‘One heckuva year’: Crew seen on ‘Wicked Tuna’ says this feat topped TV appearance

The year 2019 has been one to remember for the multi-talented fishermen aboard Rasta Rocket.

The crew out of Holden Beach, N.C., started out the first three months of the year joining the made-for-TV series “Wicked Tuna” as one of the boats from the Outer Banks pitted against those from the Northeast targeting bluefin tuna.

After making their television debut in the cable series, the crew, fishing in their relatively small boat, a 25-foot Contender, then set its sights on the busy king mackerel tournament circuit in North Carolina.

They came up big in the four-tournament series, The Kingfish Cup, based right in their home waters off Brunswick County.

The crew of Zack Shackleton, Daniel Blanks, Shane Britt, Stanton McDuffie and Derek Savage were in first place after the four events that comprise The Kingfish Cup, earning Team-of-the-Year honors.

To cap it off, Rasta Rocket won the championship tournament of the series, featuring the top 29 teams, on Nov. 10 out of Ocean Isle Fishing Center.

“It was pretty sweet — a clean sweep,” said Shackleton.

The championship was originally set as a two-day, one-fish-per day tournament, but dicey weather changed the format to one day of fishing with competing boats allowed to weigh in two king mackerel.

Rasta Rocket brought a pair of kings to the scales at the OIFC weighing 36.9 and 40.7 pounds for their winning aggregate of 77.6 pounds, earning $88,425 in prize money. The aggregate was 13 pounds heavier than the second-place team.

While fishing on a cable television reality series is quite a thrill, dominating The Kingfish Cup against the salty kingfishing veterans of southeastern North Carolina is a real accomplishment.

“I’m more excited about the Kingfish Cup than the Wicked Tuna deal,” said Shackleton. “We’ve had one heckuva year, no doubt.”

Eastbound Fishing Team finished second with a 64.6-pound aggregate followed by Fish Meister in third at 64.25. King Snake (63.25) finished fourth followed by Wahooligans (62.9) in fifth.

Prior to the championship, the king bite had been strong on the beach before a cold front changed things up.

“We caught (kings) on the beach a couple days before the tournament but the front came in and it got really cold,” said Shackleton. “That shut those fish down on the beach. We didn’t have confidence fishing on the beach so we decided to go offshore.”

The crew started off fishing The Jungle, then moved to the Hammer and then the Shark Hole.

“We caught a few fish at The Jungle, but they were small fish,” said Shackleton. “We didn’t think the class of fish we were after was there so we kept moving until we found the right the class of fish.”

They wound up at the Horseshoe, a sprawling area of live bottom located about 30 miles off Southport in 80 feet of water.

“They were biting really good, and they were noticeable bigger,” said Shackleton.

About 12:30 p.m., they hooked up with and landed one smoker king and shortly landed another.

“The two big ones hit 15 minutes from each other,” said Shackleton. “Once we caught that big one we fished until we were out of bait (menhaden). We decided to come on home and see where the chips fell.”

At the weigh-in at the OIFC, the chips fell Rasta Rocket’s way to the tune of over $88,000.

“We’ll take that any day of the week,” said Shackleton, with a laugh.

Snook Surprise

Surfside Beach angler Adam Kuryea has become quite proficient at catching quality fish from shore, without benefit of a boat, in the Garden City-Murrells Inlet area.

But even Kuryea was a little stunned at what he landed on Wednesday while fishing from the bank in the inlet.

Kuryea was having a memorable autumn afternoon catching plenty of spotted seatrout, using a Gulp Swimming Mullet, including a 27-inch gator trout.

After securing his limit, Kuryea was fun fishing when he had a bite that, frankly, wasn’t a memorable one. That is, until he saw the fish.

“It jumped and I thought that was weird,” recalled Kuryea. “A trout doesn’t usually jump. The fish didn’t fight at all, it was lethargic.

“I wasn’t even netting them at that point. I flipped it up (out of the water) and the hook popped out as soon as it hit land. I looked down and, boom, there was a snook.”

Snook are predominately found in Florida waters and are very rarely found north of Georgia. Kuryea’s 16-inch snook was caught in a water temperature in the mid-50s, explaining why the fish, was lethargic.

Kuryea found there are no limits in South Carolina for snook, since they are rarely found in Palmetto State waters. He fileted the fish and gave the carcass to South Carolina Department of Natural Resources biologist Kris Reynolds to be studied.

“It was the last thing I expected to catch,” said Kuryea. “It was a big surprise.”

Last November, I checked with Dr. Joey Ballenger of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources after small 5-6 inch snook had showed up in cast nets in Winyah Bay.

“We do see snook at times in our monitoring program, in low salinity areas in Charleston, Winyah Bay and the Ace Basin,” Ballenger said at the time. “We see some of the larger ones in the fall in our trammel net surveys, to six inches maybe eight inches long.”

Are snook becoming established in South Carolina waters? Time will tell.