Team Wal-Mart lands two top-10 finishes in year-end points standings on professional kingfish tour
Two October tournaments ending the regular season of the 2003 Yamaha Professional Kingfish Tour provided seafaring anglers with a study in contrast.
The first took place Oct. 9-11 along North Carolina’s coast and gave fishermen fits when it came to catching king mackerel. The Oct. 23-25 season-ender in Louisiana proved a kingfish bonanza.
Oddly enough, Team Wal-Mart fared better in the face of adversity at the former event, placing two boats in the top 10. Fred Hoyt’s South Carolina-based King Quest crew blazed a trail to a strong second-place finish, while Georgia’s Fish Fever – captained by the Southern Kingfish Association’s 2002 Angler of the Year, Ed Mecchella – secured the sixth-place spot.
“(The weather) got pretty rough, and the fish shut down,” Hoyt said. “I think it was actually the worst tournament we’ve had in the five-year history of this professional tour.”
Mecchella said the first day of competition was actually postponed due to winds in excess of 25 mph and 7-foot-plus seas. The after effects of Hurricane Isabel also contributed to poor fishing conditions.
“The fishing was scarce,” Mecchella said. “I think the hurricane held the fish from moving north, so we had to move south to find them.”
The North Carolina tournament, held near Beaufort, provided the perfect platform to illustrate the power of teamwork in saltwater competition. The crews of King Quest and Fish Fever, both manning 32-foot Wellcraft boats powered by Evinrude direct-injection outboards, took turns finding the kingfish during the two-day event.
Hoyt said Team Wal-Mart’s five boats spread out in search of king mackerel on the first day of competition since the weather change rendered useless all prognostication based on prefishing conditions. The Fish Fever crew came through, however, finding the bite in the wake of a shrimping vessel, “which creates a big chum line,” Mecchella said.
King Quest was radioed in to the hot spot on day one and was able to capitalize on the discovery by landing a 24-pounder. Hoyt and company were able to return the favor the second day, calling the Fish Fever team into fruitful waters.
Hoyt said he found “a big school of bluefish,” which meant the sought-after kings would be in close proximity. King Quest was able to bring in a 23-pounder on the final day, and Fish Fever used the location to bring in a keeper that contributed to a two-day aggregate of about 35 pounds.
Though neither of Team Wal-Mart’s top guns was able to crack the top 10 at the Louisiana tournament held in Fourchon, some of the best fishing of the season made the event worth the trip west.
“Fishing in Louisiana was one of the best times we’ve had fishing in several years,” Mecchella said. “The weather was great and the fishing was excellent.”
He estimates his boat team caught between 30 and 40 fish a day there, compared to the North Carolina tourney where only 21 fish were weighed in on the first day by all competing teams and a paltry dozen made it to the scale on the second.
Louisiana yielded enough weight for Fish Fever to end the year in sixth place overall on the Yamaha Pro Tour. Though Mecchella wasn’t able to repeat his 2002 Angler of the Year finish, he said he is pleased with the season and looking forward to 2004.
“We gave it everything we had,” he said of 2003.
Hoyt’s team was thwarted on the first day of the Louisiana tourney by a fuel leak that led to a zero-weight day. King Quest followed up fiercely on day two with a 571/2-pounder – the third largest kingfish weighed by Yamaha Tour pros all year – but it still wasn’t enough on the whole to land a top 10 in a tournament with unbelievable catch weights.
“We were in contention to win Angler of the Year,” he said. “I was really upset because all we needed was a 30-plus-pound fish on day one to lock it up.”
Though Hoyt is disappointed King Quest didn’t land the top prize in the year-end standings, he allowed that a seventh-place finish is certainly respectable. He said he and the rest of his teammates are proud of their accomplishments in their first year of fishing together and are excited about their chances in 2004.
“I had a really great time fishing this year with the team I put together,” he said.