Backwater Battle 2009
Brandon Sauls, Capt. Mark Stacy, and Capt. Mark Dickson with the winning 5 lb., 14 oz. speckled trout and 2 lb. 2 oz. flounder that earned them the top spot in Tripp and Austin's Backwater Battle for the second year in a row.
“It’s worth the entry fee just to see the kids’ poly ball bounce and cast net competitions,” said Little River’s Capt. Mark Dickson, of Shallow Minded Inshore Fishing. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: these boys put on an awesome event.”
While the man obviously enjoys every facet of the event, it must help that he and Ocean Isle teammates Capt. Brandon Sauls and Capt. Mark Stacy have won Tripp and Austin’s Backwater Battle two years running. The flounder and trout tournament, held April 24-25, the first in this year’s inshore tournament schedule, is the creation of 9-year-old Co-Tournament Directors Tripp Hooks and Austin Aycock.
Dickson, Sauls, and Stacy topped the event’s trout and flounder aggregate category, and they posted the heaviest individual trout and flounder as well, with a 5 lb. 14 oz. speck and a 2 lb. 2 oz. flattie.
“I just got a new boat, a Triton 240 LTS, and this was a great way to break her in,” Dickson said. “It’s great to fish with two other guys who can run the boat, net fish, and do everything else without anybody needing to say a word to each other.”
Netting fish became important early on, as Dickson hooked the team’s big trout on a float-rigged live shrimp at the Little River jetties early on Saturday morning.
“Live shrimp are really the difference,” Dickson said. “When you’ve got guys who can go trawl up the shrimp this time of year like these Ocean Isle boys, they’re going to do well.”
Figuring they had a solid contender in the trout category, the anglers went looking for a flounder to get on the aggregate leader board.
While headed from Little River to Tubbs Inlet, where they hoped to find their flatfish, they were forced to wait for the Sunset Beach Swing Bridge to open up.
“We pulled up and had six minutes to go on the bridge,” Dickson explained, “and Mark threw out a mud minnow right there while we were waiting.”
It didn’t take long before a flounder found the minnow pinned to Stacy’s hook, and before the bridge had a chance to open, the trio of anglers had their 2 lb. flattie in the boat.
With a solid flounder in the boat, the anglers no longer needed to head for Tubbs Inlet, so they returned to the Little River jetties in search of an even larger trout. Although they didn’t find one, none of the other 14 competitors could touch either their trout or flounder, and their 8 lb. aggregate weight earned the Shallow Minded crew first prize and the bragging rights from the event for yet another year.
Ocean Isle’s Capt. Kyle Hughes, of Speckulator Charters, fished the event with his father, Nathaniel Hughes, and the pair put up a 4 lb. 11 oz. speckled trout and a 1 lb. 12 oz. flounder to take home second place.
“We fished most of the day at the Little River jetties,” K. Hughes reported. “There was an early big trout bite, but we weren’t lucky enough to get one then.”
The trout finally turned on again at 2:30, and each of the Hughes caught a 4+ lb. speck on float-rigged live shrimp before they decided to go hunting for a flounder.
They tried one spot and caught an undersized one, then moved to an inshore spot behind Ocean Isle Beach, where Kyle hooked the flounder that got them into the aggregate category on a live mud minnow. The flatfish hit the deck at 3:35, and with the scales at Holden Beach Marina closing at 4:00, they immediately ran for the weigh-in.
Clay Morphis took third in the aggregate competition.
Al and Teresa Fulford took home the prize for the largest trout not entered in the aggregate category with a 4 lb. 1 oz. speck. Ryan Strickland had the largest flounder outside the aggregate with a 1 lb. 12 oz. flatfish.
Strickland’s teammate, Kim Robbins, took home the event’s Lady Angler honors with a stout 5 lb. 5 oz. trout she hooked at the Little River jetties on a live shrimp.
The Backwater Battle had a special youth bluefish category, and 9-year-old Davis Julian took home the award for a 1 lb. 12 oz. blue.
Remarkably, in a tournament run by junior anglers, no junior angler weighed in the main division, so the call was made to roll the tournament’s guaranteed Junior Angler prizes over to next year-meaning that next year’s top three juniors will receive $1000, $600, and $400, substantial prizes even for adults.
