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BILOXI — The 61st Annual Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing lasted four days at Point Cadet as anglers weighed fish ranging from trout to barracuda. But it was the final five minutes that drew the crowd to the scales — and cheers from the crowd.

That’s when Wyatt Williams of Venice, La., entered the tent with two ice chests filled with fish.

Williams, in his 20th Deep Sea Rodeo, walked away with top honors in grouper, with a 58-pounds, 14-ounce Warsaw, as well as first and second place in red snapper.

“We were fishing in 328 feet of water,’’ Williams said. “All the way on the bottom. I was using a little lighter tackle, so it took 15 minutes or so to get him up.’’

The bait, however, is what sets this catch a part.

Traditionally, grouper prefer live baits like hard-tails or big chunks of dead bait.

“This one ate a ribbonfish,’’ Williams said. “I’d just gotten some bycatch (off a shrimp boat) for this rodeo. It was a couple of weeks ago that we caught a couple of amberjack and they had ribbonfish in their stomachs.

“So we decided to try it and it paid off. I will use ribbonfish now.’’

When the dust settled on the 2009 rodeo, every freshwater and saltwater category was filled.

“Despite the one-day weather event on Saturday, it was a success,’’ weighmaster Mark Wright said. “We had solid weights across the board and we had every category filled except one, which is good.

“We had nice gar, trout and plenty of black drum. This is the summer of the black drum. I’ve never seen anything like it.’’

Winning the gar division was George Mason at 130 pounds, three ounces while Nicky Nazaretian won speckled trout with a five-pound, 11-ounce fish weighed on Saturday.

The black drum category, which had fish entered every day, was won by Angelic Mason at 50 pounds, 14 ounces.

Two of the top catches on the final day came five minutes after the scales opened at noon. That’s when David Rodgers of Theodore, Ala., hit the scales with a 76-pound, 14-ounce wahoo and a 51-pound king mackerel.

The wahoo, one of the largest weighed in at the rodeo in several years, measured 69 inches to the fork and hit a live hard-tail in 150 feet of water, more than 90 miles west of Dauphin Island.

“We caught three more wahoo and several kings,’’ Rogers said. “We figured this one was a wahoo after he hit.

“He hit a down rigger and peeled line.’’

When the wahoo was cleaned by rodeo officials, the stomach had four hard-tails — all over 12-inches long — and an 18-inch remora.

In the Bass Shootout, Lucky Gordon of Woolmarket won with a stringer of four fish rather than five and still won $510.

The largest bass, which was caught on a plastic lizard, weighed seven pounds, 12 ounces.

“I caught the fish in a private lake,’’ Gordon said. “The fish were caught three-to-four feet off the bank.’’

Team Malley and captain Ben Malley won the Speckled Trout shootout with a five-fish aggregate weight of 21 pounds, 12 ounces.

For their efforts, Team Malley pocketed $990.

Taking second in the Trout Shootout was Dustin Ladner and Team Croaker Soaker of Ocean Springs with a five-fish weight of 20 pounds, 15 ounces.

Ladner and his team caught 50 trout on four-inch live croakers around the Louisiana Marsh..

“But these were the five biggest,’’ Ladner said. “We caught fish, but we had to bounce around to do it. ‘’

Steve White won the Redfish Shootout with a 22-pound, nine-ounce fish that earned $750.

Posted at www.sunherald.com on July 5, 2009

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