Tidelines – August 11, 2011
I’m a newspaper publisher and not a financial advisor, but it makes sense to me—in light of our country’s recent lowered credit rating—for everyone to invest $75 by entering this year’s NC Flatfish Championship (hosted by Fisherman’s Post Newspaper). Last year we paid out over $4,000 to the winner, and that’s got to be a better return on investment than anything on Wall Street right now.
The NC Flatfish tournament booklets and posters went out last week, so it should be easy for you to find information on our Sept. 16-17 event at Inlet Watch Yacht Club in Wilmington (located just a mile from Snow’s Cut Bridge). With an entry fee of only $75 per boat, we’re hoping that we attract several tournament newcomers.
And we’re doing something else to try and entice new participants—we’re hosting a couple of free flounder fishing schools to give you confidence that you can go out and find a quality fish on tournament day. Intracoastal Angler will be hosting the first one on Wednesday, September 14, and Tex’s Tackle will host the second on Thursday, September 15.
The schools will start in the late afternoon (I believe Intracoastal starts at 7:00 and Tex’s Tackle starts at 6:00 pm), and each one will last for an hour or so. Both schools will be taught by Capt. Jot Owens of Jot It Down Charters out of Wrightsville Beach. At the end will be a question and answer period, and Jot has also generously offered a Berkley tackle pack as a door prize at each school.
These schools are designed to help people catch more flounder more often, and there will also be time spent on targeting trophy flounder. The schools are open to the public (you don’t have to fish our tournament to participate in either school), so we hope many of you come out for some quick flounder knowledge.
Look for ad copy in Fisherman’s Post for more details.
Those that have fished our events in the past already know that school or no school, we give our tournament participants value whether they make the leader board or not. On Friday there will be free pizza and drinks (thank you Papa John’s and Anheuser Busch). The captains’ bags will have a few free goodies in them (Trigger X sample packs, for example). And then Saturday at awards we’ll be serving up some free Wild Wing Cafe wings.
All this for only $75 a boat. So if you put three guys on the boat, it’s only $25 per person to be entered into the NC Flatfish Championship and a chance for big cash payouts.
And here’s another reason to enter: every junior angler that weighs in a flounder will have his/her photo published in the following week’s issue of Fisherman’s Post Newspaper. People often tell us how much their kids enjoyed being in the paper (and I think the adults enjoyed their kids photo appearance even more), and the NC Flatfish may be your easiest and/or quickest route to getting that junior angler featured in our pages.
Proceeds from the event will go to Cape Fear Community College’s Marine Tech Club, and those club members will be staffing our event all weekend.
If you’d like more information, then I suggest you visit our website, FishermansPost.com, click on “Tournaments” and then “NC Flatfish Championship.” If you still have questions, then shoot us an email at flatfish@fishermanspost.com, or call Max Gaspeny, Co-Tournament Director, at (910) 409-8379.
And if our NC Flatfish Championship still doesn’t sound like a good way to invest $75, then perhaps Bernie Madoff at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex (here in our NC backyard) has a deal for you that’s too good to be true.
