Tournament Time - FLW Outdoors - Morehead City, NC Team Reel Krazy

FLW Outdoors - Morehead City, NC


Team Reel Krazy



Sunday Oct, 9 2005 - Arrival in Atlantic Beach - Condo rental from Spectrum Properties a huge benefit for the team. Splashed boat and moored at Portside Marina / Miramar Boats in Morehead City, NC. Thanks to the great folks (Denhard and Kay) at Portside/ Miramar.


Monday Oct. 10, 2005 - Tournament day one, boat number 40 and a 7:30am checkout. Cold and Rainy. We bought bait from Capt. Stacy before checkout and initially they looked BIG and strong. Straight to the Dead Tree hole and trolled without a strike. A 13 mile run at 11:30 to the Little Ten yielded big seas and strong winds. Once we arrived at the little ten it was difficult to even get baits in the water. After about thirty minuets, we made the agonizing run back to calmer waters. Special Thanks to Pat with ESEA RIDER his beanbag chair came in handy!!! Late day reports from Team Extreme (Wellcraft Capt. Mike Everhart) broughtus to the Rock Jetty "parking lot" where we latched on to several fish with one weighing 20lbs 09oz. This fish put us in 13th at the end of the first day. Special thanks to Genmar for putting on a great spread for all the Wellcraft and Hydra Sports owners, the food was excellent! Thanks


Tuesday Oct 11, 2005 - Day two, cold and rainy, back to the Rock Jetty "parking lot" for a string of teenagers. Seas were easy but the wind continued to blow. Final fish to the scales was only 15lbs 15oz. Bumping us to 34th… we still managed a $1500 check for our efforts and we secured our spot in the championship event! Congratulations to Marcia-D Perry Johnston in his new Hydra Sports on the win… it's a shame he left $30,000 in Yamaha's money on the table…

Wednesday Oct 12, 2005 - Thought we had a day off and the FLW had scheduled the Wellcraft Kellogg's team for a 7:00am photo shoot. Delays in the shoot proved fruitful… We found plenty of bait on the backside of Shackleford Island and floated the net in one throw. More delays found us searching the chart for options… We ran three miles East to AR315 and within 5 minuets and only two baits in the water we had a 25+ on and on its way to the boat… Prospects for the championship were looking better.


Thursday Oct 13, 2005 - Championship day one, boat number 37 and another 7:30am checkout. . Bought bait from Capt. Stacy before checkout again and decided to only buy 2 doz and put them in one baitwell and catch another baitwell full before checkout. After checkout we found bait on the beach at the Atlantic Beach water tower we didn't manage to get it before checkout… Straight to AR315 we caught 7 - 8 fish all day the biggest coming in at 23lbs 13oz. Team Kellogg's, Wellcraft and Carolina Boat and Yacht were in 8th place after day one!!! Needless to say, we were excited but we knew our fish was not likely to hold…

Friday Oct. 14, 2005 - Reports from My Turn (Hydra Sports - Capt. Steve Venable) in second place after day one put us in the ship channel. We brought two fish to the boat and watched as Reel Culture (Wellcraft - Capt. Shane Hollar) boated a good fish and left the area!!! Questions arose with Team Kellogg's and at about 11:00am we returned to the beach for a tough time of catching bait and returned to AR315 for the remainder of the day. We caught plenty of fish, the sun came out (Thanks Solar Bat Sunglasses) but nothing to beat the 23-13 we had at the scales. There was an FLW camera on the boat with us and we had a great time. We took Tony to the scales but unfortunately we came up a little short finishing 14th in the Championship event.
Saturday Oct. 15, 2005 - Congratulations to Early Riser - Capt. John Parks - A Wellcraft and Yamaha owner on winning the first FLW Kingfish Championship and $150,000. Congratulations also have to go to Team Reel Culture, Rebecca Ann, Double Shot, Team Chevy, Sea Rat, My Turn, Capt. Dan, East Coast Sports and Team Snickers! And all that just go to go fishing!

Team Kelloggs - Reel Krazy - FLW Team is comprised of: Captain Bryan Edwards, Mike Glover, Kirk Lewellen and Shelly Lewellen. Consistency was the key we finished 9th in the points overall for the year and the first Genmar / Wellcraft / Yamaha as well as the top finishing sponsored boat. Thanks to Wellcraft and Kelloggs!!!
See ya Next Year!!!

