Redfish Shootout Series #2
Hylan Furniss and Tommy Mungo with the 12.94 lb. pair of red drum that earned them first place in the Redfish Shootout Series/Low Country Redfish Cup. Their fish bit Rapala Skitterwalk topwaters in a bay near Rich’s Inlet.
Scaling a pair of red drum weighing 12.94 lbs., Wilmington’s Tommy Mungo and Hylan Furniss took out their competition by over half a pound to earn first place in the Redfish Shootout Series/Low Country Redfish Cup tournament, held June 7 out of Wrightsville Beach’s Intracoastal Angler.
Fishing out of Furniss’s 18’ Maverick flats skiff, the anglers made a hasty decision to fish the event in the week leading up to the tournament, but didn’t skimp on the preparation once they were committed.
“This was all planned at the last minute,” Mungo explained. “Hylan called Tuesday at lunch and wanted to fish it. You’ve got to put your time in to fish these things, so we pre-fished Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.”
While most of the tournament competitors headed south to the waters off the lower Cape Fear River, the winning duo stayed closer to their home waters at Wrightsville Beach.
“This year the fish have been a little late coming in from the ocean,” Mungo reported. “So we decided to hit some of the spots I do better at earlier in the summer. When the fish are feeding behind Masonboro, it’s usually not that good in the river. They’re usually cleared out of Masonboro by now and the river’s turning on, but there were still big schools up here.”
The anglers located two of those schools of upper-slot fish to return to on the morning of the competition, one in Masonboro Sound, and one north of Figure Eight Island, and formed a gameplan for the tournament day.
“We fished both those spots each day and caught a few fish before leaving them alone,” Mungo continued. “The fish behind Masonboro were going 5-5.5 lbs., but we found out the fish up north were just a little heavier. We were 100% sure the Masonboro fish would be there though, so we decided to go there, get a couple fish in the livewell, and head north to upgrade.”
The plan began to work out when Mungo caught a quick fish on a topwater plug behind Masonboro, but they were unable to get the second at their first spot.
“We caught that one and then couldn’t find the fish again,” he explained. “The wind came up and blew that spot out so we couldn’t really sight-fish.”
Deciding to go ahead to their second hole, the anglers ran north to Rich’s Inlet, using the Maverick’s shallow-running capabilities to make it into a small bay off a feeder creek near the inlet.
“That boat will go real skinny,” Mungo related. “We were able to get into spots that I’m pretty sure a lot of those redfish guys couldn’t get to with bigger bay boats.”
The weather again made finding the fish a bit tough and complicated the plan upon their arrival.
“We couldn’t find the fish for 15-20 minutes,” Mungo said. “But I knew they’d be in that little bay with the tide rising and when we got on them we were steadily catching fish for 2 hours.”
With Furniss primarily manning the poling platform and Mungo casting from the bow, the anglers consistently hooked fish for much of the rest of the morning.
“Hylan did a bunch of poling and I did a bunch of fishing,” Mungo reported. “We’d hook a few fish and have to move 10-15’ and hook up again.”
The fish to the north were indeed larger, and the anglers upgraded steadily over the course of the morning, finally pairing the 6.46 and 6.48 lb. fish that made up their aggregate weight. All of their fish fell for Rapala Skitterwalk topwater plugs.
“Once that water hits 70 degrees, a topwater is about all I fish,” Mungo said. “The Rapala in red/white was the lure that day. We tried a couple other colors and that one was just working the best.”
Scaling a 12.33 lb. pair of reds good for second place in the event were Geoffrey and Vince Payne. Capts. Rennie and Shannon Clark had the event’s largest single fish at 6.89 lbs. and a 12.18 lb. aggregate to finish third.
More information and a full leaderboard for the event and upcoming tournaments is available at www.redfishshootoutseries.com and the Redfish Shootout Series Facebook page.
