Palmetto Bass Club--July 19 Clarks Hill Lake

 

Brad and I finally got our first tournament win of the season today on Clarks Hill.

Our first stop of the morning was the shoal straight across the lake from Hawe Creek. A five to ten mile per hour breeze was blowing straight onto the shoal and we thought it was worth a few cast. On my fifth or sixth cast of the morning I hooked up with our first keeper of the morning, weighing a little more than a pound, on a clear super spook.

We fished around the shoal with no luck and jumped across to the adjacent point were I hooked a three pounder that jumped at the boat and threw the lure.

We hit several more points down to Wells Creek catching only one more small keeper and made a move to Fishing Village.

We started on the first wind blown point on the right side of the creek were Brad caught a nice two and a half pounder on a clear colored Super Spook, Jr. We worked the area around this point for twenty minutes or so with no success and made the decision to turn the trolling motor up on high and cover the windy points moving toward the back of the creek.

Soon afterwards Brad had filled our limit picking up a couple of one pound fish off the isolated clumps of grass in three to six feet of water on his spook.

I had been throwing the big Super Spook all morning, it was ten thirty by now, and the big heavy lure was not getting the attention Brad's Jr. spook was, so I switched to a Clear Gunfish and immediately hooked a one and a half pounder.

One of the coves we came to was covered in brushpiles and while we had not even gotten a bite around any wood cover, it looked to good to pass up. We should have passed it up but just before we rounded the point at the mouth of that cove our biggest fish of the day, weighing approximately four and a half pounds, exploded on Brad's spook. After this fish went in the livewell anything but windy points was off of our list of places to fish.

We hit every windblown point to the back of the creek and caught ten to fifteen more bass and by now the smallest fish we had was a pound and a quarter and the time was closing in on noon. We made the decision to run up the SC Little River.

We stopped at the Pump House and had a fish come up once but didn't take the bait.

We then moved to the mouth of Buffalo Creek and Little River. The water had a little more color in it and I noticed that as I was working the Gunfish back in, it was followed by numerous baitfish. As I was pointing that fact out to Brad we heard a fish bust the top of the water. I looked over to where Brad had cast and saw he had just set the hook on our second biggest fish of the day weighing just under four pounds. We gladly tossed back that one and a quarter pound bass.

Two cast later I put a two and three quarter pound fish in the livewell.

After fishing around the point we moved to a rock pile just off the River run where I caught a two pounder and it was now pushing one o'clock and we decided not to take any chances with dead batteries,(the trolling motor batteries were very weak and the aerators running off the starting battery had been running all day)or anything crazy like that and went to put the boat on the trailer.

Just before getting to Hawe Creek we stopped on the Rocky Points at the mouth of Little River where I put another two pounder in the livewell.

That gave us the fourteen and a half pounds we put on the scale.(My culling scale did have us with a little more weight but 14 1/2 was our official weight.)