oN tour
catch as catch can
The first day of the All-American, which involved 49 boaters and an equal number of co-anglers, Lawyer alternated among about a dozen baits, but wound up catching his keepers on four different baits that included a Bandit crankbait custom-painted in a herring pattern by Fallcreek Lures, a Zoom Brush Hog( green pumpkin, Texas-rigged), a Chompers Wobble Head with a Reaction Innovations Kinky Beaver and an unnamed football jig. His biggest fish in the opening round was a 5-pound, 4-ounce smallmouth that engulfed the Bandit in Taylor Bay, on the west side of the lake.
By the end of the second round, Lawyer had winnowed his lures to the Bandit and the Brush Hog, plus added a Zoom Magnum Trick Worm( green pumpkin with a dyed chartreuse tail) on a 3 / 8-ounce football jighead to his arsenal. In the final round, the Magnum Trick Worm accounted for one keeper in Hopson Creek and four more inside the mouth of Little River. One of those, which he caught at about 8 o’ clock that morning, weighed 5-8.
Lawyer had been using the Magnum Trick Worm periodically the first two days, but switched to it almost exclusively late in the second round after his co-angler, John Farmer of Sherrills Ford, N. C., caught two solid keepers within minutes of each other on a shaky head.
“ I was cranking; he was fishing a shaky head. He caught fish; I didn’ t,” notes Lawyer.“ That’ s all the encouragement I needed to fish a shaky head at that spot [ the mouth of Little River ] the last day – good thing.”
PHOTO BY KORY SAVAGE smItH WINs co-aNgLer tItLe
Even fishermen have to suffer for their art sometimes. Wesley Smith, the All-American’ s co-angler champion, qualifies in that regard. On the practice day prior to the tournament, Smith’ s legs got so badly sunburned that he could barely walk the next morning. As painful as it was, it didn’ t keep him from fishing. His three-day haul of 11 bass that weighed a collective 26 pounds, 14 ounces earned him a $ 50,000 paycheck.
Smith, of Vinemont, Ala., benefited from three great draws in the tournament, including eventual runner-up boater Todd Walters on day one, pretournament favorite Brent Anderson in the second round and third-place finisher Clabion Johns in the final round.
“ I fished docks and shallow cover with Todd [ Walters ], and we never got out of sight of the state park,” comments the 21-year-old.“ I started out using a 1 / 2-ounce Strike King Denny Brauer Structure Jig that was green with some orange strands in the skirt, and a Strike King Rage Craw in green pumpkin blue [ sapphire ], and that’ s what I wound up fishing the whole tournament.”
Smith says that sometimes he fished the jig in conventional fashion, hopping it along the bottom slowly, but that he also caught fish by swimming it through and around cover. He was in sixth place with four keepers and 8-15 after the opening round, then followed with three fish and 7-06 on day two. He and Anderson spent much of their time south of the Highway 68 bridge in Tennessee waters, fishing isolated stickups and buck brush.
In the final round, when he and Johns ranged from Fords Bay, which is south of the bridge, to Little River, Smith picked off the rare fish that Johns missed. That amounted to four fish and his best weight: 10-09.
“ We fished the very back ends of coves and creeks, and I mean way back,” says Smith.“ We fished as far up in there as the Ranger would let us.”
Smith qualified for the All-American by winning the co-angler title in the Lake Hartwell Wild Card tournament last year. He plans to fish the Choo Choo Division as a boater in 2017. ■
PHOTO BY KORY SAVAGE
108 fLWfIsHINg. com I august-september 2016