Added on Thursday, August 19, 2010  Fish Post

CFHBA Fish Tales Tournament

Featuring competitions for flounder, red drum, speckled trout, and king mackerel, the Cape Fear Home Builder’s Association held their second annual Fish Tales Tournament out of Dockside Marina on August 14^th.

Wilmington’s Stone Tippett (age 10) weighed the heaviest fish overall in the event, a 6.3 lb. red drum he hooked while fishing with his brother, Luke, and Christian Wolfe. The anglers pocketed $525 for weighing in the big red.

The anglers set out from the Fort Fisher boat ramp aboard a 16’ Ranger Banshee, bound for a school of reds Christian had found in Buzzard’s Bay the day before.

“There was a school of 26-30” fish in there yesterday,” Wolfe explained. “We got over there and they were blowing up, but it was windy and there was a shoal. We couldn’t see them and we ended up losing the pod.”

Proceeding to some creek behind Bald Head Island, the anglers began catching speckled trout on live shrimp and D.O.A. soft plastics, including a 1.1 lb. speck Stone landed on a live shrimp that earned second in that category.

“We kept fishing back there and got a 21” red and one that was 27 ¼”,” Wolfe continued. “We actually even caught a sheepshead on an artificial.”

Deciding to move on, the trio stopped near the mouth of the Dredge Hole to look for a larger trout, but came up empty-handed.

“I’d been catching some fish up this way earlier in the summer,” Wolfe said, “And they were all good fish, so we decided to come up here. We actually ended up fishing across from my house.”

Fishing a marshy area off the ICW behind Masonboro Island, the anglers had action almost immediately.
“We dropped the trolling motor in the water and Luke started casting a topwater and got a couple blow-ups,” Wolfe recounted. “He hooked up with one and the fish pulled off in the grass. We were all mad about that because we could see it was a good fish. What we didn’t even know was that Stone sort of secretly had a live mullet in the back of the boat. When we looked back his float was gone.”

The youth angler subdued the 25 ¼” red after a tough battle, and the anglers were running short on time.

“We went back in there and had a few more blow-ups,” Wolfe said “But it was 2:30 when we caught that fish and we had to have lines-in at 3. We were all pretty sure that fish was going to win, anyway.”

Win it did, as the anglers found out when the scales closed. They released the red at the dock after weighing it in.

Randall Siegel weighed in a 3.9 lb., 21” red drum that was good for second place in the drum competition.

Kelly Martin and “Team Daltile” earned the top spot in the flounder category with a 3.7 lb. fish, taking home $550. Fishing with Jim and Ethan Knight on a 19’ Pathfinder, Martin chose to target his home waters around Carolina Beach in his search for a money-winning fish.

“We worked the cut, the inlet and then some docks,” Martin said. “And then we headed into the river to try and target trout around the grass islands.”

Casting a white Gulp Jerkshad towards the grass around midday with specks on the brain, Martin hooked the tournament’s biggest flatfish.

“I actually thought I was hung up in the grass until I got the hook in him,” he explained. “He was laid up on the bank.”

After hooking the flatfish, Martin was surprised to see it break the water’s surface.

“He actually tail-walked towards the boat,” he said. “He came out of the water to say hello, shaking his head.”

When the fish surfaced, Jim Knight slid a net beneath it and the flounder victory was in the bag.

A 3.0 lb. speckled trout earned Deans Hackney, of Wilmington, and his son, Deans, Jr. first place and $320 in the trout division.

Andy Tolhurst weighed in a 3.0 lb. flounder to take second, beating Jackson David’s 3.0 lb. flatfish to the scales to knock him down to third.

Starting out looking for specks, the anglers fished some structure in the New River.

“I’d actually fished there years ago and had a plan it might work out,” Hackney explained. “Nobody was more surprised than me when we actually went out and caught a speck.”

While fishing live shrimp beneath floats, the father-son team was constantly harassed by pinfish until Deans, Jr. took one of the pins and sent it back with a hook in its back.

Shortly thereafter, his float sunk, and he hooked the winning trout around 7:00 that morning.

He quickly reeled the fish to his father’s waiting net.

“I didn’t really know it was a good fish till it flopped up to the surface and I netted it,” Hackney said.

After trout fishing for a short period longer the anglers headed down to Surf City to look for a red drum to weigh in. After releasing several over-slot fish, Deans, Jr. got a strike on a cut pogy. He battled a 21” red to the boat that was good enough for third place in that competition.

No king mackerel were weighing in during the event, so the organizers decided to roll the money over into next year’s king mackerel prize pot.