Skylar Hamilton’s Day 2 big bass illustrates exactly what can happen at any time on Lake Conroe. And for Hamilton, it happened about as late in the day as possible.
“It was 3:20 when I saw it,” he said. “I was about eight minutes from the ramp. Somewhere around 3:30 or 3:35 I caught it, and I was due in at 3:50.”
“It” was a one-eyed 9-pound, 1-ounce largemouth bass that was circling a spawning bed. Hamilton used a watermelon pepper 4.8-inch Jackal Flick Shake worm, wacky-rigged on a 2/0 Hayabusa drop shot hook and a quarter-ounce Jackal tungsten drop shot weight to entice the big bass to bite.
Hamilton said he’d seen this before, when a one-eyed fish, if the bait is cast on its blind side, is more easily provoked to strike when guarding a bed.
“I don’t know if I’d have caught that fish if it didn’t have the bad eye,” Hamilton said. “I was lucky all the way around. I was lucky to pull up and see that fish in the first place. Somebody was looking out for me, I guess.”
If not for that 9-1 big bass of the day, the 22-year-old Hamilton would have had nothing to weigh on the second day of his first Bassmaster Classic. And, as it concerns today, it shows that big things can happen at any time on this lake.