7 Attachment(s)
Clark's Hill/SCCA Classic Report 3/20 and 3/21
What a great weekend of fishing I had at the Hill. For starters, the weather could not have cooperated better for two days of fishing. The temperatures were great and the wind laid low both days.
First off, If any of you folks are looking to get into competitive crappie fishing around the state you've got to check out South Carolina Crappie Association. It's a great group of guys and gals that do a wonderful job promoting the sport of crappie fishing! Check out the Facebook page or PM me if you want any info on upcoming events. We had the Classic for SCCA this past weekend at the Hill and I started looking at maps early in the week. Before this weekend I had only been to Clark's Hill one time and it was years ago. Me and my tournament partner decided to take two boats and cover as much water as we could in Friday's practice round. I recruited my brother-in-law Friday to make the trip with me. We left the house well before daybreak and with all the recent reports of success from the Hill I believe we both felt like a kid the night before Christmas! We were greeted by a beautiful morning when we reached our first stop. Lines hit the water shortly before 8:00 AM. The game plan I had devised was to focus on shallow water and hopefully find some big females getting ready to do their thing. It didn't take long before the action had started. On our first pass we picked up somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 fish with one going close to 2 lbs. As bad as I hated to leave, I knew we needed to move on to spot #2.
Spot #2 greeted us about the same way. We dropped lines in two different areas and caught fish at both places. At the second area I lost a monster at the surface and also landed my new PB of 2 lb 10 oz. I was beside myself to say the least. We stayed in the area a little while longer and caught a 1.5 lb fish and lost another seemingly good fish that we never laid eyes on. We pulled our lines at that point and headed on to stop #3.
It was mid-afternoon when we reached our third, and final, stop of the day. We made a short run from the landing to an area that looked promising and started baiting up again. By this time, the bite had slowed down a great deal, but we still managed to catch a couple for the livewell that were all over the pound mark. We both decided that we had seen enough for the day and started making our way back to the landing when a dock caught my eye. There was just no way I could resist breaking out the jig pole for some dock shooting just to satisfy my curiosity. A couple shots later and I felt the "thump"! It was almost too good to be true. After boating the fish, and four others after it, I sat back and thought about the events of the day; we had caught crappie at every single place we tried and most of them were nice fish in my book! The fishing was red hot and at the close of practice I could barely wait for Saturday! We were off the water by 5:00 PM and headed towards the house.
We weighed our top 7 for the day and had 12.5 lbs to show for our efforts. I felt good about the upcoming day, but knew we'd need more than that if we wanted to win.
David with a 2 lber
Attachment 196280
The big fish of the day
Attachment 196283
Top 8 for the day
Attachment 196281
Big girl on the scales
Attachment 196282
Saturday morning came before I knew it and me and my partner were headed back down the road. We were prepared to tightline and long-line troll if the day dictated that's what we needed to do. At the landing, a heavy fog had set in over the lake and it was slow travels to our first stop of the day. We had lines in the water about 7:15 AM and things started out slow for us. We fished for about an hour and only boated a few small fish when we got our first meaningful strike of the day. We made a pass up into about 8 FOW when two rods went down. To be honest, I looked at the depth finder and figured we were hung on the bottom, but we both went to reaching. The first fish that came aboard was a healthy 1.80 and the second wound up being 2nd BF of the tourney, a 2.74. It also became my NEW PB!!! Back to back days of catching giants had me fired up. We continued to grind it out and got a bite here and there and at about 11:30 we put two more fish over the 2 lb mark in the boat within 5 minutes. At that point, we knew we couldn't leave. We hammered at them the rest of the day and never caught any more giants, but did manage a couple upgrades here and there. I was certain that we had bested my previous days 7-fish weight, but until we started weighing fish to decide which to take the scales we had no idea we had eclipsed the 14 lb mark. Our 7-fish creel tipped the scales at 14.7 lbs, my best sack ever with my best fish ever! I couldn't have imagined a better two days of fishing. Each day we caught our limits worth of fish and each day numerous quality fish came in the boat. It was the best of both worlds!
All the fish were caught tighlining in 5-15 FOW and most fish were caught 5-8 foot down. Colors changed throughout the day both trips, but red/yellow, black/chart, blue/white, and blue/black were probably the best color combinations as a whole. We tried numerous baits both days and very few baits hit the water without catching a fish or two. RootyTootys stood their ground in the spread of offerings too with numerous fish being caught on them!:biggrin All in all it was great weekend of fishing and the fish were biting. As with anyone who fishes a lot, I often experience trips where fish don't seem to be feeding so it's very rewarding when you hit them just right! The only problem I've found with this weekend is that it's been very difficult to concentrate at work....I just keep wishin' I was fishin'!!!!!!!
P.S. Both the big fish I caught this weekend are going on the wall. The 2.29 that I caught on Greenwood in January has been taken out of the freezer, thawed, and given to my wife's grandparents for some baking!
My partner sporting one of the 2.40s on Saturday
Attachment 196288
Saturday's Top 7
Attachment 196289
Friday's big fish in my right hand and Saturday's in my left
Attachment 196290
