Neuse River Backwater Open
Berry Bender and Scott Wood took first place at the Neuse River Backwater Open by scaling two puppy drum, two flounder, two striped bass, and two speckled trout weighing 26.42 lbs. They hooked all their fish but one puppy drum and the flounder while working topwater plugs in the Neuse and Trent Rivers.
Scaling every allowable fish in the event, New Bern’s Scott Wood and Berry Bender—“Team REDNEB”—hauled in a pair each of speckled trout, flounder, puppy drum, and striped bass totaling 26.42 lbs. to take home first place in the Neuse River Backwater Open, held October 5 out of Lawson’s Creek Park in New Bern, NC.
The morning of the event found the pair starting out around some structure in the Trent River, where they found a wide-open striped bass bite.
After putting a solid pair of striped bass in the boat, the anglers decided to head downriver to near the tournament’s boundary line to look for their trout, flounder, and drum.
“We went down to Turnagain Bay,” Wood said. “We didn’t get on them at first, but we fished one bank and stuck with it. One of us was throwing topwater and one in the middle or on the bottom—we were trying to cover the whole water column.”
Their methodical approach began to work out when Bender hooked a 26.5” red drum on a topwater plug after they’d gone fishless for some time. The 6.5 lb. red also topped that TWT.
Bender kept the streak alive, next landing two legal flounder in short order while casting a spinnerbait with a Gulp Pogy pinned to the hook.
“It was trout after that,” Wood reported.
The captain soon picked up a speckled trout while working a topwater plug, and he followed it quickly with the pair’s second red drum, also hooked on a spinnerbait.
Bender put the finishing touches on their 8-fish aggregate by landing a final topwater trout at 11:26 that morning.
“We figured we had about 25 lbs. in the boat at that point,” Wood explained, “so we decided to head back up to the Trent and try to upgrade our rockfish.”
Wood estimated they added 1-2 lbs. to their aggregate weight on their second trip up the Trent River.
Finishing just behind the winners, Michael Odom and Milton Miller, Jr. took home second place honors with a 25.84 lb. aggregate of striped bass, drum, trout, and flounder.
Mike Zaytoun, Jr., and Jonathan Howell rounded out the top three in the event with a 20.13 lb. aggregate weight, including the 2.92 lb. flounder that topped that TWT.
