Inaugural Fort Pierce Kingfish Invitational Shatters Reels in Big Fish, Payouts

By Ed Killer for CAM

The secret has been out for years: If you want to see big kings in Florida waters, fish between Sebastian and Jupiter after the new moon in April. And if you don’t go big, well, you might as well go home.

The inaugural Fort Pierce Kingfish Invitational - a big money tournament tossed together by Mike Minia and Alex Burgess in about two months’ time - saw some whoppers caught and paid out over $344,000 to the event’s top 12 teams - what is believed to be a record payout for a recent kingfish tournament. Entry fee was $5,000 per boat and the event drew a field of 69 teams, an excellent number for a first-year event.

Scores were based on one fish per day and a two fish aggregate. Fort Pierce’s City Marina hosted the weigh-in.

Burgess, who helped organize the event, was part of the West Palm Beach-based top team in the event, along with Jonah Bennett, Jeremy Dooley, Dustin Ertle and Nadia Eljabaly. They’ll soon be fishing aboard a 41-foot Mercury-powered Onslow Bay. Burgess said the first day bite was nuts.

“We fished the area off the Loran Tower in Hobe Sound in about 70-75 feet of water and went through about 80 baits. We had a few nice ones, but the big one hit a blue runner fished on a kite,” Burgess said. The 10-15 mph southeast wind was ideal for kite fishing, he said.

When they weighed their day one fish it went 50.04 pounds, good enough to stand second going into day two. But the pattern and action changed drastically.

Day two there were few bites and it took until about 12:30 for the big one of the day to bite. It weighed 45.05 pounds and was good enough to narrowly edge out Caught Slippin for a win with less than a half-pound of weight.

Caught Slippin’s Eric Neidorf was on a 37 Contender with triple Mercurys along with boat owner Cody Durham of Glenville, Ga., Wes Stephens, Carl Torreson and Ken Powers. Neidorf, who partners with Burgess in several fishing businesses and owns How Ya Reelin? tackle shop in Fort Lauderdale, was fishing

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