A Relentless win
Florida team prevails at Beaufort FLW Kingfish Tour with last-minute catch
BEAUFORT, S.C. – Last year in Sarasota, Fla., a disappointed Team Relentless weighed in bag of ice as a joke after blanking in the final round of Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour competition there. Sunday in Beaufort, they happily left the ice behind and weighed in the winning kingfish at 24 pounds, 14 ounces to redeem their near-miss the year before.
Buoyed by the 41-pound, 1-ounce king they caught Saturday, Relentless won the tournament and took home $100,000 with a total weight of 65-15, narrowly edging out the opening-round leaders, Team Second Mortgage, by a little over a pound and a half. Included in the victory winnings was $40,000 for first place plus $30,000 apiece from Hydra-Sports and Yamaha in contingency money.
The winning team had to live up to its team name, however, in order to claim that cash. Relentless returned to the area where they’d fished the previous two days, Gray’s Reef, about two hours south of Beaufort, but they didn’t have the same kind of luck they experienced in the opening round even though the ocean had laid down flatter and the sun was hot.
“We had a miserable day until about 1 o’clock. We had no hits at all, and we didn’t see a lot of bait,” said Relentless Capt. Tony Davenport of Jacksonville Beach, Fla. “We saw (teams) M&Ms and Second Mortgage catch fish around us, and we thought we were going to be back onstage with a bag of ice again.”
At around five minutes to 1 o’clock – just minutes before they had to pull up stakes and make the run back to weigh-in – the frustrated team made a last-ditch location change on the reef and dropped a blue runner on the downrigger. At the same time, Davenport was jigging up more bait when their kingfish hit.
“I caught a greenie, and as I was throwing it in the baitwell, that fish hit and ran off 300 yards of line,” Davenport said. “We threw everything we had out of the way and ran down that fish. We were dead set on bringing it in; we didn’t care what size it was. When we got it to the boat, (crewmember) Don (Bolt) took a swing with the gaff, missed it, and it made another 100-yard run. The second time he got him clean, though, no blood, and we threw it in the bag, buttoned up and came in.”
The last time Relentless had a fish on in the finals, in Sarasota, they lost it because they had trouble extracting the rod from the top rod holder. This year in Beaufort, Davenport was bound and determined not to let that happen again, going so far as to lower their rod holders and adding a step for easier access. Plus, he said, his team was ready and prepared for the big strike this time.
“I can tell you, (crewmembers) Don and Mike (Brandon) did a superb job handling the rod and gaff, Mike on the rod and Don on the gaff,” Davenport said. “We worked as a team and we got it together, and it paid off. You can’t imagine the difference in feeling that I have right now (compared to Sarasota). We wanted it bad.”
Second Mortgage just short
Until Relentless’ last-second heroic catch, Capt. Larry McDuffie of Pittsboro, N.C., and Team Second Mortgage had the winning fish in the bag.
Second Mortgage – which caught the heaviest king of the week Saturday with a 41-pound, 8-ouncer – caught a 22-12 king earlier in Sunday’s finals and looked poised for victory. They – along with Team M&M’s, which also had a kingfish in the bag – fished Gray’s Reef near Relentless, so they saw when the Davenport’s team moved locations and caught its winning fish.
“We watched Tony go about a mile away and catch that fish,” said McDuffie, who said Relentless helped them get on fish throughout the week. “Yeah, it hurts. But without those guys we wouldn’t even have been here. They stayed with us and fished with us all week, so they deserve it.”
Second Mortgage caught its keeper kingfish in 50 feet of water on the downrigger with a blue runner.
They finished with a total weight of 64 pounds, 4 ounces and collected $31,600 in winnings and contingencies for second place.
Nerves rattle third-place Blue By U
Team Blue By U, captained by Welsh Carson of Holden Beach, N.C., caught a kingfish weighing 16 pounds, 9 ounces Sunday and finished with a total weight of 55-0. They earned $18,500 for third place.
Blue By U had never fished an FLW final round before, so they weren’t quite used to the idea of performing for the FOX Sports Net camera crew that accompanied them in the boat Sunday. Not only that, Blue By U was the only two-man team in the finals, and they admitted that the TV pressure might have been a little concentrated on them.
“We were nervous with the camera on board for the first time,” Carson said. “So we were late catching bait this morning. It took us about an hour longer than normal, and that hurt on a shorter day.”
Not only that, Carson said they broke off a fish on a lure he had borrowed from a buddy just for today.
“The lesson: Always use your own equipment,” he said.
M&M’s fourth
While they weren’t able to come up with the first back-to-back wins on the FLW Kingfish Tour, Team Wild Ride / M&M’s did catch a fish Sunday – a 12-pound, 15-ounce king – and managed to avoid a somewhat ignominious finish by taking fourth with a final total of 52-5.
“When we caught this fish today, I thought we were going to get our third fifth-place (finish),” said Capt. Randy Griffin Jr. of Hampstead, N.C., who won the last tournament at Fort Pierce, Fla., and has two prior fifth-place showings including last season’s stop at Beaufort. “But we knew that if we finished in the top five, we were going to be in the points lead.”
With one tournament left in the season, M&M’s leads the standings with 585 points. They earned $14,900 for this week’s efforts.
Evinrude fifth
Team Evinrude, captained by Rick Smith of Brunswick, Ga., finished fifth and collected $13,100 for a total weight of 35 pounds, 9 ounces.
They caught a keeper kingfish Sunday weighing 16 pounds, 12 ounces, but lost their weight in penalties because they were late to check in at 3 p.m. Evinrude made a long run Sunday and ran out of gas shortly before arriving at Beaufort.
“We went flat-out today. We had nothing to lose, and this is where we ended up,” Smith said. “We only needed five more gallons of fuel.”
Coming up
The next Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour event, the regular season’s fourth and final, is scheduled for Atlantic Beach, N.C., Sept. 28-30.