Yankee's Sandy Creek Shootout

[Yankee Troller]

This was such a fun event last year that we just had to do it again. We would go on to take second in that event, so this year we wanted to grab the win! I rolled the boat down from the Oak the night before, and after talking with my brother, who fished in the AM out of the Oak, and from what I saw we knew West wasn’t best! We picked our charter up at the Sandy Creek boat launch at 5am, and headed out to a mean Lady O. 4-6’ waves was what we would fish in the whole day.

We took a right our of port and headed out to 80’ of water where we would start putting down our spread. Our three Cannon DT10s went down with flasher fly combos. Anywhere from 50’ to the bottom. Out went our wire divers with flasher fly combos, and when that was done we started to let out the coppers. The first King came almost immediately. The 125’ wire started screaming with an Stinger UV Frog E-Chip/A-TOM-MIK Mirage fly. Don’t ask me where that combo came from. It was another one of my brothers concoctions that always seem to catch fish! Anyway, the first teenager hit the deck of the boat, and we were onto a good start.

The bite really died for us as we trolled the 100’ area East and the screen dried up. We pointed her NE and started our troll to deeper water. We would pick a fish here and there, but when we hit 400’ between the lighthouse and Braddock’s the screen just lit up! Bait and fish everywhere. That’s when the blood bath began. The new program had spoons mupped on two out of three Cannon DT10s, with a UV Frog E-Chip/A-TOM-MIK B Fly on the deep rigger, Dreamweaver Sea Sick Waddlers on the 80’ rigger, and Moonshine Green Shorts on the 60’ rigger. Our divers were out 200-250’. That same Stinger UV Frog E-Chip/A-TOM-MIK Mirage fly on one side, and a Wonder Dot Legendary SmartFish/A-TOM-MIK Glow Blue Hammer fly on the other. The 300 copper had a Dreamweaver Hammertime Spin Doctor/A-TOM-MIK Hammer fly, the 400 copper had a Stinger Hammertime E-Chip/A-TOM-MIK Hammer fly, and the 500 copper pulled a meat rig.

The two big guys would take the 300 copper combo and weigh in at 29 and 27 pounds. Knowing we needed minimum a 25lb average we continued to pound on the fish. We fished over a great screen, and rods were just flying the whole day. Given the conditions Lady O was throwing out our clients did a great job on the rods. Given we met the average we thought we would need we still wanted to get rid of a 22 and a 23 we had sitting in the box. It just never happened. Either way we had big smiles heading into the weigh in.

When it was all said and done we took second to the same team we took second to last year. I want to give a huge congrats to team Trout and About and Captain Jason Franz on his three-peat. Even though he is a friend of mine that competitive nature in me gets me really upset that he beat us again. There is always next year! Another thank you goes out to all the people who worked their tails off to get this event to where it is today. Believe me, I know how much time these events take.

The 29lb'r

The 27lb'r

[EdB]

Nice job and nice pics, those are some great kings! Congrats on a strong finish in the tourney.

[KJ pluggin]

Nice job on the tourney Captain, and great looking fish!

[Nailer]

Big fish. Wow!

[sslopok]

You guys sure do get into some big fish over there. Congrats!