CCU Saltwater Angler Club wins king mackerel tournament

Baseball and golf weren’t the only big wins for the university this summer; Coastal also found victory on the high seas. Faculty member and Capt. Joe Winslow led an all-star team of former CCU students to the top of the podium at the East Coast Got-Em-On Classic, a prestigious regional event on the highly competitive Southern Kingfish Association tournament circuit hosted in Carolina Beach, N.C. Winslow and crew members Matt Eisenberger, Scott Heffernan and Austin Keener caught their big fish on the first day of the weekend-long competition more than 60 miles offshore in rough conditions aboard their 34-foot triple engine-powered center console, Hooligan. This was the first time the team had ever finished at the top of the leaderboard.

“The team has had some excellent finishes in the past, but it’s an amazing accomplishment to win against almost 200 other boats,” said Winslow.

Coastal has sponsored the team for the past seven years through its club sports affiliation. “The Saltwater Anglers Club is an exceptionally active student group on campus and in the community. They participate in numerous campus fundraising efforts, such as Relay for Life, support fishing education for local schools through the nonprofit Carolina Kids Fish donate labor to help local fishing tournaments such as the Rumble in the Jungle, as well as coordinate public fishing seminars presented by expert charter captains from the region,” said Winslow.

Of course, somewhere among all these service obligations, the students obviously get to fish, and not just with Winslow, but other captains as well.

“When the club first started, there were just a handful of students, so it was easy to teach them about saltwater fishing on my boat, but the club is so large now that the resources, support and logistics have had to evolve to a completely different scale.”

Many of the club members take what they learn from Winslow and from each other to work summer jobs mating on local charter boats, where as one would expect, the learning continues.

“I can’t possibly teach them everything, but the club has morphed into an amazing co-ed service fraternity that has built a self-perpetuating knowledge network where these kids develop fishing skills learning from many different sources and then turn around and share that information with each other at their various club events,” said Winslow.

This socialized learning, Winslow says, is documented continuously online via Instagram and Facebook, and many of the members will say that the social media presence factored into their choosing to attend Coastal. “I can’t think of a better compliment to a university organization than knowing its service and social agenda, as well as its competition success, have a measurable impact on enrollment. I’m proud of the hard work these kids put into the club and honored to represent the University with them at our first official victory.”