BILOXI, Miss. – Before the 2007 Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Championship began, many anglers said it would take at least 50 pounds just to make the cut in the big-fish waters off the Gulf Coast. After two days of fishing, however, only one team, M&M’s, has broken the 50-pound mark, and it will consequently take the lead into the final round.
Catch weights were a little lower Saturday than they were the first day of the opening round. Team M&M’s didn’t top their leading mark set Friday – 51 pounds, 10 ounces – and only two more fish over 40 pounds came across the scale.
Still, those two fish, caught by Team Hooligan and Team Reelin, vaulted those teams into the top five and on into Sunday’s final round.
Hooligan bounces back from rough day one
Hooligan, which is captained by Joe Winslow of Sunset Beach, N.C., caught the biggest kingfish Saturday at 47 pounds, 15 ounces, but they had a difficult road to run in catching it.
“I’m really happy to be here today,” Winslow said. “It’s been a tough weekend. This was the only bite we had in two days of fishing. We’re proud of what we did today, especially in light of what we’ve been through.”
Friday was an unmitigated disaster for Hooligan, which won the tour event in Southport, N.C., last year and placed second at Sarasota, Fla. After making what he admitted were some poor choices on fishing locations, Winslow said they struck a 10-by-10-foot submerged piling during a run toward the end of the day. He thought that ended his new boat’s duties at the championship right there, but after pulling it out of the water and checking the damage, it only had a minor nick on one of the motors.
“It was completely submerged,” Winslow said of the piling. “I never saw it.”
Worse yet was the fact that they didn’t catch a fish.
“This is a sport about decision-making,” Winslow said. “Everybody here is a good angler, and what makes a good angler is a combination of luck, preparation and decision-making. Yesterday, our decision-making was not so good. We went to where we thought (the fish) were going to be, and they just weren’t there. We were fishing mostly (oil) rigs, but nothing was working for us.”
That changed Saturday when they finally caught a king on their downrigger on a big hardtail with about two and a half hours left to fish. And it was a big one.
“Today, we had some good information and a totally different game plan,” Winslow said. “Unfortunately, our first spot was empty, so we made the tough decision to make a long run. We pulled up on the last spot, and we didn’t have the lines in the water more than five minutes before it hit. It’s ridiculous, but that’s the only bite we had. Hey, even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.”
Hooligan made the final-round cut in third place.
Reelin gets into them, weeds out a 43-5
The other team to break 40 pounds Saturday was Reelin, captained by Marc Pincus of Hilton Head Island, S.C. They caught a 43-pound, 5-ounce kingfish and made the cut in fourth place.
Like Hooligan, Reelin didn’t catch a fish Friday due to some boat trouble. They had motor problems and didn’t even get to fish.
However, unlike Hooligan, Reelin got into a lot of fish when they finally got out on the water Saturday and went rig-hopping.
“We just kind of stuck with our plan, and we probably caught 20 fish today,” Pincus said. “We were just weeding our way through a bunch of 20-pound fish and keeping the bait fresh. This one hit on a big blue runner. We looked at it and saw it was a good fish, so we made two more laps around and came back in.
“We had caught a good fish in there prefishing, so we knew they were in there. We just had to work hard to weed through them.”
M&M’s, Collins, Pro Marine USA round out finals field
Even though the other three final-round qualifiers didn’t weigh in a fish Saturday, they didn’t exactly rest on their laurels.
Capt. Randy Griffin Jr. of Hampstead, N.C., and Team M&M’s didn’t go back to their productive spot that yielded them the tournament’s leading fish so far, but they did go out and catch some decent kings.
“Yeah, we went fishing. We were working on backup plans B, C, D and E. We caught some in the mid-20s and a 30 or two here and there. I feel good about it,” Griffin said. “Tomorrow, we’re probably going to go back to where we were yesterday unless we hear of some other big bites in other places.”
Capt. Johnny Sears of Fuquay Varina, N.C., and second-place Team Collins, which caught a 49-pound, 3-ounce fish Friday, also kept the throttle down.
“We ran long and hard today,” crew member Mike Muhlbauer said. “We went looking for something bigger than yesterday. We wanted to really knock it out of the park.”
Also based on their day-one catch, Capt. Kevin Hannon of Seminole, Fla., and Team Pro Marine USA/Hannon’s Cannon rounded out the top five to make the final cut with 42 pounds, 12 ounces.
Championship final round Sunday
The top five boats will take off at 6:30 a.m. Central time Sunday for the final round of competition. The 2007 champion – and a potential $150,000 check – will be determined by combined opening-round and final-round weight.
Sunday’s final weigh-in will be held at the Wal-Mart store located 3615 Sangani Blvd. in D’lberville, Miss., beginning at 4:30 p.m. The takeoff and weigh-ins are free and open to the public.