BILOXI, Miss. – Though the wind picked up out of the north and made it a tougher day of fishing Sunday, Team Hooligan overcame all adversity this week and won the 2007 Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour Championship by catching a 36-pound, 7-ounce fish in the final round at Biloxi.
“Really, how do you describe how we feel right now?” asked Joe Winslow of Sunset Beach, N.C., captain of Team Hooligan, which took home $112,500 in winnings and Yamaha contingency money. “The biggest thing was that we had a couple of really awesome teammates. You can’t compete at this level without really awesome teammates. And I mean that. They’re not just crew members; they’re teammates.”
On Sunday, Winslow and his teammates – which include Alan Ambrose, Fred Coyne and Jared Floyd, all from Sunset Beach, and Michael Kennedy of Semmes, Ala. – hooked the only king of the day to weigh over 30 pounds. Added to the big 47-pound, 15-ounce fish they caught Friday, they climbed from third place to first with a winning two-day weight of 84-6.
In the end, that weight seemed a little low to claim victory, but it was more than enough for Hooligan this week. This fishery is known for its big kings schooling around the offshore oil platforms in the Gulf, and many anglers predicted that it might take a hundred pounds or more to win this event. But the big bite never really materialized for any of the teams this week. Barring the big 51-pounder caught by Team M&M’s on day one, there weren’t nearly as many eye-popping smoker kings caught as expected.
In Sunday’s finals, the odds of that happening dropped even more as rough seas in the morning and a shortened day of fishing really cut into the top five teams’ ability to maneuver. Consequently, some of the finalists, like Hooligan, abandoned their distant hot spots and fell back on fishing the accessible community areas around the oil rigs.
“We knew that we weren’t going to be able to go to the same spot where we got that big fish yesterday. It was just too rough this morning, and we had less time today,” Winslow said. “We knew that we needed to target an area where other boats caught fish the day before. We basically fished two or three (oil) rigs, and we had to change rigs later in the day because it wasn’t really a strong bite.”
Hooligan struggled a little with a lack of fresh bait Sunday. While they had been catching fish on big hardtails earlier in the weekend, they resorted to using ribbonfish for a spell, which yielded no good bites for them. They went back to the hardtails and managed to land their winning catch.
Hooligan only caught three kings Sunday, which seemed to add to the woes they experienced earlier in the weekend. On day one, they hit a submerged piling at 50 mph and didn’t end up catching anything. They came out unscathed, and so did their brand-new boat, for the most part – the collision somehow only managed to damage a single lower unit on a motor, which Yamaha techs promptly fixed. On day two, they only caught one fish, but it was a top-five catch. And fortunately for them, one of their three fish on day three turned out to be the biggest catch of the day by a pretty good margin.
“The irony is that we caught more fish today than we did the first two days combined, but we only had three fish,” Winslow said. “It’s been a tough week for everybody, it seems. It hasn’t really been the classic Biloxi bite that you hear about and prepare for so much.”
With this win, Hooligan becomes the first team ever to win two FLW Kingfish Tour titles. They first won at Southport, N.C., last year and also managed to finish second at Sarasota, Fla., in 2006. This season, their highest finish prior to this weekend was ninth place, also at Sarasota.
“We had a little adversity this weekend, but that seems to be our M.O.,” said Winslow, “We strive for efficiency, but we always seem to find a way to make things difficult. But that’s the game of fishing, so we’re really excited.”
Capt. Randy Griffin of Hampstead, N.C., and Team M&M’s couldn’t manage to follow up the tournament-leading 51-pound, 10-ounce king they caught on day one. On Sunday, they caught a 26-7 fish and finished second with a two-day weight of 78-1. They won $41,500.
“I was just praying for a top-three finish with that little fish we had,” Griffin said. “Joe (Winslow) is a very good friend of mine. Before this tournament, we said we needed to finish first and second, and look what happens. If it wasn’t going to be us, I’m just ecstatic that he won.”
In addition to scooping the win, Hooligan also stole the honor of becoming the tour’s first two-time winner away from M&M’s. Griffin’s crew already has five top-five finishes, and they took their first victory at Fort Pierce, Fla., earlier this season.
Thanks to the conditions, M&M’s was also one of the teams that couldn’t get to their honeyhole. They stayed away from the spot where they caught the big fish on day one and instead fished the community oil rigs.
“You know, we actually had (a fish) on that was about in the mid-40s today, too. We saw it; it skied on the bait right on camera, but we lost it,” Griffin said. “At that point, you just say, `Man, we’re in the right spot.’ So we stayed there all day.”
Capt. Johnnie Sears of Fuquay Varina, N.C., and Team Collins finished third and collected $24,900 with a final two-day weight of 74 pounds even. They weighed in a 24-13 kingfish that they caught on a mullet Sunday.
“We caught a mid-20s on our first line out,” crew member Mike Muhlbauer said. “We were fishing 15 to 20 miles offshore in clear water. The temperature was right at about 76 degrees, and we caught fish all day, about 15 or 20 of them. We consistently caught fish in the mid-20s, but we just couldn’t find the big boys.”
Pro Marine USA/Hannon’s Cannon fourth
Team Pro Marine USA/Hannon’s Cannon, captained by Kevin Hannon of Seminole, Fla., finished fourth and earned $9,960 with a two-day weight of 70 pounds, 2 ounces.
Using Spanish mackerel around oil rigs, they caught six kings Sunday and brought in a 27-pound, 2-ounce fish for weigh-in.
“We caught the second-biggest fish today, but we just had too much ground to make up,” Hannon said. “But we’re happy. We’ll get them next time.”
Reelin fifth
Rounding out the top five finishers at the 2007 championship was Team Reelin, captained by Marc Pincus of Hilton Head, S.C., who caught a 14-pound, 11-ounce king Sunday and ended up with a total weight of 58-0.
“We went right back to where we caught that good fish yesterday, and we had a good, solid bite,” Pincus said. “But the conditions changed. The water temperature was different, the water color was different, and the class of fish that were there was different.”
Reelin, which won a qualifier this season at Atlantic Beach, N.C., earned $8,300 for fifth place at the championship. They caught their small keeper in the finals on a big blue runner, which Pincus said was the key bait for their bigger catches earlier this weekend.
“His eyes were bigger than his mouth,” he said of today’s catch. “That blue runner was probably about the same size as he was.”