Davy Hite, the 1999 Bassmaster Classic champion, got about 5-6 hours of practice on Lake Norman Monday afternoon for the Bassmaster Southern Open which begins Thursday and he liked what he found in that short time.

“With just a few hours on the water, it’s hard to say how the tournament will go, but I think it will be a good tournament,” said the long-time pro from Ninety Six, S.C. “The water temperature is about 56 to 60 degrees, depending on where you are on the lake, so I think a lot of fish will be caught a lot of different ways this week.”

Hite has come to the first Southern Open focused on his main goal this year – to qualify for the 2012 Bassmaster Classic.

“As always,” he said, “you want to have a good start for the season. Having won a couple of Bassmaster Angler of the Year titles, that is something that is an ultimate goal every year, but I try to make it a realistic goal. With competition the way it is you can’t have a single bad tournament and have a chance at Angler of the Year.”

His hopes to make a run for the AOY title this year in the Elite Series went down the drain last week in the second Elite tournament of the year when he finished well out of the money.

“Florida has never been good to me,” Hite said. “I had a decent finish on the Harris Chain of Lakes, 33^rd. I’ll take that finish any day of the week in Florida. Then last week on the St. Johns River I had a bad finish that eliminated my chances to have a shot at Angler of the Year.”

The goal now is to stay focused, he said, on making the Classic next year.

“Realizing I had a decent first tournament and the Classic is a goal I shoot for every year, I certainly plan to qualify for it this year. I just barely missed it this past year.”

There are two main ways for a pro angler to qualify for the Classic – through the Elite Series, based on points, and through the Opens, which is why Hite and many other anglers are fishing both series now.

Besides the opportunity to earn as much as $192, 500 by winning an Open tournament, the Pro Division winner of each Open tournament also gets a berth in the 2012 Bassmaster Classic.

With that goal in mind, Hite plans to pick a different section of the lake to scout on Tuesday and then he will spend the half-day of practice Wednesday zeroing in on his plan for fishing the tournament.

“I will probably try to target largemouths, but from what I’ve seen so far I don’t know if you would be able to catch a limit of those. So, I probably will target a little bit of both to make sure I get five fish each day. It would be really good to get a quality largemouth to help with the weight.”

Hite said the bass are up in pre-spawn and likely will be shallow by tournament time.

“I think they will be caught on shallow crankbaits, jigs, Shakey Head Worms, all those sorts of things. But it all depends on the weather over the next few days as to how far along these fish will progress. We had some good 80-degree weather this past weekend, but things cooled off Saturday night and it’s supposed to be fairly cool the next few days.”

If the water temperature holds and even edges up slightly, it could make for a really good tournament, Hite said.

“Lake Norman is not known for big stringers, but it should fish about as well as it can this week.”

 

Bassmaster Southern Open

March 24-26, 2011

Lake Norman

Blythe Landing

www.bassmaster.com