Rains Make The Alabama River Muddy For B.a.s.s. Southern Open
B.A.S.S. pro Todd Auten of Lake Wylie, S.C., spent the first half of this week “feeling my way around” the Alabama River out of Cooter’s Pond in preparation for the second Bassmaster Southern Open which starts Thursday.
“There are not a whole lot of maps available for this place so I am basically eliminating water and trying to find some areas that I think will hold enough fish to last a couple of days,” Auten said. “You run into the little coves and there are a lot of stumps so I am kind of feeling my way around.”
Auten said the water is a lot dirtier than usual and the river has more color than he has seen there before.
“Some of the backwater is really muddy. I usually like that, but the fish have not been biting real good in it,” he said.
“I think there are some largemouths spawning, but most are post-spawn as far as I can tell. For the spotted bass I don’t know yet. You can’t see the bottom anywhere, but I do get a lot of short strikes – like maybe the fish is on the bed.”
Auten said crowding can add to the problems during the tournament.
“I don’t know how many boats we will have, but it will probably be about 200, and this place gets pretty crowded pretty quick. The bad thing is you can be in an area and it can be the right area, but so many people may have been through there and beat it up ahead of you.”
The main thing will be to keep an open mind and take advantage of opportunities if they appear, he said.
“If you get a couple of bites in an area there probably are a few more fish in there,” he noted. “They’ve had a lot of rain and the water is muddied up so the fish are not biting real good, but there is a lot of current, though, so they ought to be cranked up somewhere. Maybe I’ve just been fishing in the wrong place.”
His two previous trips to the Alabama River have been at different times of the year, so those experiences won’t provide much help for a post-spawn springtime tournament. He finished 46th in the 2005 Open Championship in early December 2005, but the year before he finished 4th in the Bassmaster Elite 50 on the Alabama River.
Auten placed third in the first Southern Open on Lake Kissimmee in mid-January. If he maintains his ranking through the three-tournament Southern Open season he would qualify to move back up to the B.A.S.S. Elite Series. A win in the Alabama River or in the series final at Lake Seminole in October would earn him a ticket to the 2016 Bassmaster Classic.
Bassmaster Southern Open
Apr 16-18, 2015
Alabama River
Cooters Pond
