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

First, let me say hello to everyone and apologize for the lack of reports lately. Capt. Mike Taylor and myself have been on the West Coast of Florida fishing the 2008 IFA's Redfish Tour Championship event in Panama Beach City, Florida. We've had a great first season fishing the IFA Atlantic Division in NC (2nd place), SC (3rd Place), and GA (5th Place) taking home the Atlantic Divisional Team of the Year. We met the qualifications to fish the IFA Championship Event in Panama and Mike and I went down a few days ahead of time as we've never fished the waters and wanted to have time to locate fish and adapt to the much different conditions we've heard about. We managed to locate 4 or more different areas holding really good tournament quality reds. In fact, during prefishing we landed reds between 26 and 27in that weighed as much as 8lbs. We really thought we were going to take home the win for NC and Team NCCharterfishing. One thing for sure, things change on tournament day. Our plan A gave us a skinny perfect 27in redfish and a decent 26.5in redfish in the first hour but the school wasn't present. We knew we had between 13 and 14lbs in the livewell and we still had about 6hrs before weigh-in. So, we made the decision to stay in the area and wait the fish out. The decision didn't pay off as well as we hoped as the only other redfish we caught went about 15lbs. Back at weigh-in we were pleased to find we secured 5th place in the field of over 100boats for the first day of the two day event. Day two presented us with some tougher conditions as the wind blew about 15mph out of the WNW and really messed up the water clarity and ability to sight fish on several of our spots. We started out the morning with a quick 25 1/2in red but the school we had located during prefishing still hadn't made a showing. We made a long 25mile run to another area we had found good fish prior to the event but upon arrival the few fish we sighted just wouldn't eat anything... they had a case of the lock jaw. We opted to make the long run back toward the Pass and work a small section of the rocks where some fish had been staging up on a certain time of the tide. We got there at 3:00pm and only had 30min. left to put a second fish in the boat. A few minutes into it Mike hooked up and boated a 26in Red. The camera man broke out the equipment and started shooting as we proceeded to hook up time and time again. We wound up with two 26in. Reds and then Mike landed a monster slot fish. He brought what looked to be a 29in fish to the net and layed it on the ruler to find that it was 26 15/16in and about 8.5lbs... only problem was when he flipped it to measure the other side it would measure a perfect 27in and remeasure it again and would measure 1/16th over. We looked at the clock and we had about 3 min. to make a decision on which to keep... the smaller of the 26inchers or this monster. We felt that the two 26in fish would place us in the top 5 and possibly win us the Team of the Year title... we knew if we weighed the big fish and it measured we would win the whole event. We quickly made the decision to release the borderline fish and we took off for weigh-in. Day two proved to be tough for many anlgers as quite a few folks had nothing to weigh-in. Mike and I were pleased to discover that we had moved up in position on day two to finish in 4th Place overall for our two day aggregate of 25.9lbs ahead of over 100 boats. Especially as we were fishing strange waters in much different conditions. We wound up in 2nd place for the runnings for Series Team of the Year. Mike and I would like to thank the IFA for a great Redfish Series. Congratulations to all who placed in the tournament as well as those who managed to put fish in the livewell. Thanks to all the Sponsors of the IFA. We'd like to give a special thanks to our Sponsors including: Ron Enslen and Ranger Boats, Les Collins and Collins Inc., Chris Ulmer and Crystal Coast Graphics, Dan Vinent and Berkley, John Willard and Dudley's Marina, Tim Haney and Yamaha Outboards, Jack Salzer and SeaLake Products. We look forward to the 2009 IFA Redfish Tour's Atlantic Division as it will hold one tournament in Surf City on Sat. May 23rd and another tournament in Morehead City on Sept. 26th. For anyone interested in fishing these Nationally Televised Events check out their website at http://www.redfishtour.com/ Next season Ranger Boats will be giving away a brand new, fully rigged Ranger Boat valued at $30,000 to the first place team in each event. With a $400 entry fee and no qualifying events, fishermen would have to be insane not to participate! Expect the 2009 season to be massive in NC with giant payouts and lots of prizes! See ya next season if you're fishing!

Capt. Jeff Cronk

Team NCCharterfishing/Crystal Coast Graphics

Below are some pics from the event!