Last Friday and Saturday 13 members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished our May tournament at Lake Hartwell. From 6:00 AM to 4:00 PM Friday and 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM Saturday, it took us 18 hours to land 98 keeper bass weighing about 173 pounds. There were 13 five bass limits and no one zeroed.
Raymond English won with ten bass weighing 20.71 pound, beating Niles Murray who came in second with ten weighing 20.68 pounds. Unfortunately for him but good for Raymond, Niles had a .06 pound penalty for a dead fish that made the difference!
Lee Hancock had ten weighing 18.27 pounds for third and Glenn Anderson had ten for 18.9 pounds for fourth and his 5.0 pound largemouth was big fish. My nine at 14.42 pounds was way back for fifth.
Hartwell seems to get me every year. Potato Creek has fished Hartwell this same weekend in May since I joined the club seven years ago, and it seems I always come up short. Even though I went up Tuesday and camped at Hartwell State Park and looked for something that would catch fish for two days before the tournament, I did not find it!
We put in for the tournament at the mouth of Little Beaverdam Creek, many miles by water from where I camped but only 15 minutes driving on the road. Wednesday I drove to Hatton Ford Ramp, the tournament site, and looked around that area then put in at the state park to practice in that area on Thursday.
I tried a variety of places and lures both days. I thought I had found a pattern casting a weightless Trick worm to shallow cover on shady banks, catching a few keeper bass doing that on Wednesday. And Thursday I caught some on a buzzbait on a shady bank. That gave me something of a plan.
I started the tournament pretty good, catching a limit of keepers before 6:45. I ran back in a small creek I have been fishing since catching fish there in s Top Six Tournament in the 1980s and caught two on a spinnerbait around bushes. Then at one dock I caught two on a topwater plug, missed two more on it, and caught my fifth fish on a whacky rigged worm.
At about 8:00 I started running different things, hitting a couple humps and points. Then at 10:00 I went back into a small creek and started catching better fish on a Carolina rigged Baby Brush Hog. I quickly culled all five I had caught early then spent the next two hours culling up, landing about 15 keepers in two hours.
For some reason I stopped getting bites around noon. I tried a lot of different things that afternoon but had five weighing 8.71 pounds to weigh in, putting me in sixth place.
Saturday morning I ran back to the same small creek where I started the day before and got one bite, from an 11 inch bass! It started as “one of those days,” no keepers and on one cast the side plate of one of my favorite reels fell off, hit the deck and bounced into the lake!
After setting up another rod, I then ran to the creek where I had caught so many the day before, and got one bite, this time a 13-inch spot. I have no idea what changed other than it was cloudy Friday and sunny Saturday, and there were a lot more boats running around Saturday.
I kept fishing and caught two more keepers but broke my line setting the hook twice and missed two more bites. Everything just went wrong. With 30 minutes left to fish I went back to a point near weigh-in and caught my fourth fish on a roadbed with ten minutes left to fish.
That was the best ending I could hope for on a bad day!