Saturday July 11 2009                                                                                           

         Tournament partner Darin Strickland and I had high hopes as we traveled to Beaufort for the second cup event of the Redfish Action Series on Saturday July 11 2009. Having located a couple extremely large schools all containing 3 and 4 year class fish on several previous Topsail Island Charter Trips, we decided to make a 60+ mile run (one way) from Beaufort. After an extremely well organized Captain's Party hosted by Town Creek Marina, we retired to the hotel to strategize for the tournament.  Knowing that the run would leave little fishing time and quite possibly be the farthest ever made in this series, we knew that the 21 Fin Chaser we were fishing out of would get us there and back without issue. With visions of the hundreds of happily mudding upper slot fish that awaited us on the little sand washed mud flat 3 counties away, we decided we would "hero or zero"

         We were the 5th boat to clear checkout at 5:30 am on tournament day(thanks to Darin's mystical ability to always draw a 7 or better in the checkout lotteries!) We arrived at our spot around 7:15 to find perfect sight fishing conditions(little to no wind and a bright rising Sun). After poling stealthily into the little bay, we began to wonder if we made the right decision, as the surface was devoid of any signs of Reds or bait activity. Within about 15 minutes, as the tide began to funnel in bringing with it thousands of skipping shrimp, the first fish blew up on Darin's Mirrolure Top Pup. Deftly walking the bait back to the boat Darin soon came tight on the first fish of the morning, a healthy upper slot Red that showed us it was much too early to celebrate  by throwing the hooks a short while later. While we should have been discouraged by losing such a quality fish, we knew that there were easily hundreds more in the school that was pushing water off to our starboard side. By 8:30 we had 2 Reds totalling about 12.5 lbs. in the livewell and had culled several others. After several more top water fish and seeing hundreds upon hundreds of tightly schooled Reds bringing the water to a boil, I decided it was now or never, and cast a copper spoon to the edge of the most active school, resulting in a beautiful 7.5 pound Red that was scarily close to being over the 27 inch slot. Knowing we had an extremely long run ahead of us and guestimating that we had 14 pounds or more, we decided to leave them biting at 9:30 in hopes that we could take our time getting back and not beat up the fish in the livewell. Thanks to Darin's forward thinking when he built the boat and installing two seperate pumps, we avoided arriving at the scales with dead fish after the livewell pump became clogged with mud while poling off the flat. The first to weigh in at 2:00 pm when the scales opened, we were optimistic, but weary, as there were several extremely competetive teams still on the water. It turns out our 14.09 pounds were only good enough for second, as Capt. Rennie Clark and Drew Arndt hit the scales with a whopping 14.45 pounds to seal the deal and put us in second place for the tournamnet. Congratulations guys, that was impressive!

        With 36 of the 48 teams weighing nice fish, this event cemented in me how truly lucky we are to have such a healthy fishery here in North Carolina, yes we have some things that definitely need fixing, but the weights posted rival or better those than are seen in any other state hosting these events! Thanks to Capt. Lee Willis and his dedicated staff for putting together a first rate tournamentt series right here in our backyard!