NCCHARTERFISHING-Capt.'s Jeff Cronk and MIke Taylor-Crystal Coast, Swansboro, Emerald Isle

WHAT A DAY!!! Ryan Taylor fished onboard with me in the CCA Inside/Out Tourny today. We managed to take home 1st place in Primary Division for Redfish, the TWT for Redfish, and the 1st Place for Inshore Champ (Red,Trout,Flounder Aggregate)!
The weather was perfect! Anyone who likes fishing Trout/redfish/flounder tournaments should've been in Morehead City for this tournament! There was a primary division for biggest trout, longest 3 reds, biggest flounder... and an inshore slam category within the primary... a heaviest redfish division, as well as TWT's on all previously mentioned categories. There were so many ways to win money while still having fun... With only 30 boats in this tournament this year the payouts were higher than most inshore species tournaments. We started out our day trying to land a speckled trout... then hoping to work over the redfish... and finish up with a flounder... our plan worked well today... our first stop produced a decent trout... we moved and within 5 min.'s of searching, found a school of several thousand redfish from 25 to 30+in. We spent 3hours of non-stop wearing them out... with a fish on almost every cast we culled through nearly a hundred reds and released so many 26 to 28in. fish. The water clarity was so good we could pick out the fish we wanted to hook-up with... you could almost count their spots while they were swimming next to the boat... if one fish pulled off... another smacked it! There was no problem landing several hundred reds! But, after sore fore arms we decided to go bag that flounder we needed for a slam... The second stop we made we hooked up with a solid 4lb flounder which pulled off just before we could get the net to him... talk about frustration! Anyway, a short while later we put a decent 19in. flounder in the livewell which topped off our slam. Rather than fish late and make the late 5:00pm weighin, we decided to get to the scales at 3:30 and make sure our heaviest slot red 7.35lbs made it to the scales alive. Surprisingly, we could barely catch the thing from the 60 gal. livewell to weigh it in... it was weighed and released alive like the rest of our fish today. Again, what an awsome day! Great job Ryan! His largest redfish today was 16lbs! Capt. Jeff Cronk- FISH'N4LIFE 910-326-7512. jcronk@ec.rr.com