Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

It’s not terribly unusual that Garry Oliver’s Outer Banks Sportfishers took first out of 120 teams in the Cape Hatteras Anglers Club Invitational Surf Fishing Tournament Nov. 7-8 – they’ve won the event a total of seven times.

But exactly how they did it was a bit unusual – a team member targeted large red rum and landed one. These events are typically won by the team who caught the most fish, not necessarily the largest.

It all happened when Dan Hardy caught a spot that Thursday afternoon and his teammate Les Lockhart charged down the beach to grab the non-scoring fish for bait.

“I knew it was something he really wanted,” Oliver said. Cutting it in half, Lockhart baited it up and heaved his rig out “as far as possible,” he said.

The wait for a drum was on and after a while, it happened. A lengthy fight ensued with Lockhart pulling back hard on his Century Surf Machine 13-foot-long heaver and souped up Diawa Saltist 20. Hardy took videos of it all.

Eventually, Lockhart beached the enormous 51-inch red drum with a bigtime girth that scored 103 points to ensure the team victory. A full week later, he was still grinning from ear to ear.

The anglers relived the catch and overall victory the other day while hanging out at Fish Heads located on Outer Banks Fishing Pier in South Nags Head, which is owned by Oliver and his family.

Lockhart said it was a catch he’ll never forget.

“It was amazing – I’m still on Cloud Nine,” he said. “It was really big around the middle.”

As a diehard drum fisherman, he was ready for this type of fishing. Lockhart said he spends every day of September with his line in the water. He’s a regular on the end of Outer Banks Pier.

So was it luck or skill? Oliver said it was some of both because they did the same thing a month before.

“Everybody’s gotta get lucky sometimes,” he jested. “Hatteras was skill, Nags Head was luck.”

So what happened in Nags Head?

Oliver said his team took second place out of 80 teams in the Nags Head Surf Fishing Club’s Invitational Tournament Oct. 10-11 when another new team member and drum fisherman targeted and landed a different bigtime drum.

Enter Lockhart’s fishing buddy Trystan Beacham of Manteo, who was tapped to fill in for Oliver who was out of town, Oliver explained.

“My bait wasn’t even in [the water] for 30 minutes,” Beacham recalled. “Next, I was knee deep, fighting up and down the beach, stepping in holes and falling!”

With only one hand holding his rod high up in the air, the fight went on.

“I was going down the beach and ‘bam,’ I’d fall in a hole!” Beacham said. “I was just keeping it tight.”

Eventually, the catch was landed, and the judges measured the fish at 45.5-inches – good enough to put the Sportfishers close to the top of the scoreboard.

“We knew we were in the top three,” Hardy said. “It was close, they [tournaments] were both close.”

The Outer Banks Sportfishers ended up placing second with 119 points.

For Beacham, a 2013 Manteo High graduate who works construction with his dad and had ancestors on scene for the Wright’s first flight, fishing the tournament was a pleasure.

“Yes sir, it was a thrill and an honor to be there,” he said. “To be filling in for Garry Oliver – I was like ‘oh man,’ but I had a ball … I’m ready for next year!”

Beacham fished a CTS, 12 foot, 6-inch-long Camel City Customs rod and a Daiwa Seagate he purchased from Oliver.

“He made me proud,” Oliver said of his new team member. As the captain of the Outer Banks Sportfishers, Oliver has put in more than five decades at the helm of this salty team who sometimes fishes silver Team Diawa inline rods on the beach and matching tan button up fishing shirts at the nighttime socials and awards banquets.

“Fifty-four years, I’m still throwing, still going strong!” he said.

In general, Oliver said there seems to be more drum around now than there used to be. Over the years, especially in the 1970s, it was all bluefish and some big ones. Other years it was a “sea mullet tournament” or a “puppy drum” event.

He speculates that targeting drum may be a trend that sticks around for a while.

“Fishing was slow, the slowest Hatteras has ever been,” Oliver said. “There are more drum around, so we target them.”

And this fall, the strategy paid off.

Oliver also recalled how the late Elizabeth City doctor, Walter Spaeth of the Albemarle Anglers, frequently used the same strategy – going for the big drum to score big points.

Apparently, “Doc Spaeth” as he was known, always fished for drum in the Nags Head tournament back in the day, decades ago.

The elderly Albemarle Anglers team hung out together at his rustic oceanfront cottage, which was across from Tortugas Lie before it was replaced by a “rental machine.”

“He always fished for drum and never caught one,” Oliver said. “Finally, one year, he caught one. And I believe they won, yeah. They won that year.”

READ ABOUT MORE NEWS HERE.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE COASTLAND TIMES TODAY!