Padrick/Smith Place 2nd at Carolina Redfish Series #1

by Lee Padrick, June 2, 2014

Courtesy of Carolina Redfish Series

On May 31st, Dwayne and I had the opportunity to fish the inaugural event of the Carolina Redfish Series, a new tournament trail that consists of three events over the course of the season.  At safe light, 18 teams competed for the 1st place prize of $2,000.  

Dwayne and I had done a fair amount of scouting in the weeks leading up to the event.  We had spent a few days in Swansboro, but did not find enough fish or a pattern that we could rely on, so we decided to focus our practice efforts in eastern Carteret County.  We found an area about 20 miles from takeoff that was holding good numbers of fish, and decided to fish there on tournament day.  

We checked out as Boat #17 on tournament morning and took our time getting to our fishing spot, since the tide was low.  As the tide rose, we were able to get to the area holding fish.  Found fish after a few casts, and caught fish in flurries of chaos during the day, ending up catching around 45 fish.  The fish were in an odd mood and seemed to prefer topwater lures, versus our Salty Bay Red Devils or gold spoons that we had caught them on in practice.  While we would have preferred to fish the single hooks of jigs/Red Devils or spoons, we listened to the fish and threw topwater, although the treble hooks cost us a few fish over the course of the day.

The wind increased to a solid 15 knots during the morning, but the fish still cooperated.  We culled fish most of the day, making half-pound upgrades here and there.  As the sun reached its midday point, the fish started to prefer gold spoons instead of the topwater lures.  We fished until 2:45 pm, then packed up our gear for the ride back to the 4 pm weigh-in at Chasin' Tails Outdoors, on the Causeway at Atlantic Beach.  We thought we had somewhere between 12.8 and 13.1 lbs of fish.

Courtesy of Carolina Redfish Series

It was a good day of fishing for most of the teams in the event, as 15 out of the 18 teams weighed in fish.  Our fish ended up weighing 12.94 lbs, just a hundredth of a pound less than Team B & G's winning bag of 12.95 lbs, putting us in 2nd place.  Congrats to Dave Bernstein and Daniel Griffee of Team B & G for their win!  And great job by all the competitors.

I want to thank Hook and Bones, Salty Bay Baits, Temple Fork Outfitters, Pro-Cure Bait Scents, Fins Premium Superlines, No Slack Tackle, Bubba Blade, and PointClickFish.com for keeping us on the water.  

Our next event is August 9th at the Hook and Bones tournament, part of Carolina Redfish Series Event #2 in Swansboro.    The Hook and Bones folks and the Town of Swansboro really put together a premier event, so this should be a lot of fun.  We are looking forward to it. - Lee

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