AJ's Win Falls to Venice Marine - Tounament Win

Southern Kingfish Association
September 18, 2000

Destin, FL— Destin is dubbed as one of the top fishing destinations in the South, and despite rainy weather and tough fishing conditions during the weekend the reputation stood as such. The Venice Marine fishing team of Brent, Deborah, and Brandon Ballay, along with Jerry Franks and Kirk Lewellen emerged as the winners of the tournament with a 42.8 pound kingfish.
Newcomers to the SKA Mercury Tournament Trail, they fished over 120 miles from the scales to find their winner. “Everyone else ran the ditch,” according to team captain Brent Ballay, “while I think we were one of the only teams to head out the jetties.”
After running their OMC-powered HydraSports center console hard in the six foot seas, they finally arrived at their numbers by 10:30 in the morning. “We had only a couple sharks there,” Ballay reported, “so we picked up and ran to the nearest rig.” The kings quickly responded, with a double-header right off the bat, followed by a triple hookup once the baits had been redeployed. Their biggest fish of the day hit a jumbo hardtail down 50 feet on the downrigger at 1:10 PM. Deborah grabbed the rod and proceeded to angle the fish to the boat in just 15 minutes.
“We use about 10 pounds of drag on 30 pound test line in the Gulf, so it usually doesn’t take us very long to get them to the boat,” Ballay said. The team then made the long journey to the scales, and would remain in the lead for the remainder of the tournament. For their efforts, the team won not only the event’s top prize of $10,000 but a beautiful hand-carved kingfish trophy.
Neal Foster and the Intense team came to the scales near the end of the day on the first day of the tournament, after having made the same long run as most of the fleet with the tournament’s second place fish aboard their Yamaha-powered Contender. Unfortunately, the team weighed in right in the middle of an intense downpour (pardon the pun), so there wasn’t an opportunity for any photos to be taken of their fish.
“We ran a total of 370 miles today,” Foster reported, “all the way to Dauphin Island and then 55 miles offshore.” Foster said there was a hot bite in progress most of the day, as the team caught and released nearly 40 kingfish during the first day. Their kingfish hit a hardtail on the topline for Robbie Montgomery in 115 feet of water.
“He only fought the fish for about 10 minutes--we saw that he was hooked really well in the jaw, so he put the pressure to him,” said the happy captain. “I’d like to thank both Contender and Yamaha, though--the boat holds the fuel that gave us the range to fish that far from the dock, and the motors had the fuel economy and reliability to let us run. In fact, there were only a couple boats at the spot that weren’t Contenders. It’s just a great ride in the ocean.” The Intense’s 42.5 pounder would put them in second place overall, just three-tenths of a pound behind Venice Marine.
Third place in the tournament went to the Triple Action team of Mark McDonald, Chad Pierce and Jimmy Duke, fishing aboard a triple-Mercury powered Donzi 35. They were first to the scales on Day One with a very nice fish aboard. Their 40.9 pounder would eventually be dropped down to the tournament’s third spot after leading for a short while. “We only had about 5 or 10 gallons of fuel left in the tanks,” McDonald reported. “We ran hard and burned a lot of gas today!” The team ran 20 miles from Dauphin Island to 100 feet of water. At 10 AM, their number was called when their biggest fish of the day came calling. “We had a double on the flatlines, then about five minutes later the big boy hit deep,” Pierce reported. The big king proved to be a stubborn adversary, however, dogging deep and refusing to come to the surface.
The tournament’s fourth place finisher is certainly one of the most consistent teams in the upper Gulf--Mark Kennedy, his son Tyler, Steve Ennis, Max Williams and Jeff McKoy on the Kwazar. The team also elected to make the long run off Dauphin Island in their Contender to find the fish, coming to the scales shortly after the Intense and also in the rainstorm during Day One. Their fish weighed forty pounds even, earning Tyler yet another SKA First Place Junior Angler plaque for his efforts with the team during the day.
The Rag Tag, captained by Creighton Parker with Robert Merritt, Geoff Persell and Hal Hudson aboard, is usually one of the top boats at AJs. This year would be no exception as they rounded out the top five. They chose to run the ICW to Fort Morgan before heading out to the rigs in 100 feet of water. “We could barely keep the lines in, that’s how strong the bite was today,” Parker reported. Their biggest, a 39.8 pounder, hit a Better Baits ribbonfish that was being let out on the downrigger. “We were trying to put it down, and he just smoked it. Robert [Merritt] fought the fish for 15 minutes or so before we could boat him,” Parker said later. “We ran the boat extremely hard today in the ocean--I need to thank both Yamaha and Contender for making our day today. We had the range and fuel efficiency to find the fish and get back in time.”
The staff and volunteers at AJ’s deserve a hearty pat on the back for their hard work during the weekend. Gary Jennings from CCA-Florida pitched in as tournament weighmaster, and he did an outstanding job. Although the weather was not good, everyone enjoyed the weekend and all said they would return next year.

Final Standings
1. VENICE MARINA’S TEAM HYDRASPORT......................42.8
HydraSport/Evinrude
Brent Ballay
Deborah Ballay
Brandon Ballay
Jerry Franks
Kirk Lewellen