Topsail Inshore Challenge
Tex Ritter and the “Brown Dog” crew took first place on the redfish aggregate leaderboard at the Topsail Island Inshore Challenge with these 7.09 and 6.91 lb. reds. Both fell for topwater plugs at a bay inshore of Topsail Island.
Already at Sears Landing’s docks when the Fisherman’s Post crew arrived to set up for weigh-in, Tex Ritter and the “Brown Dog” fishing team waited patiently for the scales to open at 1:00, then weighed a pair of red drum totaling 13.99 lbs., a figure the 60 other boats in the Fisherman’s Post Topsail Inshore Challenge were unable to top.
Ritter, fishing with Jay and Bobby Wright aboard an Xpress center console, had been ready to head for the scales since early that morning.
“We had both of those fish in the boat at 8:00,” he said of the 6.91 and 7.08 lb. reds that earned the trio the victory. “The rest of the morning we were fishing some other spots with no pressure at all, just killing time.”
Ritter, who fishes nearly daily, had had his eye on the school of reds that produced the crew’s tournament winners throughout the week leading up to the event.
“I knew where there were some nice fish,” he explained, “and they cooperated and stayed right there.”
The school, feeding in a bay off the ICW behind Topsail Island, cooperated not only by staying put but by biting readily when the “Brown Dog” crew began casting.
Tossing topwater plugs, they immediately got into action, and figured they’d found what they came for just two hours after the official lines-in time.
“We weighed those fish,” Ritter continued. “And knew they were right about as heavy as they were going to get under 27 inches long.”
Deciding to leave the school and check out some other areas, the crew started hopping from spot to spot as they made their way closer to Surf City and the scales.
“I don’t like to harass a school of fish,” Ritter explained, “so we hit some other spots and caught some more slot fish and some over-slots.”
With the weigh-in time drawing closer and a thunderstorm doing the same, the anglers decided to head for Sears Landing just before noon.
“We got up there at 12:00,” Ritter recalled, “and just rode out the storm while we were waiting.”
Scaling the event’s heaviest flatfish were Kyle Jefferys and the “Mud Duck” fishing team, whose 4.83 lb. fish maintained the top of the leaderboard by nearly half a pound.
Chase Leblanc with the 4.83 lb. flounder that earned the “Mud Duck” crew first place flounder in the Fisherman’s Post Topsail Island Inshore Challenge. The flatfish fell for a live finger mullet near a Cape Fear River dock.
Jefferys and fishing partner Chase Leblanc teamed up aboard his 19’ Jones Brothers Bateau for the event. They pre-fished one day in the week leading up to the event, which prepared the anglers for the tournament in more ways than they knew at the time.
“We went out on Tuesday for about an hour,” Jefferys said, “and we got rained out.”
The mission didn’t give the crew much intelligence about where to find their winning fish, but it did foreshadow intermittent but at times torrential rains that faced competitors on tournament day.
The morning of the event, the anglers caught some bait and headed into Snows Cut, where they fished unsuccessfully before deciding to catch some more finger mullet and push into the Cape Fear River.
Fishing some docks on the river banks later in the morning, the pair came upon a solid flatfish bite.
“I think Chase caught the fish we weighed in around 9:30,” Jefferys explained. “But we had two that were almost identical, and I caught the other one about 20 minutes before.”
The pair of near-5 lb. fish were part of 14 flounder the anglers managed to land over the course of their fishing day, many of them in the same small area.
“That actually wasn’t a spot I’ve caught fish at before,” Jefferys said. “It caught us by surprise a little bit.”
After their flounder success, the anglers went searching for a drum and found one, but they elected not to take it to the scales.
“It was 19-20 inches,” Jefferys reported. “We figured it wasn’t going to be much help for us, so we ended up releasing it.”
As morning faded to afternoon, the anglers headed north towards Surf City and the scales, stopping to fish a few creekmouths north of Wrightsville where they hooked several more flatfish, but none larger than the pair already aboard.
“I didn’t think that fish had a chance to win at all,” Jefferys said. “Chase weighed it in with about 15 minutes to go and said it was 4.8 and he thought we were in first, but I said no way.”
As it turned out, the “Mud Duck” fish was in the lead, and maintained it until the scales closed.
Posting the 13.71 lb. second-place red drum aggregate along with the 4.14 lb. fourth place flounder and the event’s heaviest flounder/drum aggregate were Luke Donat and the “Donat Marine Solutions” crew. Cameron Byrd and the “Sears Landing/Snakebite” fishing team rounded out the top three on the drum leaderboard with a 13.61 lb. pair of reds.
John Donovan and “Team Donovan” were the runners-up on the flounder side, scaling a 4.34 lb. flatfish. Wesley Gleiter and “Fish Whistlers” secured third with a 4.15 lb. fish.
The Topsail Inshore Challenge is event number four in the 2014 Fisherman’s Post Inshore Tournament Trail, leading up to the Carolina Beach Inshore Challenge September 12-13 and the crowning of the season-long red drum and flounder champions. Visit www.fishermanspost.com for more information on all the events in the series along with leaderboards for each tournament and the standings for the overall trail.
