Tournament Report – Neuse River Backwater Open
Brad Buck and Mark Dudley secured the top spot on the Neuse River Backwater Open leaderboard with a 25.02 lb. aggregate weight anchored by these fat stripers. The fish struck Rapala Skitterwalk topwaters early in the morning near New Bern.
Blasting past their competition with a 25.02 lb. aggregate weight, New Bern’s Brad Buck and Mark Dudley took home first place in the Neuse River Backwater Open with an exclamation point.
Buck and Dudley, fishing together aboard a 22’ Triton bay boat, had done some pre-fishing early in the week and devised a gameplan for the tournament morning—target striped bass around New Bern early in the day, and then head well downriver to try and add speckled trout, puppy drum, and flounder to their bag.
“We were just hoping for a couple of slot (18-22”) fish at New Bern,” Buck explained.
After releasing a number of 24-26” fish, the anglers found more than they bargained for, landing a pair of big stripers that exceeded the 27” limit for keeping larger fish.
“We had those two fish by 8:30,” Buck continued. “We were very fortunate to have that to start.”
Their 9 lb.-class stripers struck Rapala Skitterwalk topwaters, and the crew moved onto the next part of their gameplan after putting the big fish in the boat.
“We’d found some trout down in South River earlier in the week,” Buck said, “so we ran 20-25 miles downriver to fish a shoreline down there.”
Just as the stripers had, the specks they’d found previously cooperated. The anglers began casting MirrOlure MR17 plugs and landed eight trout over the next hour, culling through them to find the pair they were allowed to weigh in.
With their allowed two-striped bass and two-trout aggregates in the boat, the anglers moved on to searching for puppy drum and flounder they could also weigh in the event.
They casted around for a legal flounder in South River, but didn’t find the single flatfish they weighed in until working their way back to New Bern.
“We decided to hit some river points on the way back to New Bern to look for a drum,” Buck continued.
They never found a slot redfish, but the anglers did finally put a legal flounder in the boat while casting a 4” Gulp shrimp to one of their river points. Though they could’ve added a pair of reds and a flatfish to their aggregate, it wasn’t necessary, as their five fish topped their nearest competition by over 8 lbs.
Joe and Brian Haddock scaled a 17 lb. aggregate weight to finish second, and Eric Jones and Sam White rounded out the top three with a 16.59 lb. weight.
This year’s Neuse River Backwater Open attracted 49 boats. More information about the event and a full leaderboard can be found at www.nrbwo.com.
