Sunday, May 04, 2008
Sat. 5/3 Redfish Action - Redfish Challenge. 5th Place
Capt. Mike Taylor and myself fished the Redfish Action Redfish Challenge Event 1 put on by Capt. Lee willis out of Harker's Island this Sat. Lee, his wife, and all their volunteers did a great job and provided a lot of food at both the Capt.'s meeting as well as at the weigh-in on Sat. afternoon. Despite the forecast for 20mph SSW winds there was a 31 boat field. Mike and I chose to come back to our home waters even though we would lose several hours of fish time due to travel. We had a few complications in our plan as we got to our first spot and a non-competitor had already been on the fish and spooked them. Then, our trolling motor remote was giving us problems and these fish were several hundreds yards back on a 15in deep flat. We pushed our way back to these fish and hooked up and landed several including a 24in. and a 29in fish. We put the 24in. in the livewell and released the oversized fish. The school was already stressed and shut down on feeding despite what we threw to them. So, we moved on to another location and got on an undisturbed school of fish. We landed 8 reds off this school before they moved off to deep water. We managed to cull out the 24in. fish and upgrade to two 25 1/2in reds. With about an hour left to fish we moved on to a third spot that had been holding 26 to 35in. fish all week and they were still there. After chasing these fish around for almost an hour we couldn't seem to get a slot fish out of them. We released 7 reds from 27 1/2in to 34in. before we had to pack it up and head back toward Harker's Island. With one last hope, we had been tracking a school of reds near Morehead City for over a week and hoped they would still be occupying the area. But, we got there and scoured the bay over and over and the extreme low tide had pushed these fish out of the area. So, with 10min. left, we picked up and ran to weigh-in. Although we didn't land any of the 26 to 27in. fish we had been landing all week, we were lucky enough to have two decent fish to weigh-in and wound up taking 5th place in the event. We are looking forward to the next event. Don't forget that the Crystal Coast Fishing Association Redfish Series begins with the first event on June 21st. Go check out www.crystalcoastfishing.net for details. We look forward to seeing everyone there.
Capt. Jeff Cronk
Fish'n4life Charters
252-764-2174
