At an early age, my dad taught me how to bass fish. He wasn’t a tournament fisherman, but he took me all the time and I fell in love with it. Justin Hamner’s family and my family have known each other for a while, and he showed me the world of tournament fishing.
Hamner and I have been fishing together since I was in middle school. He would pick me up from school and take me. Before he made the Elites, we would fish a tournament every weekend in Alabama, trying to get better so we could make it in the pros one day.
So, it was pretty unreal to win the Turtlebox Bassmaster Open at Grand Lake presented by Battery Tender, the same body of water where Justin won the 2024 Bassmaster Classic. We couldn’t have done it in more opposite ways either. He won LiveScoping a jerkbait, also my confidence technique, but I won it in super dirty water with a Colorado-bladed spinnerbait.
I know it is just an Open, but this means so much to me. It still doesn’t feel real. I can’t fathom that I’ll actually be fishing the Bassmaster Classic with all of the guys I’ve been watching and studying since middle school.
I love throwing a spinnerbait. When we went fishing, my dad and I would always throw floating worms and spinnerbaits. Lately, I’ve been showing him all the bass I catch on Coikes, minnows and all the other crazy forward-facing sonar baits. It was pretty incredible to say, “Hey dad, I won this tournament on a spinnerbait fishing in the dirt.” My momma said he cried when I won, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that man cry in my life.
But the funny part about that is, I never catch anything on a spinnerbait with a single Colorado blade. In fact, Hamner and I have a running joke about how we never catch them on that bait. When the water gets dirty, we joke about how we will catch them using it, knowing good and well we won’t. Well, I tied one on at Grand and caught every single bass of the tournament with it. Maybe they just like it better in Oklahoma than in Alabama.
I got that spinnerbait from the local tackle shop, Honey Creek Outdoors. They make it in-house, and I only bought one to start. I made it last almost all of Day 1 and caught 20-14. I boat flipped every single fish before breaking it off at the end of the day. I went back and bought 12 more. I met the guy who makes them, and he was super excited.
I had a terrible practice. I got some smaller bites on a different spinnerbait on some points but never got it going the rest of practice. On Day 1, I wanted to get that bite going again. My first two stops, I didn’t catch anything, but on my third stop I caught a 3 1/2-pound spotted bass. Before I knew it, I was culling out that spotted bass and needed a 4-pounder to cull. I couldn’t believe it. Once I got a bite on a few points, I could look at a point and know without a doubt I was going to get bit on it.
Still, going out on Day 2, I didn’t know if my bite was going to work. There were a couple boats where I wanted to start, so I idled over to another point and caught a 5 1/2-pounder immediately. From that point on, I wasn’t going to make another cast that didn’t fit the pattern with that spinnerbait. I’ve never led one of these events, and before Day 2 weigh-in I certainly didn’t think I was going to take the lead. It never entered my mind. Seeing my name at the top of the leaderboard was incredible.
There were boats all over the stuff I was fishing, and after a while on Day 2, I came to the realization I was just fishing community holes. But I could look at how people were fishing and know they weren’t catching the same bass I was catching. I caught multiple 5-pounders behind people who fished that same spot a minute or two earlier. I was fishing shallower than everyone else and tearing my boat up doing it. I was putting my boat on the rocks and making extremely efficient casts. The bass were living in the cracks of the rocks, like you would imagine a catfish would. I caught them so shallow. I watched half of them eat it and some of them blew up on it like a frog right when it hit the water.
The fog delay didn’t bother me too much on Championship Saturday. For one, I was in the lead, and if we waited long enough, I would have stayed there. But also, from 9 a.m. to noon was my best bite window. That was my prime time, so I was in good shape either way.
Around midday, I had one of those moments I won’t ever forget. The camera boat had just left me, and I had a bigger bag than I was saying. I don’t like to be disappointed at the scales. I pulled up to a point that had been really good to me all tournament. It had this tiny little crack in this big rock, and it had a spiderweb above it that had broken the day before when I caught a big one. Well, the spider had rebuilt it, and I knew no one had cast at it.
I pulled up to it, made a bad cast and scuffed my line on the rocks. So I trolled away and retied. I looked at my marshal and a guy who had been watching me all day long and told them, “I’m about to make that cast.” I threw in there and caught a 4-pounder. I trolled away so the wind wouldn’t blow me into the rocks, culled, moved back up there and caught one over 5. I let loose a little bit after that. I weighed my fish and realized I had three bass over 5 pounds. If someone was going to beat me, they would have needed a giant bag.
Before heading to Lake Norman for the third event of Division 2, I stayed an extra day at Grand and fished a tournament with fellow Opens angler Matt Pangrac and did some filming. We caught 30 or 40 keepers and had a blast. I’m trying to get into the social media side of things, and that video will hopefully springboard that effort.
I feel pretty good about making the Bassmaster Elite Qualifiers round now, and I feel like I can fish so much more freely. I can just go fishing and not stress too much. I’ve been to all three of the lakes on the EQ schedule and have had some decent finishes.
