Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

STAR-Struck!
Expect the unexpected when you sign up to ride in the Texas and Louisiana STAR Tournaments this summer.

By Ted Venker
TIDE
May/June 2008

For about 100 days every summer, a fish can change a life along the coasts of Texas and Louisiana.

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, every time a cork disappears or a topwater gets slurped under or a lure comes to an abrupt halt, an angler could be hooked to a living, breathing, swimming opportunity-of-a-lifetime.

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, but it is always better to be entered in STAR than not if you plan to wet a line during the summer months. Tens of thousands of anglers participate every year and hundreds of anglers have won prizes ranging from tackle packages to boats and trucks to college scholarships. Every year, the tournaments produce stories of heart-breaking misfortune, inspiring perseverance, great blind luck, and high comedy.

When the first STAR tournament was launched in 1990, just 30 redfish were tagged and released along the entire 3,300-mile Texas coast. No one knew if any tagged reds would even be caught over the length of the tournament, but the uncertain odds did not deter W. H. Black, a Texas rancher whose drawl sounds straight out of central casting.

One of the true early believers in conservation, Black joined CCA in 1978 and was committed to doing everything he could to help red drum in Texas recover after years of rampant commercial overfishing. He remembers the Redfish Wars and the lean years when the future of the fishery was in real doubt. As far as he was concerned, he was just doing his part when he entered the new-fangled STAR Tournament along with 3,800 other anglers in 1990.

“I wasn’t even trying to catch redfish that day; I was after a big trout,” he recalls. “I pulled in this redfish and was in the process of releasing him when I turned him over in the net and saw that skinny, little spaghetti tag. I had to put my glasses on to read it.”

When he realized it was a STAR-tagged redfish, Black tossed it in his ice chest.

“I didn’t pay much attention to it until I got in and then no one could believe I had caught it,” he said.

On the very first day of the very first STAR tournament, W.H. Black won a new boat, motor and trailer by catching a tagged red, much to the relief of tournament organizers.

NOTRE DAME OR RICE?

Since the initial Texas STAR in 1990, the tournament committee has constantly tweaked the format, adding new divisions and more chances to win. Mercury Marine has been a sponsor since the beginning and many other companies have supported the tournament along the way, allowing it to greatly expand. Ford Trucks now sponsors the Tagged Redfish Division and 60 tagged reds are released prior to every tournament by 30 or so volunteers who have agreed not to participate in the Redfish Division.

Over the last 18 years, 56 tagged reds have been caught by anglers registered in STAR. The record for a single year was in 1997 when 19 tagged reds were caught, but only five of the anglers were registered and won a truck, boat, motor and trailer package. The 14 other anglers were no doubt deeply depressed. The most tagged redfish winners in a single tournament occurred in 1999 when 10 out of the 60 were caught and seven were winners.

The high success rate was not the story of 1999, however. That was the year that John Campbell entered the Texas STAR but was unable to fish much that summer thanks to a boat that had seen better days. He was finally able to get out on the water seven days after the tournament ended and, as fate would have it, he caught a tagged redfish that would have retired his old boat for good. Too late, he was told.

Seemingly destined to be the hard luck story of 1999, Campbell refused to stay down long. Thrown into the drawing along with everyone else who entered the tournament that year, Campbell’s name was drawn as the Member Bonus winner and he ended up with a rigged 22-foot center console after all.

Also in 1999, three registered anglers not old enough to drive won Ford trucks after catching tagged reds. Tyler Wychopen (age 11), Josh Busha (age 12) and Walter Durham (age 15) are the reason Ford and the Texas Ford Dealers initiated the $20,000 scholarship in lieu of the truck prize.

In 2006, Luke Crain won the first scholarship/boat prize package when he caught a tagged red on the last kicking shrimp in the live-well. A red had broken off his line the cast before after a long day of fishing, so he borrowed his sister’s rig for one last attempt.

“When I got it on board, it was all covered in slime, and so my dad turned it over and wiped it off. When he saw that little tag that said CCA STAR on it, he just started freaking out,” Crain said. With good reason. Luke is now a senior at Barbers Hill High School in Baytown, Texas, and has narrowed his college choice down to two: Notre Dame or Rice.

As of October 2007, the Texas STAR has awarded 94 scholarships totaling almost $3.2 million.

