Courtesy of Vance McCullough

Photos courtesy of Becky Williams

 

“Saturday was an absolute blur!” said Will Scaife. “When God does something, He makes sure there is no doubt or question, and He was definitely with us! Winning the Wolfson Bass Tournament is a life-long dream that so many can relate to, and you honestly don’t know if it will ever happen. To bust 30lbs for the first time and do it in the biggest tournament in the southeast is an indescribable feeling.”

“God has blessed us with a special opportunity to catch these fish,” said Branden Waters. “It was a special opportunity to get to fish the Wolfson together. 48 hours ago, I wasn’t even sure I was going to fish. We fished extremely clean and had a really fun day fishing.”

Scaife and Waters topped a field of 395 boats to win the 32^nd Woldson Children’s Hospital Bass Tournament out of Palatka, Fla. and collect the top prize of $10,000.

Their total weight was 30.66 pounds (5-fish limit) and included a kicker that weighed 8.01.

“We should have lost two fish in the net nut didn’t,” noted Scaife. “Just blessed.”

Sight-fishing was the main game for Scaife and Waters but a locally made, semi-secret topwater lure provided two key catches. “Out of the five we weighed,” said Scaife, “a couple of them came on topwater, a Devil’s Horse, well, actually the Heaberlin horse, as we call it, made a local guy, Bryan Heaberlin.” “It’s modified to work,” said Waters of the special plug.

The duo used Lucky Strike G4 tubes to pull the rest of their weight off of beds in Lake George where bass are still spawning under record cool temperatures that included overnight lows in the 50’s for at least 3 nights prior to Saturday’s tournament. “We were tickled that we had to put the hoodies on this morning,” said Scaife. Waters said, “I told him if it stayed cool, we were going to catch them.”

Runners-up Kevin Duncan and Austin Duncan weighed-in 23.05 pounds.

Phillip Turwitt and Jason Jackson placed 3^rd with 21.74, followed closely by Brandon Wilkes and Jimmy Cornn with 21.63.

Justin Woods and Clayton Woods rounded out the Top 5 with 20.97 pounds.

Big bass honors went to James Sojka and Andrew Pulliam with a 9.59-pound beauty that ate a Strike King Red Eye Shad in Rodman Reservoir.

Organizers and anglers generated well over $400,000 for the hospital at this year’s event.