t seem to affect the second place anglers, however, as they estimated they caught 65+ red drum during the competition.
“We fished all over the Swansboro backwaters,” said Cronk. “The fish were spread out, but we found one really good school. It got disturbed by some commercial guys clamming, but we came back later on and they were feeding again.”
While they were waiting on the school to settle and feed, Cronk and Taylor still caught fish, including one of the pair they brought to the scales.
“We were finding them with topwaters,” explained Taylor, “and then throwing Gulps at them and hooking up.”
After the school became active again, the anglers culled their second red and continued catching fish until it was time to head for Surf City.
“It felt bad to leave that school of a thousand biting fish in 3′ of water and come back here,” Cronk lamented, though learning the team had taken second place surely helped the pain.
Cronk and Taylor wish to express their gratitude to sponsors Ranger, Collins, Berkeley/Pure Fishing, Line-X, Sea Lake Products, and AB Surf Shop.
A pair of reds weighing 7.13 and 7.75 lbs. earned third place for Wilmington anglers Capt. Rennie Clark and Andrew Arndt. Fishing aboard a 22′ Yamaha-powered Pathfinder, the anglers earned a check for over $1800.
The third place anglers keyed in waters not far from the weigh-in site in their search for tourney-caliber reds, following the other top anglers’ formula of locating fish with topwater baits.
“We fished all around behind Topsail,” Arndt said. “We went north, we went south, just everywhere. We caught fish pretty much all day.”
“We had a good day,” Clark added. “We caught 25 fish, and all of them were on topwaters except 3.”
Another Swansboro charter captain, Rob Koraly, teamed up with Gary Knight to land the 6.96 and 6.59 lb. reds that secured fourth place with a 13.55 lb. aggregate weight. The anglers won nearly $1500 and found their fish in the marshes and bays behind the barrier islands from New River to Swansboro.
“We caught them in a bunch of places,” Koraly revealed. “They were schooling in the big open bays and along shorelines.”
Smelt-colored Gulp jerkbaits produced most of the fourth-place team’s fish, including the two they weighed.
Tim Barnes and Ray Thigpen, of Hampstead, brought 7.29 and 5.71 lb. reds to the scales for a 13.00 lb. aggregate weight that earned them fifth place.
Anglers competing in the Surf City Event earned points toward an overall IFA Team of the Year prize. Teams that fish all three of the Atlantic Division events (Charleston, SC; Surf City, NC; and Savannah, GA) qualify to fish in the IFA’s National Championship, held November 7-8 in Panama City Beach, FL.
Jerry Stakely, IFA Director of Tournament Operations, was pleased with the organization’s first NC event, commenting, “I was impressed with the area and the fishing. This must be one of the best-kept secrets on the coast. We’ll be back next year.”
