Added on Thursday, September 17, 2009  Fish Post

Ringer On The Rocks

Overall, I think it’s very safe to say that here at Fisherman’s Post we’ve got a lot more expertise and experience running fishing tournaments than we do fishing in them. But after finishing fourth and weighing in the most live flounder at the Flat Bottom Girls Tournament last November, the Fisherman’s Post crew of Eddie Hardgrove (Sales Manager), Gary Hurley (Publisher), and myself (Editor), the team began to fancy ourselves as legitimate competitors.

Of course, our modest success last year may have had something to do with the fact that we put ourselves on a boat with a ringer, Capt. Wayne Crisco of Last Resort Charters out of Topsail Beach. With 10 and 12 lb. flounder to his credit, along with numerous 8’s and 9’s, Wayne was a clear choice. Under his guidance last fall, we experienced an incredible day of flounder fishing (after getting our anti-horseshoe, Gary Hurley, off the boat) catching over 30 flounder in a short time and hauling around half that number to the scales and the live flounder tank going to UNCW’s Aquaculture Program.

With the Flat Bottom success fresh in our minds, we decided to fish the Third Annual Masonboro District Flounder Tournament, put on September 12 out of Bridge Tender Marina by the Cape Fear Council of the Boy Scouts. The tournament’s for a good cause, and hey, we’re seasoned flatfish competition anglers, right?

Of course we again gave the ringer a call, and made arrangements to meet up early tournament morning at the WB boat ramp and begin plying the waters in search of a winning flatfish.

The day started with a little difficulty in the bait department, but shortly after the sun broke the horizon we had the livewell on Wayne’s 21’ Carolina Skiff abuzz with finger mullet and bait-size spot. Then we headed for the Masonboro jetties, where a productive flounder trip a few days before led us to believe we might hook a money fish, if not necessarily a winner.

As the skiff caught a little air going over a boat wake at the south end of Wrightsville Beach, Wayne turned to us with a grin.

“This is tournament fishing, boys,” he said, throttle pinned in an effort to beat anyone else with jetty flounder on their minds to the spot.

Fortunately, no boats bobbed at anchor in the spot where I’d caught a number of 3-5 lb. fish earlier in the week, and the tailing current of the low and falling tide was soon tightening Wayne’s anchor rope.

As I turned from my anchor duties at the bow, I noticed that I was already behind in the game, since Wayne, Eddie, and Gary were snapping the bails of their spinning outfits shut after pinning finger mullet to their Carolina rigs and casting towards the exposed jetty rocks. Tournament fishing indeed.

I followed suit, netting a healthy mullet from the livewell. And just as my Carolina rig hit the water, I noticed that Wayne seemed deep in concentration, his line taut as something mouthed the mullet on the other end.

“Got one biting, and feels like a flounder,” was all we could get out of the captain. A few seconds later, Wayne sharply lifted his rod, but the tip didn’t follow suit, bowed and the bouncing as what appeared to be a solid fish shook its head 20’ below the boat.

“Flounder?” the Fish Post crew queried simultaneously.

“Feels like it,” Wayne replied. The captain walked up the skiff’s starboard gunwale as he played the fish, which was digging deep and putting up steady resistance in the style of the species we were looking for.

As he gained line, Wayne pulled a net from a forward holder and continued cranking the fish ever closer to the boat while it continued to register its displeasure with the situation with violent head shakes. Wayne’s steady pressure took its toll after half a minute, and a flounder, a nice one at that, soon materialized under the boat.

The captain slid his net under the fish and introduced it to the skiff’s deck, which brought on a fresh round of thrashing, but this fish was ours.

Putting a flounder in the boat on the first cast seemed to bode well, and when Wayne set the fish on top of his aluminum ruler, it taped out at just over 19”, an excellent start to the day.

My attention had been on Wayne as he fought the flattie, but my head was soon back in the game as something gave my mullet a firm thump and held on, flatfish-style.

I let the fish eat for half a minute or so, lifting the rod to see if the weight was still there, and then set the hook.

“That him?” the crew asked, as the fish dug for the bottom.

“Think so,” I replied.

Wayne was quickly at my side with the net, but when my fish appeared, he quickly went back to baiting up his rig.

“Toadstool,” I was unhappy to report as I swung a healthy oyster toadfish over the side.

Gary and Eddie followed with toadfish of their own as Wayne fished another cast, got a bite, and missed the fish.

“That was a flounder,” he said, casting to the same spot where he’d gotten a bump. “He’s still there. He’ll bite again.”

Shortly into this cast, Wayne was again negotiating with an unseen bottom dweller, and he set the hook into another fish that appeared more substantial than a toad.

After an identical battle to his first fish, Wayne was again sliding the net under a pretty flatfish, and put a near twin of his first flounder, just a half-inch shorter, in the boat. Ringer indeed.

Wayne was showing us the skills he’s acquired in a lifetime of inshore fishing from Southport, where he grew up, to Topsail, basically the epicenter of NC trophy flounder angling.

Gary, Eddie, and I followed Wayne’s flatfish pair with a trio of oyster toads and a small gag grouper before Wayne decided our flounder games needed a little tune-up with some sage advice.

“How long of a leader are you guys using?” Wayne queried, holding up a freshly baited mullet on the end of his rig. “See how short my leader is? I catch a lot more flounder with a shorter leader.”

I had an opportunity to put Wayne’s advice into practice after my next cast, as I snagged and broke off my third rig of the morning, just a half-hour into the day, somehow finding every rock and hang on the bottom, though my companions had yet to have to re-tie.

As I slid an egg sinker on my line and prepared to follow it up with a chartreuse plastic bead, the ringer offered another hint.