JET SKIS AND KINKED LINE

There is simply no shortage of tall tales and fish stories when it comes to the STAR Tournament - it would take a book to list just the best ones. In 2001, Shelley Lopez of Corpus Christi won the Kingfish Division with a 58-pound, 3-ounce specimen. That’s a handsome fish to be sure, but the interesting part is that somehow Lopez managed to catch it and land it while on a jet ski.

In 2003, Donnie Macha caught the largest flounder ever weighed in the STAR Tournament, an 11-pound, 12-ounce fish that easily won the division. He had wade-fished all morning and had called it a day when a friend asked him to help install a water pump on his boat. After finishing the job, they took the boat out in the evening for a quick test run and Macha hopped out to throw a Norton Sand Eel at some tailing reds. The reds wouldn’t cooperate so he motioned his friend to bring the boat back to pick him up. During his last retrieve, a kink developed in his line so he tossed the eel one last time to straighten it out as he walked to the boat.

That’s when it got hung up.

“When it surfaced, I thought the bottom of the bay was coming up,” he said. “It made three runs before it turned toward me. All I could do was put my wading net down right beside me and it ran into it so hard I almost dropped the net.”

He held on to the net and landed a boat prize package, thanks to a faulty water pump and a kink in his fishing line.

BE COOL, BE CALM

CCA Louisiana launched its own STAR Tournament in 1995, built on the same basic format but with its own unique divisions and contests. As in Texas, it pays to expect the unexpected when it comes to the Louisiana STAR. One fishing legend, which happens to be true, holds that an angler agreed to go fishing on his friend’s boat one day, but the invitation came with stipulations.

“You are not getting on my boat without a STAR ticket,” the angler was told.

Considering it the price of admission, the angler went online, signed up for the Louisiana STAR and was allowed on the boat. He caught a tagged redfish that night.

Other Bayou State anglers have put a bit more preparation into their fishing strategies, even if the STAR Tournament wasn’t foremost in their minds. Beryl Eisworth was fishing the Grand Isle Rodeo in 2006 and was dead-set on beating her arch enemy in the women’s division. Leading after the first day, a faulty pump in the live well put her on the beach the second day. Adding insult to injury, her main competition pulled into first place with a trout caught out of the exact hole Beryl had been fishing.

“We were back out in my spot at 3:30 a.m. the next day, and when I caught that monster speck I just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I’m 65 years old and it was the thrill of my life. I wasn’t even thinking about STAR.”

Her 8-pound, 1.5-ounce trout sealed her win in the Grand Isle Rodeo and set off a celebration at the boat ramp upon her arrival. Everyone, it seems, came out to take a picture of the fish that some said was the biggest caught in Grand Isle in more than 10 years. The fish, laid out on the boards at the boat ramp, was shrinking under the lights of the paparazzi until Beryl’s fellow anglers Terry Stcyr and Bootsie Toups arrived and asked if she had entered it in STAR.

“They both started shouting to get it in ice and get it weighed-in in STAR,” she recalls. “We figure the fish lost at least a pound but it was still enough to win the Eastern Trout Division, although it missed winning the overall prize for biggest trout by a couple of ounces.”

Her advice to future STAR entrants? Ice your fish immediately.

Believing that all work and no play is no way to go through medical school, J. J. Tabor found a week off between rotations and headed offshore for a three-day tour last year. He was more than 100 miles off Louisiana when an amberjack devoured a live hardtail trailing the boat.

“As soon as I saw it, I knew it had a chance to win. There was a 90-pound amberjack already on the leaderboard and when we weighed this one on a scale on the boat it was bouncing between 90 and 95 pounds,” said Tabor.

So did he run straight in to see if he had the winning fish?

“Well, we lost one of the engines the first day so we were putt-putting around the Gulf at 8 miles per hour. We ended up keeping a lot of ice on him and it was a nice, relaxing 15-hour run back to port,” he said, displaying a calmness that will likely serve him well as a doctor. “When we finally got it on a certified scale it weighed just under 93 pounds and took first place in the division.”

Anything can happen in a STAR tournament. They reward both the hardcore fisherman and the casual, occasional angler. Kids have won scholarships and grandmothers have won boats. One unlucky angler was actually eating his redfish before he saw the tag (true story), but countless others have turned a day of adversity into a moment of shining glory.

But in the end, the biggest winners are not the people at the top of the board on Labor Day. The biggest winners are the marine resources that have benefited from the surge in CCA membership, excitement and interest in marine conservation created by the STAR tournaments.

The people who fish, who care the most about the fish, will be the ones who fight the hardest to conserve the fish. That is what the STAR tournaments are all about.