There are a lot of very good young bass tournament fishermen in the Griffin area. For some reason Georgia has not produced many top level tournament pros but maybe these young fishermen will start a trend and make it to the top. A couple already are there.

I have enjoyed doing articles with several of them, and one fishes with me in club tournaments. Jordan McDonald from Jackson made the regional tournaments on two trails, the Bulldog BFL and the Weekend Series, in the past couple of weeks. He qualified to go to the next level through fishing state tournaments. And he won the point standings for no boaters in the Weekend Series.

At the two regionals he will be fishing he has a chance to win a boat and also to move on to the next level. And there are cash prizes in them, too.

Cody Stahl is in high school here and he and his partner on the state high school tournament last year then placed tenth in the national high school tournament. I did an article that is in the current October Georgia Outdoor News magazine on Lake Oconee and he showed me how good he is. His knowledge of bass fishing and his techniques are excellent for someone his age.

Byron Kenney is from Griffin, fished with the University of Georgia college team, and is doing great in the qualifying tournament for the bigger trails. Last weekend he won the two day BFL tournament at Oconee as a boater, the same one Jordan placed 9th as a no boater.

A couple of years ago I did an article with Dawson Lentz. Dawson is from Peachtree City, went to North Alabama College where he was on the fishing team and they won several big college trail tournaments. Dawson was a very good youth angler while growing up and will try some of the big trails next year.

Micah Frazier is from Newnan and he was the youngest angler to ever do so when he won a BFL when he was only 16, beating all the adult fishermen in that tournament. He is now fishing the BASS Elite Trail. As its name implies, it is the very top trail in BASS, and he had to do well in a lot of the lower trails to qualify for the Elite Trail. And he is doing pretty well on it.

Last Monday I went to Lake Sinclair to fish with Clayton Batts for a November Georgia Outdoor News article. Clayton is from Lizella near Macon and is now fishing the FLW Tour trail, the top trail for that organization. He worked his way up through the BFLs and FLW Rayovac trail to qualify for it and has been successful on the top trail.

We started fishing at 7; 30 and stayed until 5:30, and the whole time Clayton threw a top water plug. He landed a 5.6 pound largemouth and lost two more almost as big when they just pulled off the hook. He also caught five or six bass in the two pound range. His best five landed weighed over 13 pounds.

In my club tournaments it usually takes less than ten pounds to win, often a lot less. And the last time I fished a tournament at Sinclair I didn’t catch a keeper in eight hours. Not only does Clayton know the lake very well, he lived in a cabin on it while in college, he knows how to catch fish.

It is hard for me to fish with just one thing all day like he did. I keep thinking I need to try different things to find out what the bass want. But Clayton, and other pros, have so much confidence they will stick with just one bait, knowing it will work.

Clayton told me he wanted only five bites in a tournament, if they were the right ones. Pros like him concentrate on big fish. They know catching keepers won’t win their tournaments so they hope to land a five fish limit with each weighing at least three pounds, rather than dozens of one pound fish.

Tournament fishing is very competitive and youth and stamina help a lot! Clayton didn’t even have a front seat on his boat, he stood up casting all day. But he is half my age. I cannot stand up for long before my back hurts too much. And Clayton was able to twitch his rod all day to make the topwater bait work right.

If I try to fish a bait like that, one that requires a lot of hand and arm work, I give out after an hour or so. But I can always make excuses for not catching fish, from my age to the weather to the time of day. But even when I think the bass are not biting, somebody will catch them, even in our club tournaments,

Fishing the big trails is hard work. Clayton left Tuesday to drive to Arkansas to fish a Central Open, hoping to get enough points to qualify for the BASS Elite series. He says he will fish both trails as much as possible.

To fish even one trail you may have to fish a tournament in Florida then take off to California for one a week later, then come back to Kentucky for one a week after that. All that travel makes it very hard to have a family, or much of a life beyond fishing. But for the top pros, bass fishing is all that matter.

Forty years ago I had the dream of being a pro fisherman. I am way too old for that dream now, but it is nice to know some local youth are living that dream or working up to it.