“No beads,” I heard Wayne say from the back of the boat. Not sure I’d heard him right, I turned and asked, “Do you really think beads make a difference?”

“I never use beads,” he replied, a short cast sending his finger mullet on another flounder-finding mission a few yards off the rocks. “The beads attract more toadfish, pinfish, and other stuff you don’t want to the rig.”

Unwilling or able to argue with his results, I completed the rig, leaving the beads in the box.

As I cast again, Wayne and Eddie both hooked up, and just a short time apart landed flounder that were easily keepers, but a bit smaller than the two the captain had boxed up off the bat.

Gary soon followed suit, adding another keeper to the box, as I released yet another toadfish. The tide was almost slack, and with the bite slowing down, Wayne made the call to make a short move.

“Let’s move down the jetties a bit,” he said, starting up the Suzuki four-stroke powering his boat. “We’ll fish a few more minutes, then go catch a little more bait when the tide dies. You want some moving water for the flounder to bite.”

We moved a few dozen yards towards the south end of Wrightsville Beach and reset the anchor. Like our last spot, I was just stepping off the bow when I saw Wayne bow up on a fish, and a 16” flounder soon joined the ones in the box.

I was quick to add another toadfish and then a sea bass to my personal tally, but hadn’t yet hooked a flounder when the current stopped and we made the call to head inshore.

We easily loaded the well back up with finger mullet and debated on where to fish next.

“The tide’s high at around 2:00,” Wayne said, checking the time on his phone. “Those fish were biting at the end of the fall, and they’ll probably bite again when that rising tide slows down, so we want to be back at the jetties then.”

Deciding to make a drift through Hewlett’s Creek before doing some dock fishing closer to Wrightsville, we made the short run south and set up at the mouth of the creek, letting the rising water carry us up the winding channel.

The drift was slow in terms of action, but it gave Wayne time to give us some drift fishing pointers.

“I love to drift,” he explained, bumping the boat into gear with an eye on his depthfinder, “but you want some deeper water. We’re in 5’ here. I really like to have 7-8’ to drift in.”

We found the deeper water near the creek’s opposite bank, but no willing flounder.

We soon made the call to head to a marina at Wrightsville, which Wayne seemed excited about.

“Marina fishing is some of my favorite fishing,” he said as we stowed our rods and hauled tail towards Wrightsville Beach proper. “You catch a lot of fish, and there’s some big fish in the marinas, too.”

We arrived, deployed Carolina rigs, and began to power drift the area. Wayne’s eyes were on his depthfinder, and he got even more worked up at what he saw.

“See that?” he asked, tapping the screen of his depthfinder with his index finger. “That ledge just went from 19’ up to 12’. That’s pretty.”

Almost on cue, as the boat was a few yards past the ledge and our baits came up it, Gary, Eddie, and I all set the hook. My fish pulled off after a few yards, but Gary and Eddie soon had theirs to the boat, forcing Wayne into double-time netting duty.

One fish was legal and the other a bit short, but just like the jetties, landing flounder on the first drop definitely boded well for the spot, and Wayne’s excitement built.

“We’re coming back to that,” he concluded, as Eddie set the hook on another fish that shook the hook after his rod bowed up.

We power drifted up and back down a channel between piers in the marina, hooking up a few more times before Eddie put a solid 18” fish in the boat when we went back over the ledge Wayne had liked. After another drift down a parallel channel with little to show for it, Wayne decided that it was time to bag the drifting game.

“We’ve hooked up every time off the end of the docks where that ledge is,” he said. “We’re going to anchor up there.”

We did so, and the bite confirmed that the captain had made the right decision. While anchored up, there wasn’t a moment that one of us wasn’t “in negotiations,” as Gary likes to refer to the period between a flounder’s initial bite and when the hook is set. All of us landed several fish while anchored up, some barely legal, some undersized, and with a quality 18-19”, 2-3 lb. fish for everyone aboard as well.

Gary’s parental duties caught up to him shortly after lunch, and we had to drop him off around 1:00. Fortunately, he had disproven our firm theory that he was a flounder curse on the boat (in Flat Bottom Girls last year, we went from one fish in the box to 16 in the two hours after dropping him off), as we had a double-digit number of keepers in the boat already.

Making the call to return to the jetties and catch the end of the rising tide for the last few hours of competition, Wayne, Eddie, and I caught a few fresh mullet, then zipped back out to the inlet.

I hooked a 16” flatfish on my first cast, but then was back on the toadfish routine.

After yet another toad, something occurred to me.

“Wayne, you haven’t caught a toad all day, have you?” I asked. “How do you manage that?”

Pausing to think on it for a moment, Wayne replied, “Nope, guess I haven’t. I don’t cast as to close to the rocks.”

Following his advice, I’d thankfully battled my last toadfish of the day.

With a few short moves at the jetties, we managed to box up another couple fish before time ran short before the 4:00 weigh-in deadline.

Our 2.5-3 lb. fish weren’t sufficient to crack the leader board, as it appeared we weren’t the only people who’d had a good day on the flatfish, but it had been yet another incredible day of flounder fishing with Wayne. And with a dozen keepers in the box awaiting our dinner plans, no one was going home hungry or unhappy.

Capt. Wayne Crisco fishes everywhere from Southport to New River, and he’s a flounder specialist who’s also got an impressive record with other inshore targets like red drum, speckled and gray trout, spanish mackerel, and Atlantic bonito.

A trip with him is sure to provide not only a great and informative time, but plenty of fish for the table as well. Give him a call at (910) 465-0611 to talk about a charter, or check out Wayne’s website at www.lastresortcharters.com for more information.