Drew Cook and Drew Benton put their heads together after three days of practice on Lake Hartwell, came up with a game plan, headed in opposite directions on the lake, and came back with almost the exact same results Thursday.
The Day 1 standings at the Whataburger Bassmaster Elite showed Cook in a three-way tie for 6th place with 18 pounds, 12 ounces, and Benton in 9th place, one ounce back at 18-11. These two former Elite Series Rookie of the Year champs have been sharing information for several seasons now.
“Oh, yeah, 100 percent, we’re in it together,” Cook said.
It doesn’t mean they’ll see each other on the water during the tournament.
“I’m up Seneca (River), and he’s down the lake,” Benton said. “I’m gonna stay probably mid-lake up, and he’ll probably stay mid-lake down for the most part.”
Both anglers are focused on spawning largemouth bass. There was much talk on the weigh-in stage yesterday about particular females being on a spawning bed one day during practice and then gone when the tournament started. But with a new moon coming Sunday night and the water temperature warming into the mid 70s in rapid fashion, Cook and Benton believe the best is yet to come.
“Absolutely, I think I think only about 25 to 30 % of them have spawned,” Benton said. “The problem is they’re not everywhere, and you can you can get caught up looking at a lot of dead
water. Like today I went to a bunch that weren’t there. They’re doing it so fast. Places where I saw a female yesterday would have a fry guarder today.
“But no telling how long they’d been there. They might’ve been there for a couple days. But still, it’s happening so fast. A lot of times you’re seeing like two and three females up with one male. It’s like there’s not enough males up everywhere. You would think because this lake has got so many fish there would just be males on the bank everywhere. But it’s not the case that I’ve seen.”
Cook, 30, from Cairo, Ga., has a special fondness for Lake Hartwell. It’s where he made his first Elite Series top 10, finishing 4th in 2019, on the way to earning Rookie of the Year honors over 2nd place Lee Livesay and 3rd place Patrick Walters. All three have gone on to win Elite Series events since.
Benton, 36, from Panama City, Fla., won the Elite Series rookie title in 2014. He has since added two Elite Series titles, including one at nearby Lake Murray in 2023.
Cook did catch one bass on a glide bait Thursday before putting on a Bassmaster Live clinic demonstrating how to work a bass on a spawning bed. It takes time, it takes patience and it takes technique. Cook worked that fish for nearly an hour before catching it.
“I don’t know if we’re in the middle of the spawn, but they’re really doing it so fast,” Cook said. “They’re just trickling up. Places that had no bass had new ones in there today.”
Angler after angler mentioned how many bass he caught on Day 1, when all 102 weighed in five-bass limits. The standings are jammed with ties. Twenty-two anglers are crowded between 40th and 61st place with 14-15 to 14-0.
“You’re gonna have to have at least two of those females a day just set yourself apart from everybody else,” Cook said.
Both Cook and Benton would like to have more sunshine. That was the one thing that didn’t happen at all Thursday, and the sun may not shine much today. After seeing what he could catch when the sun was shining during practice, Benton was let down a bit with his results on Day 1.
“I really expected to catch 20 to 25 pounds,” he said. “Out of like eight five-pound-plus females only one of them was still there. But all my fish except for one today was a new fish that was not there yesterday. Really, there’s no telling what you’ll see (Friday).”
