Cape Fear Red Trout Tournament

With high winds and weather systems moving through our area all week it made it difficult to find fish. I fished several areas throughout the week from New river to the cape fear and everywhere in between. I found a few trout just about everywhere I fished but no big numbers although most of what I found were nice fish. Only targeted redfish for one day before the tourney and we found them thick in a few areas pushing shrimp all over the pace with their backs out of the water. Had a good day on those fish then I checked some of my favorite rising water spots and wacked 7 fish in a row on a piping cork soft plastic combo. These fished were 25to 29 inches. Also got a black drum. On Saturday morning (day one of the tourney) we had motor issues at the ramp and ended up checking out late for the tourney. We hit our first spot and hung one fish and as he was lifted over the gunwale he fell back into the water. Well we made a run and ended up hiring the same area we found fish eating shrimp and cruising down the banks with their backs out of the water the previous day. The night before the tourney the winds switched out of the North from all week out of the southwest. Needless to say the bite was less than stellar. We ended day one with 6 reds and one 4 trout. We caught several undersized reds as well. On day two my luck started like it did on day one. I dropped my Costa sunglasses before we checked out and shattered one of my lenses. Thankfully I had a back up pair in the boat. We started Day two like day one and went empty handed at spot # 1. We made a run and found some nice trout at a spot I didn't fish all week. Scotty and George were double hooked up every time they hit the school for 15 minutes. Having a few on the books we decided to search for some reds to round out our points. We found a few reds bit they were finicky and only managed three for the day. We headed back to the weigh in and see how we did. As we hung out with our wives and kids enjoying good food and some cold uns we awaited the paperboard to update. To our surprise we won the overall tournament, Dr George Brinson won grand champion angler for the second year in a row, Dr Scotty Gould won runner up grand champion angler, and we won the spin (artificial bait) division. Congrats to Scotty and George to stick it out on two slow fishing days. That is two years in a row we have won the Cape Fear Red Trout tournament and multiple divisions.