COOKSON, Okla. — There have been days when Connor Gartman and Blake Starr believed they were in line to win a tournament, only to finish second or third to a team with a kicker bass.
The Arkansas Youth Anglers duo sealed the deal this time at the Strike King Bassmaster High School Series at Lake Tenkiller, landing a five-bass limit weighing 18 pounds, 3 ounces. They anchored their winning catch with a 5-pound largemouth.
“This feels amazing,” Gartman said. “I’ve been one good bite away in many tournaments. We caught our kicker today, and we had four good ones to go with it. We did it the way we like to — power fishing. It was windy and cloudy, perfect conditions for it.”
Fellow Arkansas Youth Anglers Tayson Hathorn and Tristin Hathorn finished second in the 78-boat field with 16-7 and landed the Big Bass of the Day, a 5-2 bass. Cale Compton and Adam Reed from the Moore High School Fishing Club finished third with 16-3.
Clouds and wind prevailed in eastern Oklahoma on Sunday, but plenty of bass were caught on Lake Tenkiller. Forty-seven teams caught a limit of bass during the one-day tournament and nearly 699 pounds were brought to the scales.
Hailing from central Arkansas, Gartman and Starr have been fishing together since the seventh grade but had never fished Lake Tenkiller prior to this week. After spending plenty of time looking at Google Earth, it didn’t take long for them to get comfortable.
“We’ve gotten comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Starr said. “This week was the best practice we’ve ever had. We had 19 or 20 pounds in practice and today it just happened for us.”
Two areas with prominent points produced the bulk of their weight during the tournament. They tossed a ½-ounce football jig paired with either a Strike King Rage Craw or a Strike King Menace trailer, but their best bites came using a 6-inch Megabass Magdraft swimbait.
Gartman and Starr would position the boat so one of them could toss the football jig into deeper water and the other could throw the swimbait in shallow water.
“We kept the boat in 14 feet of water,” Starr said. “We tried to position it so we could parallel the bank with the Magdraft and then get the football jig into the deeper water. It really worked out. We were on as windy of a bank as we could get with as big of rock as we could find.”
“With that Magdraft, I had it in no more than 5 feet of water,” Gartman added.
While they caught quality smallmouth in practice, the duo landed mostly largemouth on tournament day.
They filled out their limit around 10 a.m., which allowed them to pick up their “big-fish baits” later in the day. The Magdraft produced a 3-pounder and their 5-pounder, which rounded out their bag and lifted them to victory.
The Top 8 teams punched their tickets to the 2025 Strike King Bassmaster High School National Championship at Clarks Hill Reservoir, which is scheduled for July 31-Aug. 2. Teams will have one final chance to qualify at Buggs Island in Virginia on May 4.
The tournament was hosted by the Oklahoma Ozarks Tourism Association.
