Tournament Report: Topsail Spring Surf & Pier
Over the weekend of May 5-7, the Topsail Spring Surf & Pier Fishing Challenge welcomed a field of 210 anglers that checked in under the big tent at East Coast Sports and were ready to enjoy a nice weekend at the beach with light forecasted winds and clear skies.
The leaderboard offered the chance to compete in the Surf Division (bluefish, trout, black drum, and sea mullet) or the Pier Division (bluefish, spanish, black drum, and sea mullet), as well as a Surf Red Drum TWT, a Pier Trout TWT, and prizes for the top junior, lady, and senior anglers.
In the Surf Division, Michael Atkinson came away with the top bluefish of the weekend, weighing a healthy 7.1 lb. blue. The blue hit well after dark (around 10:00 pm) as he was fishing a hole around the middle of the island with a piece of cut bluefish.
After losing an even larger fish earlier in the night, he heard reports of bluefish running at a pier that was within eyesight. His winning bluefish was pulled up on the beach shortly after.
Angler Mark Clontz took top prize in the Surf Division for sea mullet with a 1.7 lb. fish.
The biggest bluefish of the 2023 Topsail Spring Surf & Pier Challenge came from Michael Atkison who weighed in a 7.1 lb. blue to win that category in the Surf Division. The fish hit a piece of cut bait near the middle of the island.
William Green, Jr. landed a 5.9 lb. black drum that put him at the top of the leaderboard at the event’s close. William, with his sons Zaevyon and William III, had targeted a hole towards the south end of Topsail. After spotty fishing from tournament start, the low tide on Saturday afternoon brought the result they needed. Cut shrimp on one of William’s hand-tied bottom rigs caught the attention of the large black drum.
There were no trout weighed in in the Surf Division, but the Surf Red Drum TWT was won by Robert Rodger with an upper-slot 6.6 lb. redfish. This was his second red drum of the tournament, and both were landed within three hours of the tournament start time of 11:59 pm on Friday night.
Rodger had scoped out his hole during the week, watching an area in the middle of the island that they were moving a bunch of sand around. This formed a nice drop-off and deep slough that quickly produced for his Carolina-rigged live menhaden.
In the Pier Division, Brian Williams won the bluefish category with a 2.2 lb. blue. The winning bluefish came late in the weekend, finding the hook around 9:00 on Sunday morning.
Williams had chosen to fish Seaview Pier and focused his efforts near the end of the pier with live shad on a king rig. At one point, himself, his girlfriend Lisa Taylor, and son Nick Williams all held top spots on the board, but it was Brian’s fish that held on to take the top prize.
The Pier Division winner in the sea mullet category went to Naomi Holloway who chose the Jolly Roger Pier for her efforts. She had set up closer to the surf zone, fishing with bottom-rigged cut shrimp, when around noon on Saturday she landed the 1.0 lb. sea mullet that took the top spot.
A fellow angler next to her, who assisted with the net job, also caught a fish that came away from the weekend with a top prize on the leaderboard, and this marks two years in a row an angler fishing the tournament next to Holloway topped the leaderboard.
Josh Sheets was this year’s top pier angler, not only catching a 4.2 lb. black drum that won that category, but his black drum was also the largest pier fish of the weekend, earning him and Jolly Roger Pier the Pier Cup.
Sheets moved all over Jolly Roger Pier throughout the weekend based on different target species, and on Saturday afternoon he was targeting the surf zone with cut shrimp on a fish finder rig when he got the black drum strike.
Jacquelyn Pierson found herself atop the leaderboard for spanish mackerel with her 2.1 lb. fish. On Saturday morning around 8:00 am, she headed out on Seaview Pier where anglers were slowly picking away at some surface-feeding fish. It took only three casts of her pink and silver colored diamond jig to land the smaller spanish mackerel that was enough to top the Spanish category.
In the 2023 Topsail Spring Surf & Pier Challenge, Josh Sheets took the top spot in the Pier Division’s Black Drum category with a 4.2 lb. black drum that fell for a piece of cut shrimp while he was fishing from Jolly Roger Pier. The fish also earned Sheets and Jolly Roger Pier the traditional Pier Cup.
The Pier Trout TWT was caught early on Saturday morning (around 2:00 am) by angler Joshua Sloop and weighed in at 1.9 lbs. After midnight’s start of fishing, Sloop quickly went to work targeting speckled trout close to the end of Jolly Roger Pier. Rigged with live shrimp, he first landed a smaller trout, and then followed that with a larger fish, which unluckily kicked off on the landing process. His third and final fish (estimated to be a little smaller than the second fish that kicked off) was the winning speckled trout.
All fish weighed in are donated to First Fruit Ministries, who began in 1998 and have grown to serve thousands of hot meals, provide emergency groceries to households, and shelter homeless women and families.
Anglers already are looking forward to the Topsail Fall Surf & Pier Challenge over the weekend of November 3-5, hoping for more great weather, more great fishing, and the opportunity to win or defend their leaderboard spot against a field of returning and new anglers.
For a complete leaderboard, as well as more information on the November event and all of the surf fishing tournaments this year, please visit www.FishermansPost.com.
