Big bass of the Harris Chain 2022

It was a battle of sight fish vs. a more consistent offshore bite in the SiteOne Bassmaster Elite at Harris Chain last week, with Buddy Gross winning despite never contending for the biggest bass of the day. With recent events at Harris producing big bags, a four-day weight topping 100 pounds was predicted, but the anticipated wave of bass coming to spawn ended up more of a trickle. So slow and steady won the race over bedding bass, which still produced some monsters. Let’s look at the big bags and big bass that played on the Florida fishery out of Leesburg.

On Day 1, 89 of the 94 competitors landed limits with the average fish weighing 2.9 pounds. KJ Queen started in the middle of the pack with 15 pounds, 5 ounces, but without this 7-4 the North Carolinian would have been hard-pressed to make the cut. With growing limits, 17-1 before another lunker helped him to 20-1 on Day 3, Queen missed the Top 10 cut by 6 ounces to finish 11th.

Big bass hunter John Cox, who once again proved his sight-fishing prowess with a fourth-place finish the week before at the St. Johns River, landed a 7-11 in his Day 1 bag of 18-7. Bigger things were to come for the Floridian.

Jamie Hartman had one of 11 limits topping 20 pounds on Day 1. His 8-10 helped him get to 21-4, but 14-pound bags the next two rounds had him finish 15th, although he did earn Thursday’s Phoenix Boats Big Bass bonus of $1,000.

Wisconsin’s Pat Schlapper said he didn’t have much of a bag before landing an 8-7 and a 7-pounder within minutes in the afternoon, which bolstered his 22-15 that stood second. Without the big bites, his next best was 11-0, and he fell to 33rd.

Coming off a St. Croix Opens victory a bit south on the Kissimmee Chain, Brandon Lester had a 6-12 and several other above-average bass in his limit of 23-0 that led the event. Day 2 was much slower with 11-1, and he fell to 15th.

Friday was much stingier for the bigger bites as only three anglers mustered 20-plus pound bags. Although only one competitor failed to catch a limit, the average fish weight dropped to 2.8. Clifford Pirch made a move up the leaderboard with this 8-13. His 17-0 moved him from 41st to 29th, but bigger things were to come for him too.

Starting 38th, Stetson Blaylock jumped into fifth with 23-7, including an 8-7. Blaylock fished with a heavy heart, learning that his father-in-law died. He finished 18th in the event and hurried home to be with his family before needing to turn around to fish in his third Academy Sports + Outdoors Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk on Lake Hartwell next week.

Micah Frazier was well outside the cut in 53rd before moving to sixth with the VMC Monster Bag of the tournament. His 23-14, including this 8-10, earned him a $2,000 bonus and put him in the hunt, but he missed the cut to take 14th with his second 13-pound limit.

The two biggest fish of the event were landed on Day 3, when John Cox spent more than three hours sight fishing for this behemoth. It was entered on BassTrakk as a 9-pounder, but surprisingly ended up much larger at 11 pounds even.

Talk was that Clifford Pirch’s lunker would take the tournament lead for big bass. The Bassmaster LIVE crew discussed that Pirch’s bass, which was relayed by Marshal David Frost in a video, looked bigger than Cox’s fish. The relative size of the anglers or camera perspective might have had something to do with that. Perhaps the morning catch sitting in the livewell and holding Pirch as the last to weigh played a factor too. Pirch seemed a touch surprised when it went 9-13 on the scales, drawing a disappointed reaction from the crowd hoping to see another double-digit fish. Pirch then said he weighed it earlier and it went 10-4.

Cox’s 11-0 won the Day 3 and overall Phoenix Boat Big Bass bonuses totaling $2,000. Both his and Pirch’s fish gave the anglers two of the eight 20-plus-pound bags on Saturday and pushed them into the Top 10. Pirch totaled 22-9 to jump 20 spots, and Cox’s 23-1 moved him from 21st to fourth, and he wound up finishing seventh.

Brandon Lester found his big bite again on Day 3, bringing in a 7-8 to total 20-2 and reach Championship Sunday. He finished fifth with 69-9, completing a great Florida swing with his win in the Kissimmee Open and 28th on the St. Johns.

Maryland’s Bryan Schmitt was among the numerous anglers fishing a 100-acre area with hydrilla on the southeast end of Harris Lake near Long Island. He had 21-13 on Thursday but fell on Day 2 with 13-2. He weighed in this 7-14 on Saturday squeak in the Top 10 then moved up to finish sixth.

Texan Ray Hanselman was in a similar situation, scoring a Top 10 start with 22-0. He fished in Banana Cove with Schmitt and about 30 others the first two days, bringing in 17-4 then 18-13 to lead heading into the final day. His 13-7 left him third with 71-8.

Scott Martin of Clewiston, Fla., might have had the fish on to lead on Day 1, but critical misses in Lake Apopka left him with 17-1 and in 21st. Another 17-3 helped him remain in contention, then his 21-5 on Day 3 pushed him within 2-8 of the lead for his first Elite Championship Sunday appearance. A slower Day 4 left him 10th.

Fishing the popular Harris Lake area, Japanese angler Kenta Kimura culled to a solid limit of 23-1 on Day 3, with his best going 6-12. Over the first three days, there were 1,160 fish caught in the tournament. Photographer Andy Crawford counted 32 Elites fishing in the Banana Cove region there on Day 2. After some simple extrapolations, and some surmising, there were around 410 bass caught in the area, or 35% of the total catch. Kimura did the best at enticing the bigger bites on Saturday, moving to second, but 9-5 Sunday dropped him to ninth.

Drew Benton started tied for 47th with 13-11, but his sight-fishing bite began to ignite. His 19-1 moved him to 23rd on Day 2, then he reached eighth with 21-5 on Semifinal Saturday, which included two big bass, including an 8-0. He was quoted that the winner would catch around 30 pounds on the final day, the first full day of sunny conditions, and it would be done sight fishing.

Pirch, fishing on the north end of Griffin Lake, was back at it in the thick grass looking for bass on beds. It looked like Benton’s forecast was taking shape early when Pirch landed this 6-pounder sight fishing. (Again, it looked bigger than it actually weighed.) Pirch saw some more big bass but never got one in the boat, totaling 13-8 to finish eighth.

Starting 4 pounds out of the lead in eighth, Benton threatened the lead and finished one bite away. Nowhere near 30 pounds, Benton did have the Phoenix Boats Big Bass of the day at 7-3 in totaling 21-0, the second largest in the round. He had 75-1 for the event, just 2-10 from the winning total.

Buddy Gross led two days on the Harris Chain, most importantly the last. He was third after 22-12 on Day 1 and reached the top spot with 17-11 on Friday. His smallest limit of 14-14 on Saturday knocked him down to sixth, but only 2-12 out of the lead. Starting on the same area of Banana Cove near Horseshoe Island, Gross moved farther west into the mouth between Harris and Little Harris and also went to the eastern end of Long Island. He never had a super big bass, but simply caught more fish, and more of the 5-pounders, than anyone else.

With 22-6, Gross weighed the biggest bag on Championship Sunday for his winning total of 77-11. It was the Chattanooga, Tenn., angler’s second Elite victory. He came from 10th place, 7-8 back of the lead, with a 27-11 bag in the 2020 Eufaula Elite, his second entry on the tour. Gross became the 36th pro to win more than one Elite, proving his steady offshore bite topped the anticipated big sight bites.