Added on Thursday, September 29, 2011  Fish Post

NC Flatfish Championship

Showing up first to the scales paid off for Wilmington, NC’s John Donovan and Warren Plautz in the 4^th Annual NC Flatfish Championships, held September 16-17 out of Carolina Beach’s Inlet Watch Marina. They brought a pair of flounder totaling 11.39 lbs. to the weigh-in, tying the second place crew’s weight exactly, but earned the win based on time.

Donovan and Plautz’s 6.24 and 5.15 lb. flatfish also put them on top of both of the tournament’s aggregate weight TWT’s and in the money in the big fish TWT’s for a total payout of over $3,400.

After pre-fishing in the week leading up to the event aboard Donovan’s 20’ Bay Rider, the anglers located some solid flounder in the Cape Fear River that they hoped to return to on tournament day.

“We fished Snow’s Cut early, then headed into the river to look for those fish,” Donovan said. “All we caught was one undersized one.”

Scrapping the river plan, the anglers returned to Snow’s Cut.

“We came back in there on the last of the rising tide,” Donovan continued.

After catching a few smaller fish, Donovan got a solid bite on a live finger mullet he’d cast toward the bank. He gave the fish a chance to eat, and then set the hook.

“That fish moved five or six feet toward the bank and came flopping out of the water,” he reported.

After the commotion, the fish came to the boat relatively easy, and Plautz was soon sliding the net under their 6-pounder.

As the fish hit the deck, Donovan glanced back at another rod he had fishing behind the boat and saw something was amiss.

“When he netted that first one,” he explained, “I saw some tension on the second rod and picked it up.”

Setting the hook as he grabbed the rod, it was quickly apparent that he had another solid flatfish on. This fish, too, came to the boat easily, before the anglers had had a chance to put their first fish in the livewell.

“We had to dump the first fish out of the net onto the floor to net the second one,” Donovan said.

The netting process went smoothly, and the anglers put the pair of citation fish in the livewell.

“That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen two fish get caught,” Donovan continued. “Except for that one minute, we had a really slow day.”

He and Plautz had planned to go back into the river, but with the two big fish in the boat, plans changed.

“I didn’t think we could top that in the river,” Donovan said. “I didn’t expect we’d win it with those, but I figured we’d be in the money and at least get our entry fee back.”

Fishing a few more hours in the Cut without any other notable fish, the anglers headed for the scales around 3:00.

As the weigh-in came to a close at 4:00, it became apparent that they’d be getting their entry repaid many times over.

With the tournament’s largest flounder anchoring their 11.39 lb. aggregate, Southport’s Jason McDowell, Mike Fields, and Ricky Bishop weighed in 40 minutes later to secure second place. Their 8.07 lb. flounder topped both big fish TWT’s, earning the trio $3,368, nearly as much as the winning boat, and crowned Bishop the event’s Top Senior Angler.

After landing an 11 lb. flounder in the week preceding the event, McDowell had a solid idea of where to fish during the tournament, and the trio returned to the same spot, a grass bank north of Sunny Point in the Cape Fear River.

“I was probably the most confident person in the tournament because of that fish,” McDowell said.

After a slow morning, McDowell finally got the bite he’d been looking for just before lunchtime. A “dead man” rod dangling behind the boat fooled the fish, and after seeing the strike, he plucked it from the rod holder.

“I knew it was a big fish, but it came right to the boat,” McDowell explained. “Ricky netted him when I got him up. We caught four more right there in about 20 minutes, just boom, boom, boom.”

Bishop landed the 3.32 lb. fish that made up the rest of their aggregate shortly thereafter, and the anglers were feeling good, though McDowell underestimated the size of their big one.

“I was calling our big fish 6 lbs.,” he explained. “Mike and Ricky were saying it was 8, and I actually lost a bet with them when we weighed it in.”

Losing the bet turned out to be a good thing, though, when the fish hit the scales.

“I thought we had around a 9 lb. aggregate,” McDowell said. “I started feeling a lot better after I saw that one fish was 8 lbs.”

Carolina Beach’s Trey Styron and Sheldon Goodwin earned third place in the event with a pair of flounder weighing 9.75 lbs.

Fishing a stretch of the Cape Fear River north of Snow’s Cut that’s been good to them, the anglers also started slow on the morning of the event, but they had a flurry of activity between 10:00 and noon.

Casting to docks and grass points in the river, Styron started the burst of action with their big fish, a 6.22 pounder that fell for a live finger mullet beneath a dock.

“I didn’t feel the bite,” he said. “I just felt some tension, and dragged that fish really slowly back under the boat like a crab before it really thumped it.”

Styron set the hook and the anglers got a glimpse of the fish almost immediately.

“He came up and we saw him” he explained, “and then took a good run. It took a couple minutes to work him back to the boat. You’re always nervous when you see a good one and have it take off like that.”

After Styron worked the fish back to the boat, Goodwin netted it, and the anglers were on the board. They landed seven fish in the 3 lb. class in the ensuing hours to add a kicker to their big one and earn their third place finish.

Troy Philip and Chris Hanson took home fourth place with a 9.51 lb. pair of flatfish, and Douglas Cutting’s 8.46 lb. aggregate rounded out the top five.

Michelle Crisco took home the Top Lady Angler honors for a 5.37 lb. flounder, and Travis Holst was the event’s Top Junior, weighing in a 4.53 lb. fish.

More information on the event and a full leader board are available at www.fishermanspost.com.