I can catch ‘em shallow, I can catch ‘em deep,
Open water or the back of a creek,
The wind, the rain, to me it’s all the same,
I make a living playing this game,
I thank the Lord above every time I can,
I get to be a fisherman.

The 2015 Bassmaster Classic on Lake Hartwell opened with Casey Ashley singing the National Anthem. It ended last Sunday with the pro angler – and accomplished singer, songwriter and musician – hoisting the winner’s trophy and being serenaded by the song he recorded a few years ago about being a professional angler.

As the B.A.S.S. sound system blared Ashley’s song, Fisherman, the Elite Series pro from just down the road in Donalds, S.C., realized the dream he had been having for the past seven years had come true. Ashley finished 17^th in the 2008 Classic on Lake Hartwell, his first time in the championship, and he has been itching to get another shot on his home lake ever since.

He did not disappoint himself, his legion of fans from around Donalds or B.A.S.S. fans everywhere. But the road to victory was not an easy one, he will be the first to admit. Things did not go exactly how he had scripted the three days of competition.

In the pre-practice period three weeks before the Classic, Ashley found the fishing outstanding.

“That Friday I had probably 30 bites or more, not catching, just bites, and they were where I wanted them. Then it started getting cold and on Saturday the bite fell off a little and the next day it fell off a little more.”

Then the lake went off-limits until the Wednesday of Classic Week when the anglers were allowed on the water for a final check before the actual competition.

“It did not do anybody any good to go fishing that day,” Ashley said. “That was right after a cold front came through. It was cold – the high was 43 degrees – and the wind was blowing 20 to 30 miles per hour. I did not fish any of the stuff I would fish in the tournament, but I fished stuff I should have got bit on, but I only had four bites all day.”
If he thought it was cold that day, it felt even colder when the Classic began. So cold, in fact, that B.A.S.S. delayed the first day launch for an hour and a half as a safety precaution.

“I wanted the tournament to be cold – cold and tough – but I did not want it to be that cold,” he said. “That day on the water was the coldest I ever fished.”

The way Ashley had it figured he would go out each morning and catch an early limit on a Blade Runner type lure his father had made, then move to the docks and brushpiles with a jig and upgrade his limit with bigger fish. But the jig bite never materialized.

Ashley started out on Friday in 6^th place with a limit that weighed 15 pounds, 3 ounces. On Saturday he moved up to 5^th place with another limit at 14 pounds, 11 ounces.

At that point, he said, he realized his planned strategy was not working out. To win he knew he was going to have to abandon the jig and throw the Blade Runner all day long. The first couple of hours would be critical because after that the bite would slow down.

“If I had to order up a day to go fishing on Lake Hartwell that Sunday was it,” Ashley said. “It was a really dark, gloomy nasty day, the kind of day when the fish will bite.”

Before the tournament his dad gave him a bag full of the hand-crafted Blade Runner-type lures and Ashley thew the lures all day long on Sunday in pockets, anything with a creek channel in it.

“That’s what those fish need this time of year. They run up the creeks where the freshwater is coming in, where the oxygen is best,” he said.

Usually the fish will be more to the backs of the creeks, holding in 25 feet of water at the deepest point, but that day they were further out, he said.

“The cold front had pushed them out and all the fish I caught came from 35 to 40 feet of water. It was so deep I had to fish it really slow and it was hard to keep it down in the strike zone. It was painful – but it’s easier to fish that slow when you are getting bites.”

On the final day of the Classic Ashley came to the scales with the second heaviest limit of the tournament at 20 pounds, 3 ounces, to give him 50 pounds, 1 ounce for the win – more than 3 pounds ahead of Bobby Lane in second place.

Ashley noted that he is one of the few anglers who has won a Classic on his home waters, despite all of the distractions and potential pitfalls that come with the scenario.

“I tell everybody the hometown advantage can be really good or it can really hurt you. There is no in-between,” Ashley said. “But in this tournament, with the cold front making the fish stop biting and with me knowing the lake so well, I knew the areas the fish would be in as the tournament progressed and the lake got more stable. I knew where they lived.”