MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. – Team Marcia – D headed by Captain Perry Johnston of Oak Island caught a kingfish Monday weighing 35 pounds, 3 ounces to take the lead in the Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour event in Morehead City presented by Tyson. The field of professional kingfish anglers is competing for a share of the $300,000 purse in the fourth and final regular-season event of the most lucrative kingfish tournament trail in the country.
Conditions in Morehead City for the first day of the event have been rainy with temperatures in the mid-70s, making for an uncomfortable day on the water.
“We got out there and got rained on,” Johnston said. “We made about a 15-mile run to the east and started looking for baitfish. We found birds working over a big pod of bait.” The baitfish were greenies, or threadfin herring. After rigging some up and catching a few small fish and sharks, the team’s leading kingfish hit in about 45 feet of water.
“We may go back in there tomorrow, depending on the wind,” Johnston said. “But that area certainly wasn’t hot. There weren’t many fish caught out there today.”
Rounding out the top five teams are Team No Doubt captained by Trae Ross of Oxford, Ga. (27 pounds, 7 ounces); Team Miss Behavin’ captained by Danny Duncan of Catawba, S.C. (26 pounds); Team Snickers captained by Alex Leva of Tampa, Fla. (25 pounds); and Team The Reel Won captained by Robert Woithe of Placida, Fla. (24 pounds, 2 ounces).
The top 50 teams of the 2005 FLW Kingfish Tour season will be decided at the conclusion of this event. Those teams will go on to fish the $500,000 FLW Kingfish Tour Championship, beginning Thursday out of Morehead City, where the championship winner will take home as much as $150,000.
Named after the legendary founder of Ranger Boats, Forrest L. Wood, FLW Outdoors administers the Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour and seven other national tournament circuits offering a combined $30 million in awards through 214 events in 2005. The 27-year-old organization is the purveyor of America’s largest and most prestigious fishing tournaments, including the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, EverStart Series, Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League, Wal-Mart Texas Tournament Trail, Wal-Mart FLW Walleye Tour, Wal-Mart FLW Walleye League, Wal-Mart FLW Kingfish Tour and Wal-Mart FLW Redfish Series.
For more information on FLW Outdoors and its tournament programs, explore FLWOutdoors.com.
Wal-Mart and many of America’s largest and most respected companies support FLW Outdoors and its tournament trails. Wal-Mart signed on as title sponsor of the FLW Tour in 1997 and today is the title sponsor of all FLW Outdoors events. For more information on Wal-Mart, visit Wal-Mart.com.