Tournament Report: Pleasure Island Team
A beautiful spring weekend welcomed 40 teams and totaling nearly 200 anglers to compete in the annual Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge on April 14-16, hosted out of the Lazy Pirate in Carolina Beach. This tournament features a leaderboard based on a team’s three-heaviest fish from each of four divisions (Bluefish, Red Drum, Sea Mullet, and Black Drum). The event also awards prizes to Single Big Fish, a Team Aggregate TWT (a team’s single heaviest fish from all four species added together), and a Hall of Fame Award (the total weight of all fish weighed in in all four target species).
This year’s Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge also kicked off Fisherman Post’s inaugural Surf Series Trail, a season-long points competition where surf tournament anglers are not only competing in the individual events but are also competing for additional prize money to see who can weigh in the heaviest five-fish aggregate weight over the season.
The weather overall cooperated this year, as a stormy front moved through on Friday night bringing wet weather and some lightning, but this left fair, mild weather for the rest of the weekend.
Team Gotcha, made up of Chris Oldham, Cory Weiser, and Bill Nance, were expecting the forecast to really dish up better fishing action. After spending a wet Friday afternoon checking out the north end of Carolina Beach, the team decided to change gears based on the action, or lack thereof.
The team’s rods, setup with fresh shrimp on bottom rigs, were starting to “bump” with a little more consistency by mid-morning as the team started landing multiple sea mullet and four smaller bluefish. Team Gotcha culled their three largest sea mullet, and those mullet eventually won the team the top prize in the Sea Mullet Division with a total weight of 3.2 lbs.
Team Shore Thing with the Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge’s single heaviest black drum and single heaviest sea mullet. Both fish were caught near Kure Beach, and the two fish earned Team Shore Thing the Black Drum Division title, the Team Aggregate TWT, and the Hall of Fame Award.
Team Shore Thing, made up of Luke Arant, Melodye Arant, Mark Arant, and Andrew Arant, didn’t expect to make much movement over the weekend during their fishing efforts. The team did a little homework before the start of the tournament by zeroing in on an area south of Kure Beach that they had a feeling would produce.
The first night they found the current to be pretty stiff, requiring their bottom rigs to be setup with 3-4 oz. of weight just to hold. The water conditions were more stirred up than expected, and once fishing started, they were hoping for a drum bite knowing these are the conditions drum prefer.
That drum finally came, but it didn’t come out of the water with a copper color. They brought in a 3.2 lb. black drum that gave the team the top spot in the Black Drum Division. Saturday brought more mellow conditions along the beach, allowing the team to switch to lighter weights on their setups. They stuck to their hole despite the slow fishing action that came with the more favorable conditions. After their one black drum, they only landed one other fish the entire weekend, a lonely sea mullet.
While this story could sound like a long weekend with a lack of production, turns out Team Shore Thing had picked just the right spot. That lonely sea mullet also ended up being the single largest of the tournament at 1.8 lbs. In addition, their two fish total also won the Team Aggregate TWT and the Hall of Fame award.
Team Sistas & Brothas, with David Johnson, Sheila Johnson, Freddie Patterson, and Vicki Patterson, thought they had only small bluefish to weigh in on Sunday, but turns out all teams thought they had small bluefish. Team Sistas & Brothas found out on Sunday that their bluefish held three of the top 10 largest blues weighed, giving them first place in the Bluefish Division with a three-fish aggregate weight of 4.1 lbs.
David Johnson, Sheila Johnson, Freddie Patterson, and Vicki Patterson, of Team Sistas and Brothas, took the top spot in the Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge’s Bluefish Division with a three-fish aggregate of 4.1 lbs.
Anglers gathered on Sunday morning from 10:00 am-12:00 noon for weigh-in, followed by an Awards Dinner, an Awards Ceremony, and then a tournament raffle (stocked in large part by Island Tackle & Hardware, the tournament’s top sponsor).
The event also gives back to the community, donating all fish weighed in (and many fish donated by the teams) to First Fruit Ministries, a local food bank that provides thousands of meals annually to our community.
The complete leaderboard, along with all official weights and placings for divisions, can be found online at www.FishermansPost.com.
Fisherman’s Post hosts their next surf fishing tournament in Topsail over the weekend of May 5-7, the Topsail Spring Surf & Pier Fishing Challenge, followed by the Hatteras Island Surf Fishing Challenge the weekend of September 29-October 1.
Surf anglers can also still join the Surf Series Trail, with more information on all Fisherman’s Post events online at www.FishermansPost.com.
