Tournament Report – Wide Open Tech SMO
Anchoring their bag with a stout 5.84 lb. spanish mackerel that would have earned them the victory by itself, Sam Franck and the “Cam-Har-Jac” fishing team easily topped the field at the Wide Open Tech Spanish Mackerel Open. The 7.87 lb., three-spanish aggregate weight they posted was over 2 lbs. heavier than any of their competition in the event, held July 31-August 2 out of Wilmington’s Wild Wing Café and Dockside Restaurant & Marina.
Sam Franck, Kevin McCoy, and 6 year-olds Cameron and Jackson Franck and Harrison McCoy–team “Cam-Har-Jac”–earned the top spot at the Wide Open Tech Spanish Mackerel Open with a trio of spanish weighing 7.87 lbs. Their fish fell for rigged ballyhoo and Clarkspoons just off the beach at Bald Head Island.
Franck, fishing aboard the 25’ Sea Hunt “Tailwalker” with his sons Cameron and Jackson and friends Kevin and Harris McCoy, started out the day running south along the Cape Fear coastline. They searched for bait as they made their way down the beach but found no conditions to warrant stopping for until they reach Frying Pan Shoals.
“I went down there with the intention of fishing out on the shoals,” Franck explained, “but it was rough and we ended up coming in to the beach at Bald Head.”
Deploying a spread of Clarkspoons, squid chains, and small, rigged ballyhoo, the anglers began trolling just off the Bald Head beach, but had a fairly slow start to the day.
“We caught one jack crevalle about an hour in,” Franck continued. “We got that big fish about 10 minutes after 9:00.”
Their big spaniard fell for one of the ballyhoo under a pink skirt, and put up a solid struggle after it took the bait.
“That fish put on quite a show with that light drag,” Franck said. “It was Cameron’s turn on the rod, but he traded it off with Jackson and Harris each time it ran so they all got to fight it.”
After the trio of 6-year-olds battled the mackerel back to the boat, the entire crew were elated to see that it was, in fact, a large spanish instead of a small king.
“We thought it might be a king at first,” Franck reported, “but when he got close we could see that dark spot on the dorsal and there was no mistaking that it was a spanish. I’m not sure the boys had a lot of perspective on how big that fish was, but we were all pretty excited to put that one in the boat.”
The action continued to be fairly slow for the crew, with a few bluefish biting the squid rigs, but between 10:00 and 11:00 that morning the anglers put two smaller spanish mackerel in the boat.
“Those three we weighed were the only three we caught,” Franck said.
Continuing to work their way back up the shoreline, the crew finally decided to head for the scales a bit early as they made it to the Marriott Reef of Carolina Beach.
“We wanted to make sure we didn’t lose it on time if we had a Wildlife stop or something,” Franck explained.
The trip to the scales went smoothly, however, and the big spaniard earned Cameron, Harrison, and Jackson the event’s shared Junior Angler title.
Scaling another sizeable spaniard, Chris Spivey and the “5 O’Clock Somewhere” weighed a single 5.56 lb. fish to capture second place in the event. Eric Batt aboard “Nauti-Tymz” scaled a 4.66 lb. three-spanish aggregate to round out the top three.
The Wide Open Tech Spanish Mackerel Open features three divisions for youth anglers. Gray Melvin took home the top spot on the Pre-Teen (9-12) leaderboard, and Emma James was the tournament’s top Teen Angler.
For more information and a full leaderboard on the Wide Open Tech Spanish Mackerel Open and all Fisherman’s Post events, visit www.fishermanspost.com.
