MAYPORT, Fla. – Team Talkin Trash headed by Captain Mike Edwards of Wilmington, N.C., caught a kingfish Friday weighing 40 pounds, 10 ounces to win the Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour event in Mayport presented by Castrol and collect a $70,000 first-place check. A field of 104 teams competed for a share of the $300,000 purse in the third event of the most lucrative kingfish tournament trail in the country.
Despite the presence of Hurricane Dennis off Florida’s west coast, weather conditions in Mayport were relatively good Saturday, and few more big kingfish were caught, including a 40-pound, 4-ounce kingfish caught by Team One Flipper, which came up just 6 ounces short of the winning fish. Other than the winning fish caught Friday by Team Talkin Trash, the rest of the top five was caught Saturday.
“The water was a little bumpy this morning,” Edwards said. “So we only ran six miles to a place with a fishy bottom – a hard bottom. We thought the weather was going to get bad, so we didn’t want to run far, but the weather actually got better as the day went on. We caught a shark and an amberjack, but there were fish in the area. The second and fourth place fish were caught right around us. We left a little early to head back to weigh-in because we just couldn’t wait to see what that those fish weighed. We just couldn’t take it.
“We caught that big fish Friday by slow trolling a goggle eye 15 feet down in about 40 feet of water – 30 miles south of weigh-in. Everyone around us was basically doing the same thing today. A few guys were using kites.
“The next tournament (in Southport, N.C., Sept. 16-17 presented by Tyson) is in our backyard. So we can’t wait for that one.”
Rounding out the top-five teams were Team One Flipper captained by Ed Langel of Ft. Pierce (40 pounds, 4 ounces, $35,750); Team Lured Away captained by Robert Schoenfeld of Conroe, Texas (35 pounds, 13 ounces, $15,750); Team Concept captained by Blake Justice of Graham, N.C. (35 pounds, 9 ounces, $8,250); and Team Castrol captained by Rick Smith of Brunswick, Ga. (33 pounds, 12 ounce, $11,000).
The continually increasing popularity of the FLW Kingfish Tour led FLW Outdoors to create the $1.1 million Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Series, which was announced Thursday and will debut in 2006. The FLW Kingfish Series, which is a qualifying circuit for the FLW Kingfish Tour, features five divisions with three $100,000 events per division. Winning teams can earn as much as $30,000 in each qualifying event, and the top 20 teams from each division will advance to the no-entry-fee $300,000 Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Series Championship.
The $1.7 million Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour consists of four regular-season events. After four events are complete, the top 50 teams compete in the three-day, no-entry-fee $500,000 Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour Championship to be held in D’Iberville, Miss., Oct. 13-15. The championship winner will take home as much as $150,000.