Kingfish Connection:  Captain Crawford, you had an incredible season last year, winning two events within a one month period.  You followed that up this weekend with a win at the St. Mary’s Kingfish Classic.  How did you prepare for this tournament?

Kenny Crawford:  We didn’t prefish for this tournament at all.  We did fish the Fernandina tournament last weekend and caught a 38 pounder.  So, we decided we would give it a shot in this one day tournament and head back to that spot.  We had the same strategy that we had last week and tried to get there as soon as possible.  Last week’s fishing was all we had to go on. 

I never really prefish anyways because every time I do I catch a big fish the day before the tournament and little snakes on the tournament’s day. 

How was the weather out there this weekend?

It was beautiful!  It made the trip that much better.

What has been attracting fish to this area?

There is a great piece of hard bottom on this spot about 40 miles offshore and that hard bottom attracts a lot of hard tails.

When the fish ate did you know it was a winner?

Actually, we didn’t even think it was a kingfish.  We thought it was a barracuda or something.  The fish ate a hardtail on the surface at around 1:30 PM and just dogged us a little.  It didn’t make any big runs, just kind of acted like the barracudas we had caught at this spot earlier.   After two or three short runs, we had it next to and saw it was a king.  Again, we made a mistake thinking it was only about 30 pounds.  Finally after another 20 minutes I stuck the fish and felt the weight this fish had. 

We had caught a 41 pounder earlier and this fish was much thicker.  This fish was the fattest fish I have ever caught.  It was 6 inches shorter than the 41, but 7 pounds heavier.  After we boated this fish we headed back to the scales.  My one tip for everyone is to always weigh the fatter fish!

Did you think that you had the win with this fish?

We thought we had a top 2 finish.  This year has been really great for big fish in the North Florida/Georgia area.  We knew we had a great chance though and this fish ended up being the record for this tournament.    

Did you hear any radio chatter about other big fish?

We heard a couple people came in early with nice fish.  But when we got into phone range I called a few friends at the scales and they told me that there was a 42 and 39 weighed, so we gained a little confidence.  We knew we had a good shot. 
Thank you and congratulations!

Thank you.  I would also like to say that this is an outstanding tournament.  Terry Adkins does a wonderful job and I wish more would follow his lead.  He has a great prize structure and needs more of our support.