Winning the Whataburger Bassmaster Elite at Lake Hartwell was a super cool feeling. I never expected to win something like this, so it is really special to me. To do it on a herring lake is awesome too. I’ve been doing chasing herring my whole life, messing around on Lake Lanier and also Lake Hartwell a good bit. I won a high school tournament there in 2016.
In 2023, I fished a division of the BFLs and three of the five tournaments were on Lake Hartwell. I won the points and the regional tournament, which qualified me for the 2024 All-American. I was fortunate enough to take home that trophy as well. I had enough money saved up from that season to fish the 2024 Bassmaster Opens and ended up qualifying for the Elites. Everything that has happened in those two years goes full circle back to Lake Hartwell.
I owe Lake Hartwell a lot. It has gotten me to where I am today.
When I first started preparing for the Elite Series event, I knew I could do decently, but I didn’t think I could win just because of the time of year. In practice, we had slick conditions every day, and I barely even fished. I would go to a herring spawn point and drive over them with my trolling motor, and all of the largemouth seemed to be prespawn. That kind of scared me because when they left, they were going to the bed, which, bed fishing is not my thing. I want to fish offshore. But I had a feeling they were going to pull up on the bank like crazy, and they did, but not enough to doom me.
I weighed in two that I caught off bed the first day, but after Day 1 I would catch a nice bag of spotted bass and go look for those bigger largemouth on the bed. I was only looking for really big ones, and I seldom ran into any that would bite. So, I stuck to my roots and fished for spotted bass offshore. I would get a few largemouth around the herring spawn in the morning, but spotted bass were key.
That first day, I started on a herring spawn and didn’t really have much going by 9 a.m., so I went to an offshore place where I knew I could catch some decent spotted bass. I put the trolling motor down once and had 16 pounds by 10:30. I saw a couple nice bass on bed the final day of practice, so I went to the first one and caught it within a couple of minutes. There was a 3 1/2-pounder across the pocket, and I caught that one too to get over 19 pounds. Later that day I ran to another pocket, and I found a 7-pounder on bed. I could almost get it to bite and decided I would come back to it on Day 2 after fishing the herring spawn.
I wound up catching a couple of 3-pounders during the herring spawn, and so I decided to go check that bed fish, which ended up being gone. There was a 5-pounder in there too, and I couldn’t get it to bite, so I moved back out offshore to fish for spotted bass and caught 17 pounds by 10:30. Once I got over 17, I tried again to look for bed fish and never could get any over 5 pounds to commit.
Day 3 was a little tougher for spotted bass. I only had 14 pounds around noon, so I moved to some brushpiles I knew. I could see the bass were there, and I couldn’t get them to eat the Zoom Fluke Stick, so I broke out the chrome Spro Walking Haint. It was the first time since the tournament started that the sun came out, and I caught a 3 1/2-pound and a 4-pound spotted, which really saved my day.
The fourth day was a grind for sure. I fished offshore all day trying to run into them, and I caught over 15 1/2 pounds of spots, which was good enough to win. But I didn’t think it was going to be enough. I was running around the lake thinking I had let this slip right through my fingers. I had a feeling it was going to be pretty close. I felt like I needed at least 18 pounds to seal the victory, but it turned out 15 1/2 was enough for me.
When it came down to it, my roommate Tucker Smith was the one in the Yeti Hot Seat when I weighed-in, which was pretty cool. We have spent a lot of time together, roomed with each other during the Opens last year and fished together a ton. It was cool that we were both up there and had a chance to win.
I never expected to win one during my rookie year. I just wanted to do well in the points and qualify for the Bassmaster Classic. I had never been anywhere like the Albemarle Sound and the Sabine River. I learned a lot from those two events, which has been my main goal this season. Learn as much as I can and have fun doing it.
