Tidelines – August 15, 2013
My summer is officially over, as this week has me back at Cape Fear Community College for meeting after meeting (and some registration duties) leading up to the first day of class on Friday, August 16.
And while I was hoping to wind up my summer with a hot shot fishing trip (sight casting to citation-class red drum in the Pamlico) or even a quiet fishing trip (soaking baits at night on the Masonboro rock jetty for slot reds), this past weekend once again brought just enough rains and wind to postpone plans.
For me, it just means I have to now stay more on top of my workload so that at a moment’s notice I can sneak away for a day on the water.
For you, it means I don’t have a fishing trip for you to read about in Tidelines, and instead you’ll get a few paragraphs on upcoming Fisherman’s Post events.
If I go chronologically, then I start by talking about the Topsail Inshore Challenge being held out of East Coast Sports and Sears Landing on August 23-24. When I think of Topsail, I think of hospitality, starting with the hospitality of the Medlin family (East Coast Sports) at Friday’s registration, and then the complimentary beach house hospitality on Friday night (thanks to Adam and Wells Marine Insurance).
This year, however, the Topsail hospitality is extended well into Saturday, as Hap and the Sears Landing crew will be welcoming all tournament anglers with a complimentary pig pickin’ following weigh-in.
Then September is a busy month for Fisherman’s Post, as we will be hosting both the final Trail event of the year, the Carolina Beach Inshore Challenge, as well as the brand new NewBridge Bank Spanish Mackerel Open.
The Carolina Beach Inshore Challenge will serve as both our strongest flounder tournament of the year, and the culmination of our five-event Trail. After Saturday’s weigh-in on September 14, which is sure to feature some hearty flatfish from Snow’s Cut and the Cape Fear River, we will be giving out prizes and cash well into the evening, all while enjoying wings (Wild Wing Café) and pizza (Papa John’s) and an assortment of cold beverages (Anheuser Busch and Sweetwater Brewery).
The new event in our lineup, the one I talked about in a previous Tidelines as the replacement for the Wild King Classic, is the NewBridge Bank Spanish Mackerel Open, taking place on September 27-28. I was tempted to go with the name Spanish Acquisition, but ultimately leaned conservative on this debate (and I’m pretty sure NewBridge Bank agreed with me on this one).
The food for this event, which includes David’s Deli on Friday, will certainly be anchored by Wild Wing Café once again putting on a complete dinner buffet for all of our tournament participants, but I also think fresh spanish mackerel fried up on location at awards for everyone to enjoy will also be a memory maker (still waiting to verify with NCDMF that this idea of fresh fried spanish is a legal one, though).
All of the kids that fish the spanish mackerel event will get a trophy and a prize pack (put together by some of our generous sponsors), and in addition we’ll be awarding a host of junior angler prizes for the top finishers in several different age groups.
Then there’s our last event of the year and arguably our most successful, the Pleasure Island Surf Fishing Challenge to be held the weekend of October 18-20. This event has had me a little nervous lately, as change over the past year in Carolina Beach’s Mayor, Town Manager, and Town Council inevitably meant change in how the Town handles events such as ours coming to town.
The headquarters (behind Sea Witch Café) and three weigh-in stations open around the clock will be the same, but there will be at least two changes to the weekend, one for the good and the other for the bad.
For the good, the Town of Carolina Beach has granted us free parking on Sunday for the Awards Ceremony. People had to pay for metered parking last year (and a few suffered parking tickets), and we didn’t like that they felt “nickeled and dimed” at the end of a successful and fun weekend (especially one where they had spent a lot of money in town on gas, ice, food, tackle, hotels, etc.).
For the bad, the Town is no longer granting our tournament anglers with a free pass to Freeman Park. Instead, they will provide passes to Freeman Park for tournament weekend at 50% off. Our surf fishing crowd is a hearty crowd, though, and determined to have a good time, so I predict another successful weekend in spite of this change.
And now that my review of Fisherman’s Post fall events is complete, it’s probably time for me get back to my CFCC work load—update course websites and make copies of syllabi for the first day of school. I wonder if I’ll have any students this semester that want to “volunteer” at a fishing tournament to receive some extra credit.
