‘The kids love it.’ Young anglers show their skills in Gulf fishing tournament

Tournament fishing is usually a fast paced, high energy, adrenaline charged shootout where anglers are in go fast mode to catch the biggest and most fish in a short time frame.

They’ll spend days and weeks preparing, going over every little detail about where their prized catch might be found and how they will bring it boatside.

And then there is the Great American Grunt Hunt.

“This is something the kids can do. It doesn’t take a ton of time, skill or effort,” said Kyle Paulhus, who fished with his 4-year-old son Jase and Palmetto’s Carl Gretenhardt and his son Waylon, who is 9.

“The kids love it. It’s such a family-friendly event and something we look forward to every year. We can pack a few bags of ice and only need to go to 60 feet and just start fishing,” Paulhus added. “It’s not like the Crosthwait or another offshore tournament where we’re preparing for an overnight with extra fuel and hundreds of pounds of ice. This is just for fun.”

At only $40 per angler, Paulhus and Gretenhardt focused on getting their kids to catch the biggest grunts possible. A normal annoyance to anglers searching for more prized fish like hogfish, grouper or snapper, grunts eat just about anything they can fit their rubbery lips around. They school in the hundreds to thousands around most structures so offshore anglers can catch them with ease.

“The kids used squid while the adults were hogfishing with shrimp. They probably caught 100 grunts throughout the day. It was a weird feeling when we’d get a bigger fish and hope it was a 15- to 16-inch grunt. We kept probably 50 of them all day,” explained Paulhus.

“We also caught about 5 keeper-sized gag grouper using 15-pound leader. The weather was great again for the second year in a row.”

At the weigh-in of the 15th annual event, the grunts were coming in fast. When the final fish were weighed, it was merely ounces that made a difference, and the youth showed they could hang with the adults in the fun format.

Taking first place overall was youth angler Quinn Romano, whose biggest grunt of the event weighed in at 1.94 pounds. Another youth, Audrey Litenfield, took home third place overall at 1.81 pounds. Splitting them for second was angler Harleigh Hayes with a 1.85-pound grunt.

Jase Paulhus would have a big grunt on the day at 1.44 pounds, while Waylon Gretenhardt would have a 1.43-pound grunt. They would bring home ninth and 10th place in the youth division.

“There are so many kids who fish this tournament, it really gets them introduced to tournament fishing,” said Paulhus. “Now since they’ve been doing it for 15 years, a lot of the kids who did the first few are the ones doing well in the bigger tournaments now!”

The biggest hogfish would go to Brian Hasson at 6.58 pounds.