Countdown to Blastoff 2010 Week 27
Robby B helps us go through some great upcoming Tournaments on Clarks Hill as well as the 5th Annual Ryan Newman Foundation Tourney going out of Blythe Landing on Lake Norman on Sat, Dec 11th!!
Tom's Marine Tt Championship
Champions Pete Ling and Bobby Cardwell of Knoxville, TN win the 2010 Championship and take home a brand new Ranger Z118! Tournament Director Richard McMaster helps us wrap up one great year and one great weekend!!
Anglers Praying For Warmer Weather Before Bassmaster Classic On Lay Lake
Everybody knows Randy Howell has a strong Christian faith and the Elite Series angler says he has been doing a lot of praying lately.
Not for a win in the Bassmaster Classic on Alabama’s Lay Lake next weekend, but for the rain to stop and the weather to warm up a little
North Carolina native who now calls Springville, Ala., home.
“We’ve had extremely cold weather here. We’ve had a lot of rally cold rain and that is what has been killing the lake more than anything.
“It rained three inches here the other day and the temperature was 43 degrees while it was raining. It flooded the lake out, made it dirty and muddy – and muddy, cold water is a lot harder to fish than muddy warm water,” said Howell who is busy this week preparing for the Classic.
“I’m down here on my boat, working, putting blue LED lights in the boat, getting my tackle ready and trying to get prepared. And I’m praying the weather will warm up and the rain will stop – a big, big prayer.”
Weather forecasters say Howell’s prayer may be answered – but probably not in time for the Classic.
The first official practice day for the Bassmaster Classic is this Friday, a day when the forecast on Weather.com calls for “rain/snow showers” in the Birmingham area, including Lay Lake. The high is predicted to be 38, the low 29, and the chance of that slushy precipitation occurring is 40 percent.
By Feb. 17, the final practice day, highs should be 52 and skies partly sunny (although low temperatures Feb. 17 might be in the low 30s). But even one or two sunny days may be too little, too late, to heat up a Lay Lake largemouth bite.
“I think it definitely is going to depend on the week before the Classic, the week of the event” Howell said. “It’s going to have to warm up tremendously that week to make the lake rebound at all.”
The problem is that water temperature which has been hovering in the low to mid-40-degree range, he said.
“If it makes it up to 50-52 degrees or more it won’t be so bad, but if it says in that 40-degree range it can be really challenging.”
Strategy for Howell and the other fishermen will depend greatly on the weather over the next week and a half, he said
“The lake is full of fish, including big Florida strain bass which are the most affected by the cold. The spotted bass bite in the cold, so they will be the target fish if the water stays cold.”
Although there will be some shallow spotted bass, if they become the primary factor during the classic, he said, fishing will primarily be deep with Shakey Heads, football jigs and other deep water tactics.
“I’m hoping I don’t have to do that,” Howell said. “I’d rather fish fast and shallow, but who knows if we will be able to do that. It’s just up to the Good Lord above.”
If the weather changes dramatically and the water warms up, the largemouth bass will start to move to the shallow areas, he said.
“That’s when the bigger bite really comes on. The pre-spawn females will move up and get in 1 to 2 feet of water and you can flip them out of the grass,” he said. “That’s what everybody will be looking for, but it definitely will depend on the water temperature.”
Howell has qualified for eight previous Bassmaster Classics, two of them on Lay Lake. He finished 34th on Lay Lake in 2002, but his second highest finish in a Classic was in 2007 on Lay Lake when he was 13th.
“The 2007 Classic was about the same time of year, but the water temperature was 52-56 degrees then. Right now it is 10 degrees colder that that,” he said.
“But I am still excited about it and staying positive. I’m just hoping that stuff will start to work out during the time it needs to.”
Lay Lake
Birmingham, AL
Hite Looking For "right Group Of Fish" In Elite Series On Lake Dardanelle
It’s late March, the water temperature has warmed up to the high 50s-low 60s, and the bass in Arkansas’ Lake Dardanelle have moved up to spawn, so you’d expect the fishing to be easy for the Bassmaster Elite Series Diamond Drive tournament starting Thursday.
But, you’d be wrong.
“I’ve talked to a lot of the other pros and most are kind of saying the same thing,” said 1999 Bassmaster Classic Champion Davy Hite of Ninety Six, S.C. “The fishing is a lot tougher than I thought it would be.”
Normally when bass move up to spawn they come ready to eat and ready to fight anything that disturbs their spawning area, but for some reason the Dardanelle bass have not responded like normal fish this year.
Elite Series pro Clark Reehm, who lives just a few minutes from the boat ramp on Lake Dardanelle, said local tournament anglers are not even catching a lot of smaller fish for some reason. He added that the pros who have been to Dardanelle in the past might rely on 40 to 50 fish caught a day, but the bounty won’t be that plentiful in the Diamond Drive.
“Granted this is the Elites, but if the fish aren’t there, they aren’t there. Even the short fish – usually you catch 20-50 short fish, and it doesn’t seem like people are catching even that many.”
While Hite said he has been catching a good many fish in practice this week, most of them are small bass.
“This is a good lake and I’ve had some success here in the past,” said Hite, who won the Arkansas CITGO Bassmaster Elite 50 Pro tournament on Dardanelle in 2005 with a whopping total of 58 pounds, 9 ounces.
“I found those fish during the tournament,” he said, adding hopefully, “so, maybe tomorrow.”
Hite’s game plan in the tournament is to just go fishing.
“I think the better fish are up shallow where I’ve been catching a lot of smaller fish. I’m going to change baits and see if they like something different from what I’ve been throwing,” he said.
He’d love to repeat that success and get back into the Angler of the Year race, a title he’s won twice in his career.
“We’ve only had one tournament and I did not have the kind of tournament that I wanted in that first event,” said Hite, who finished 81st two weeks ago on Lake Amistad on the Texas-Mexico Border. “But, hopefully I can do better here. This is more my type of shallow water fishing and a lot of those fish last week were caught out extremely deep.”
Jason Williamson of Aiken, S.C., won the Lake Amistad Elite tournament and is leading the Bassmaster AOY Points race going into the second tournament of the year. Williamson bagged more than 68 pounds of bass the last two days of the tournament to surge into first place for the title with a four-day total of 96 pounds, 6 ounces.
“A South Carolina boy won it, but he was doing something totally different than what he is used to fishing and what I am used to fishing, but he found the right group of fish and that is what it is all about,” Hite said.
Now, he’s hoping to find that “right group of fish” this week on Lake Dardanelle like he did four years ago and repeat that 2005 Arkansas win.
Diamond Drive
Bassmaster Elite Series
Lake Dardanelle
Russellville, AR
Mar. 26-29, 2009
