Salisbury’s Lee and Nathan Frick joined Jeremy and Jason Foster in winning Martini’s Hook-A-Hoo Rodeo with an 87.88-pound wahoo.
That won them the $10,000 first-place prize for the largest wahoo weighed in at Harbourgate Marina for the second annual tournament, according to The Sun News of Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Tournament’s founders Jeff Martini and Ace Parker of North Myrtle Beach donate the event’s proceeds, which was $11,000 this year, to the Shriners Burn Center in Cincinnati.
Boats could fish any one day from April 4-12 in the tournament, but fishable days were scarce during this bad weather-smitten spring, the Sun News reported.
On April 5, the Frick brothers took off with the Fosters on Hooyah to fish an area from the Mac Marlin ledge to the Black Jack Hole.
“We were fishing the offshore side of the rip at the Black Jack Hole,” Lee Frick told the Sun News. “There was a color change and you could see the current causing a little whitewater there.”
About 9:30 a.m., the crew began getting wahoo bites but missed one big fish.
They caught four wahoo in the 20- to 30-pound range and then got the big bite at about 11:30 a.m.
“We knew when he first hit (it was a big fish because) he made a long run,” said Lee Frick. “We got him in pretty fast to the gaff. We saw how big he was, then my brother stuck him with the gaff and pulled him on over (into the boat). From there it was nothing but high fives. We threw him in the cooler and quit fishing.”
The fish hit a naked ballyhoo trolled 50 feet back on a flat line.