Fishing Topsail Message Board
Topsail Area Charter Boats
2009 NC Recreational Coastal Waters Guide
Hurricane Drew Arndt and I won the IFA tourney in Surf City this past Saturday. It has been one we have just missed a few times and was finally great to win one and a Ranger Banshee fully rigged with electronics and power pole to go with it. BTW it is for sale for a smoking deal for anyone in the market for a super skinny flats boat. Enough spam-here's how our week went. I charted the first half of the week and found scattered fi hen I switched gears and pre fished two days and found lots of fish on day two. Day one of pre fish for me was finding us some low water spots around structure and deeper areas I usually don't fish. We needed a low tide game plan due to the low tide at 9:30 on game day. Many of my flats would not have water on game day except for the first hour or two of competition. I struggled to find deep water fish and finally finished up hitting one of my flats later in the day and crushing them on topwater and soft plastics for an hour or so in rain and heavy wind. The next day I hit 8-10 of my favorite flats and located scattered fish but not the tourney winners I was looking for. Later in the day I hit my favorite piece of water for the first time this year and found nice mid slots every place I went. Never beat any of the fish up but got 35-40 on topwater, pitching soft plastics to cruising fish, and spinnerbaits. Drew and I went separate ways and we looked at tides, wind, and water levels to determine our game plan. We were going to put some comfort fish in the boat early at three of the spots I had pre fished but changed the plan after Hurricane found two nice flats holding fish in a place we are not so familiar with. We were able to get into the spot for two hours and fish and get out of there before the tide got us and hit the low water flat. Well we miscalculated and got stuck on the flat for four hours and were not sure we were going to be able to get off the flat before check in. We boated a perfect 27 inch fish early on topwater along with about 12-15 more reds on topwater and subsurface twitch baits in the first two hours of competition. We had over 13 lbs in the well by 8:00 am recirculating at low tide as we were high and dry. Can't tell you tournament guys how important a good insulated livewell and recirculating pump is for situations like this. The water from the morning was a good ten degrees cooler than the sun-baked water that was holding on the flat at low tide-which kept our fish happy and well oxygenated all day. When the tide did start coming up our fish started roaming the flat towards us and we picked off a few 25 inch fish dead sticking soft plastics and then Hurricane stuck a 27 incher to go with our other 27 inch fish. We then left the flat and headed to Surf City for weigh in. We were confident we had two perfect length fish but were not sure how much they weighed. When our smallest fish hit the scales we were confident we were going to have some good weight. Ended up with 14.46 lbs and first place. Thanks to the IFA for putting on a good tourney and to all the anglers that showed up from out of town. I believe we had more teams from SC than NC. Hope to see a lot of you guys at the next tournament-HT3 in Beaufort, NC June19.
Tight lines,
Capt. Ren
www.tournamenttrailcharters.com
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