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