By Jason Duran
The fourth stop of the Alabama Bass Trail South Division was held on Logan Martin Lake. The lake host was the city of Lincoln that developed a premier tournament facility in Lincoln’s Landing. With over 350 parking spaces for trailers and trucks, a very spacious multilane boat ramp, and dock space, Lincoln’s Landing provides ample space for the 225 ABT teams. Logan Martin Lake is also a great lake for teams to catch largemouth and spotted bass. The spotted bass population is in abundance and provides anglers of all ages a fun opportunity to catch fish. Teams competed for the top prize of $10,000 and Angler of the Year points.
Foster Bradley and Nick Harris finished in first place. “After practice, we started this morning down the lake using top water baits. Based on practice, we felt this area was going to be productive for us, but we only caught around 7-pounds fishing down lake. We knew the schedule said they were going to start pulling water around 8 am, so we decided to make a move and head back up the lake to fish. As we started back up, we noticed the current was flowing which helped position the fish in areas where we needed them to be. The retrieve for us was the key. We targeted very shallow grass areas using a Davis Baits Swim jig in a couple different colors including black and blue and white and brim colors. We paired the jig with a Hammer 7-foot heavy rod with 65-pound braid. We have a lot of confidence in that bait, and when we caught a couple of fish using it today, it helped our confidence to keep using it and clued us in more on what we needed to keep doing. We caught about 20 fish today with a mixture of spotted bass and largemouth. This afternoon we culled out all the spotted bass and upgraded them with largemouth. We felt like we needed around 17-18 pounds to win this event, and at the end of our day, thought we were still one bite away. We had a 2-pound fish and spent the last hour and a half trying to cull out with no success.” When the scales closed, 16.66 pounds was enough for first place and $10,000.
The team of Mark McCaig and Tim Hurts finished in second place with 15.86 pounds and a big fish of a 5.85 largemouth. The team has fished Logan Martin Lake for many years. Tim lives on the lake and knows it very well. The key for Mark and Tim was to “fish for largemouth all day long. There are places on this lake you can go and catch spotted bass all day in the 2.5-3- pound range, but you cannot waste time doing that if you want to win tournaments. We knew if we focused on largemouth, we would not get as many bites. However, the bites we did get would be the ones needed to win. We caught the big one, but we needed one more to cull out our small one that was around 2 pounds. Looking back at tournaments here, the teams winning always have big, largemouth to win. We decided that was what we needed to do, so we focused on that all day. We fished four or five big areas targeting fish 5-6 feet or less. The fish are done spawning here, so we tried to fish areas where the fish were coming through headed out towards the ledge. The baits that were productive for us were Shakey Head and Crankbaits. The big fish came one a green pumpkin Senko. With this win, they collected a $5,000 payday plus a $2,500 Phoenix Boats payday bonus, and a $500 Big Fish Bonus.
The third-place team of Ethan King and Fletcher Phillips caught 15.36 pounds. “In practice, we looked around for a shad spawn and found an area to start on tournament day. We were boat 126 and ran to a spot we found in practice about 3 or 4 miles in the back of a creek where we found the shad spawn. When we got there this morning, the shad spawn was still going on and no other boats were on the spot. We were hoping this area would be productive for us and provide a good largemouth. The shad spawn lasted about an hour.” They fished this area “swimming a Dirty Jigs swim jig in white and Jackall Kaera Frog. After the shad spawn, we moved out to fish docks and river ledges fishing a War Eagle ½ oz ball head jig and Rapala DT 6 and 10 Crank Bait in Disco Shad. We caught about 20 fish, about 11 pounds, on the shad spawn and 30-40 fish came the rest of the day on docks and river ledge” to help cull up to the third-place weight of 15.36 pounds. Prior to this event, they were in 15th place in AOY standings and moved into 5th place with a good opportunity to make the AOY top 9 to qualify for the BASS Team Championship. With their third-place finish they earned a $4,000 payday.
The top five standings are below for a complete list of standings please visit:
With only one event left here are the current AOY Standings for the South Division:
PLACE ANGLERS POINTS
1 Chris Rutland/Coby Carden 834
2 Jacob George/Ryan Sweeney 807
3 Rob Lee/Steve Winslett 805
4 Mike Freeman/Zac Freeman 796
5 Ethan King/Fletcher Phillips 793
6 Lanier Burton/Kelly Jaye 791
7 Justin Mott/Randal Hamilton 787
8 Josh Chapple/Paul Davis 784
9 CJ Knight/Anthony Goggins 771
10 Robert Medas /Carlton Alford 769
11 Mark Mccaig/Tim Hurst 764
12 Brian Adamson/Ryan Lloyd 763
Download and listen to the ABT Podcast on your favorite Podcast app by searching for “Alabama Bass Trail Podcast.” The Podcast is released each week on Tuesday.
For Live coverage from this event and others visit https://www.youtube.com/@alabamabasstrailtv
The sponsors of the 2023 Alabama Bass Trail include: Phoenix Boats, Academy Sports, Alabama Power, America’s First Federal Credit Union, American Trailer Rental Group, BAJIO, Big Bite Baits, Bill Penney Automotive, Black Rifle Coffee Company, Anheuser – Bush, Inc., E3 Sports Apparel, Fish Neely Henry Lake.com, Garmin, Jack’s, Lew’s, Mtn Dew, Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association, Power-Pole, Strike King, Sweet Home Alabama, T-H Marine, Yamaha, YETI Coolers.
