Tournament Report: Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge
This year, Fisherman’s Post hosted the Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge on the weekend of April 8-10, where 41 teams were on the hunt for bluefish, red drum, black drum, and sea mullet. The tournament’s format features a leaderboard based on a team’s three-heaviest fish from each of the four species, and included an Aggregate TWT, Single Big Fish prizes, and a Hall of Fame award.
Although nice spring weather had been in the area prior to the start of the tournament, this was not the case on the weekend of the tournament. James Meehan, of Leland, NC, recalls the weekend well stating, “The wind picked up pretty heavy during the weekend, unlike during the week of. It was blowing consistently out of the west at about 15 mph for the majority of the tournament.”
Team Island Girl Outdoors was the big winner in the 2022 Pleasure Island Team Surf Fishing Challenge, winning the Black Drum Division, as well as the Team TWT and the Hall of Fame Award. Pictured are (l-r) Dugan Frazier, Mandi Waddell, Emily Morris, and Jeff Morris.
Meehan and his team, El Presidente Gun Club, would go on to scale the event’s heaviest aggregate weight for bluefish, as well as the largest single bluefish. Meehan stated, “Daniel (his son) caught the fish on a fireball rig weighed down with a 4 oz. sinker, rigged with cut finger mullet.”
The heaviest of the team’s three bluefish weighed in at 1.7 lbs., and their total weight was 2.5 lbs.
The Reel Deal Team took the top spot in the red drum division, as well as the largest single red drum, with a single red drum weighing in at 5.8 lbs. The fish was the only red drum landed over the weekend, and it was caught on a Carolina rig with cut mullet.
Peyton Woody, of Statesville, NC, and fishing with team The Reel Deal, remembered, “Conditions were pretty rough out there for almost the entire weekend, and the bite was pretty scattered. The west wind allowed us to keep the bait on the bottom, but the bite was just really spotty.”
Dale Traxler, of Asheboro, NC, fishing with Team Under Slot Again, bested all teams in the very busy sea mullet division, the category that easily saw the most fish weighed in by the most teams. Their total weight of three sea mullet was 5.0 lbs., and most were caught on homemade custom rigs paired with live sand fleas.
Traxler stated, “The fishing was hard. We had to adjust our weight size quite a bit to account for the windy conditions that picked up. It really helped that we had found some good holes our first day and just had to split up our fishing to allow us to have the team working around the clock.”
Team Gotcha won the heaviest single sea mullet with a 1.8 lb. sea mullet. Their 1.8 lb. fish tied three other teams’ heaviest sea mullet, but Team Gotcha won the tie by weighing in first.
Jeff Morris and his team, Island Girl Outdoors, were the big winners of the weekend. For starters, they took home the award for the team black drum division. The team’s three-fish aggregate weight was 9.3 lbs., and it included the tournament’s single heaviest black drum weighing in at 5 lbs. flat.
In addition, Island Girl Outdoors also took home the Team Aggregate TWT, an award based off a team’s single heaviest fish from each of the four divisions, with a weight of 7.1 lbs. They also won the coveted Team Hall of Fame Award, based on the total weight of all fish weighed in in all four divisions. The team’s total catch was just shy of 15 lbs. at 14.9 lbs.
Team Reel Deal was the only team to scale a red drum in the 2022 Pleasure Island Team event. Skyler Gayble holds up the 5.8 lb. red that took cut bait on a Carolina rig.
Most teams struggled through the windy conditions and the cold front that pushed in just before the weekend hit, yet the majority of teams scratched out some fish to bring to the scales on Sunday at The Lazy Pirate, the location of Tournament HQ and the host of Registration, Weigh-In, and Awards. Immediately following Awards was the tournament raffle put on in large part by Island Tackle and Hardware.
This tournament benefits not only the anglers and teams involved, but the local community as well. Each year Fisherman’s Post donates all fish weighed in, as well as additional fish donated by the teams, to First Fruit Ministries. First Fruit Ministries serves over 20,000 hot meals, provides emergency groceries to over 5,000 households, and shelters over 24 homeless women and families annually.
The complete leaderboard, along with all official weights and placings for the different divisions, can be found online at www.FishermansPost.com.
