Turner Tharpe (left) and Camdyn Cranfill of the Kingston Fishing Team after winning March 29 on Dale Hollow Lake.
BY DAVE LINK
Some days, everything seems to go right for a bass fisherman.
Turner Tharpe and Camdyn Cranfill of the Kingston Fishing Team had one of those during Day 1 of the Tennessee Bass Nation’s State Trail event on Dale Hollow Lake two weekends ago.
Cranfill and Tharpe landed five largemouth weighing 24.02 pounds on March 28 – then clinched another TBN title with 19.04 pounds on Day 2. It’s their fifth tournament win of the school year.
“It was pretty awesome for both of us,” Tharpe said of their Day 1 at Dale Hollow.
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Cranfill was coming off a March 21 victory on Kentucky Lake, when he fished solo and won the TBN’s stop on the West Division Trail. Although Cranfill fished alone, Cranfill and Tharpe were credited with the co-anglers’ win – like they were in October when Cranfill won the first West Division trail event fishing solo on Kentucky Lake.
Tharpe, meanwhile, was in another tournament March 21 while Cranfill and his dad/boat captain, Hagen Cranfill, were winning at Kentucky Lake.
And unlike March 28 on Dale Hollow, the previous Saturday didn’t go smoothly for the Cranfills. Engine troubles caused slower-than-usual travel time and more gas burning, making a long boat ride even more arduous.
“We had to go to a marina,” Camdyn said, “sit there for 35, 45 minutes and put gas in the boat. And we’d already made an hour and 45-minute run, so it’s 11 o’clock (before) I’m making my first cast.”
Here’s how the two events unfolded:
BIG BAG, BIG WIN
Not only were Tharpe and Cranfill able to get a 24-plus pound bag on Day 1 at Dale Hollow; they didn’t take long to get it.
They had five big largemouth by lunchtime.
“We caught 20 pounds that morning in our first little spot,” Cranfill said. “We left there, and I think we culled one more time. We got to like 21, and we went back to that area later in the day just to kind of expand on the area to see how big it was.”
They estimated catching 25 or so keepers that day, mostly using jig-head minnow baits. All the bass were largemouth.
“We were really shocked just how early we actually caught ’em,” Tharpe said, “and how much weight we already had by like 11 o’clock. We were like, ‘Really, there isn’t much else we can do besides go look around for new stuff.’”
As expected, the bite wasn’t as good during Day 2.
They returned to the same area where they caught bass the first day and stayed there most of the day.
“It was definitely slower,” Cranfill said. “The bite was a lot tougher. There was a lot more boats running around, trying to see what was going on, and we stayed in that area all day and slowly picked them off and kind of scrounged up what we could in that area.”
Tharpe’s said lower weights were expected for Day 2, when their big bass weighed 4.22 pounds. They finished with a two-day total of 43.06 pounds.
“I definitely expected it to be tougher because it’s been warming up a lot here recently, and a lot of those fish have been pushing up shallow, getting ready to spawn,” Tharpe said.
“We were in a spawning area where they were out feeding on bait pre-spawning, and then they’d go to the bank and spawn because where we were fishing at is kind of like really flat banks around us. It was an easy place for them to pull up and spawn wherever they felt like it, and that second day, a lot of them had been pulling up, trying to spawn.”
Tharpe will fish for the Carson-Newman Eagle anglers next school year, while Cranfill hasn’t finalized his plans.
“We fish good together,” Cranfill said. “We both practice very hard. We definitely have a wide variety of different lakes we’ve been to and had history on.”
MORE DALE HOLLOW
Rex Reagan and Max Moody of Pickett County were second at Dale Hollow with a two-day total of 39.59 pounds. They had 21.08 pounds on Day 1, including a 5.25-pounder, and had 18.51 pounds on Day 2 with a 4.46-pounder.
Canyon Padgett and Levi Tomlinson of Temple Academy were third (37.40 pounds total), followed by fourth-place Van Yocum and Landan Smith of Stewarts Creek (36.40 pounds) and fifth-place Blake James and Sam Ballard of Sale Creek (36.38 pounds).
In the Juniors Division, Knox White and Grayson Sandford of Mt. Juliet Junior Bass were winners with a two-day total of 34.82 pounds. They had 19.67 pounds and a 4.20-pounder on Day 1.
William Logan and Gavin Bernhard of Pickett County were second (31.10 pounds), followed by third-place Lincoln Snyder and Lake Murphy of Soddy-Daisy (27.21 pounds) and fourth-place Colton Meriman and Ace Adams of Cannon County (26.43 pounds).
CRANFILL ON KY. LAKE
Cranfill got off to a rocky start March 21 on Kentucky Lake, and not just due to boat-engine trouble.
“My second cast, I jumped off a 5-pound smallmouth,” Cranfill said. “That kind of tore me up a little bit.”
After moving to another spot, Cranfill caught a 4-pound largemouth, missed a couple of bites on a jerk bait, and moved to another creek they expected to hold big largemouth.
“My first cast in there, I jumped off a 5-pounder,” Cranfill said. “Then I just went to catching them right there.”
Within about 2 hours, Cranfill had five keepers weighing more than 20 pounds, including a 5.02-pounder. His winning weight was 20.48 pounds and consisted of one smallmouth and four largemouth.
The victory puts Cranfill and Tharpe in contention for the TBN West Division points championship. The next stop on that trail is at Pickwick Lake later this month and the West Trail championship follows in May on Kentucky Lake.
Cranfill has done lots of fishing on Kentucky Lake – a necessity to be successful on it.
“It’s very hard to stay consistent on that lake just because of how big it is,” he said.