Redfish Action
Capts. Jason Dail and Brent Stanley with the pair of red drum weighing 12.76 lbs. that secured their victory in the Redfish Action Challenge Cup One event, held out of Scotts Hill Marina April 25th. Their fish fell for Gulp shrimp in bays off the ICW and New River.
Squeaking by their nearest competition by just four-hundredths of a pound, Capts. Brent Stanley and Jason Dail—team “Worthless”—failed to live up to their name in the 2012 Redfish Action Challenge Cup One Event, bringing home the victory with a two-fish weight of 12.76 lbs. Their winning total also included the heaviest single red drum brought to the scales at Scotts Hill Marina, a 6.64 lb. fish.
Both Dail and Stanley did some scouting in the days before the event, and both located healthy schools of reds on the Friday preceding competition.
“Jason found fish to the south, and I found them to the north,” Stanley, of Current Adventure Charters, explained. “We ended up deciding to go to the north so we wouldn’t have to deal with the weekend Wrightsville Beach boat traffic.”
Hopping into Stanley’s 19’ East Cape Vantage flats boat and heading north from Scotts Hill, the anglers started fishing the flats and bays surrounding the mouth of the New River near Sneads Ferry. It didn’t take them long to locate fish, but getting them to eat proved a bit more tricky.
“We caught one right off the bat, had him in the boat before eight,” Stanley continued. “And we were on fish all morning, but they wouldn’t bite.”
Dail landed their first fish while casting a Gulp shrimp, and the 6+ lb. red ended up being the smaller of the fish they weighed.
The anglers located another school of fish in the same area, but they also proved reluctant to bite.
“We had a Plan B spot, but we needed the tide to come up to get in there,” Stanley said. “We ended up timing it perfectly. I can get in 8.5 inches of water with my boat, but we almost scraped bottom going in there.”
Reds were also working the team’s secondary spot, but not taking a huge interest in their lures.
“We finally got another one using a bait-and-switch tactic,” Stanley revealed. “I was throwing a topwater to get their attention, and then Jason came in behind me with a Gulp and caught them.”
The action soon slowed again, and hitting a few more spots as morning turned to afternoon, the anglers finally decided to head back south.
“I had one more spot I wanted to hit on the way back,” Stanley explained. “There were fish there about two weeks ago.”
The anglers fished the spot for around 20 minutes with no luck, and were about to head for the scales when Dail hooked their final red.
“I was saying we should go weigh what we had,” Stanley said, “but Jason wanted to pull up to one more point. I threw the topwater and got a push, and he threw the Gulp and hooked up.”
Thinking at first that it was a smaller fish, Stanley wasn’t too excited, but after the red began pulling drag, the captain grabbed a net.
“I saw it and got it in the net,” he reported, “and it was clearly bigger than what we had in the boat.”
Releasing their second fish and hanging on to the big one, the anglers headed for the scales, narrowly taking the lead, which they hung onto until the weigh-in ended.
The winning crew would like to thank East Cape Skiffs and Rockport Rattler Jigs for their support.
The “Dingbatters” team of Capts. Rennie Clark and Drew Arndt were right on the leaders’ heels, scaling a pair of fish weighing 12.72 lbs. to earn second place. “Sandbar Safari,” with Capt. Rob Koraly, finished third with 11.49 lbs.
More information on upcoming Redfish Action events and the whole tournament series, along with a complete leaderboard, is available at www.redfishaction.com.
