Camdyn Cranfill (left) and Turner Tharpe.
BY DAVE LINK
Camdyn Cranfill’s current hot streak in high school bass fishing has little to do with luck.
It’s mostly about time and effort.
Cranfill, a home-schooled senior on the Kingston High School Fishing Team, has victories the past two weekends on the Tennessee BASS Nation high school circuit – plus a top-level finish in another tournament Sunday (Oct. 5).
“I travel around a bunch, like Kentucky Lake,” Cranfill said. “I’m very familiar with it. I’m very familiar with Chickamauga, very familiar with Watts Bar. I have a very good range of all these lakes and just keeping up with them, talking to locals, just keeping up with things and spending time out there by myself kind of figuring out something different than anybody else is doing.”
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Two weekends ago, Cranfill and co-angler Turner Tharpe – also a home-schooled senior on Kingston Fishing – won the first Sept. 27 event on the TBN’s East Division circuit (previously the Southeast Division) on Watts Bar Lake.
Last weekend, while Tharpe was winning the two-day Rhea Alliance Scholarship Bass Tournament (Oct. 4-5), Cranfill won the Oct. 4 first event on the TBN’s West Division circuit on Kentucky Lake.
After winning there, Cranfill returned to Watts Bar for the second day (Oct. 5) of the Rhea Alliance and posted a third-place finish in the co-angler division while fishing with Tharpe, who won a $1,000 college scholarship as the overall winner.
“We had a great weekend, won a little bit of money, and got some hardware,” Cranfill said. “It was a good weekend.”
Really, two good weekends.
Tharpe and Cranfill won the Sept. 27 TBN event on Watts Bar lake with a five-fish total weighing 16.03 pounds, including a 3.79-pound largemouth caught by Tharpe.
Tharpe’s father, Brent Tharpe, was their boat captain.
“That was definitely a good day,” Cranfill said.
Rex Reagan and Max Moody of Pickett County High School Bass were second (15.73 pounds, 3.02-pounder), ahead of third-place Brody Teller and Alex Roberts of Sumner County High (15.42 pounds, 3.82-pounder) and fourth-place Abram Sledge and Bryson Sutton of Loudon High (15.28 pounds, 4.01-pounder).
Last weekend, Tharpe and Cranfill decided to split forces and cover more water. Tharpe returned to Watts Bar for the first day of the Rhea Alliance Tournament, while Cranfill headed toward middle Tennessee for the TBN on Kentucky Lake.
“He wanted to fish that (Rhea Alliance) and I wanted to fish the other one,” Cranfill said. “We asked the tournament director (at Tennessee BASS Nation) if we could split up and he said yeah. We made more money in the long run.”
Tharpe started toward his $1,000 scholarship Oct. 4 by returning to weigh-ins with the three-bass limit (for one day) weighing more than 10 pounds, which included a 4.19-pounder he caught just before weigh-ins.
“I caught it on a jig out of a brush pile,” Tharpe said. “It was about 6 minutes before we went into weigh-in. That one helped me out a lot.”
At the same time, Cranfill was winning the TBN’s West Division event on Kentucky Lake by himself.
However, Cranfill’s boat captain was Hayden Barnett, his former co-angler at Kingston; Barnett now is a freshman fishing for the Carson Newman Eagle Anglers.
“Obviously, he can’t fish or nothing (as boat captain), but we had a great time,” Cranfill said. “We cut up and talked. We hadn’t seen each other in probably a month or whatever, so we talked about all kinds of things. He just got to college, so he’s got all kinds of stories about all kinds of things.”
Barnett saw Cranfill reel in the bass early on Oct. 4 morning. He caught the 3.87-pounder first thing on a Burtek Wrangler imitation shad.
“I think I caught three or four that morning out there in that one little spot that I had found last time we were over there,” Cranfill said, “earlier in the fall a couple of weeks ago for the state tournament, we had 16.05 and finished third, and we caught everything off that spot there.
“I started there again and caught three or four, caught that smallmouth right there on that Wrangler, then we ran to another area and sat down there and just basically kind of lived in that area for probably four or five hours and fished around and didn’t get many bites.”
Cranfill caught a largemouth just before weigh-ins he estimated at 4 pounds, but he never weighed it. He caught it on a Burtek worm.
“We never weighed it ’cause it was towards the end and we didn’t have much time, so we just threw it in the box and culled that other one,” Cranfill said.
The cull probably won the tournament for Cranfill.
His five-bass limit weighed 17.65 pounds, including the 3.87-pounder from early morning and the 4-pounder at the end.
Second place was Logan Tolbert and Corbin Bornstein of Lipscomb Academy (16.35 pounds, 4.04-pounder), ahead of third-place Tucker Surrat and Ryan Moore of Adamsville High (15.10 pounds, 5.02-pounder) and fourth-place Kerry Johnson and Mavrick Grover of Waverly Central High (12.78 pounds, 3.81-pounder).
After weigh-ins, Cranfill and Barnett returned from middle Tennessee, and Cranfill was up early Sunday morning (Oct. 5) on Lake Chickamauga for the Rhea Alliance with Tharpe.
Cranfill finished that Sunday with three bass weighing about 8 pounds.
“I had the biggest bag on the co-angler side that day,” Cranfill said.
And Tharpe was the overall winner with the two-day, six-bass limit weighing more than 18 pounds.
“It was my fourth or fifth time winning it (the Rhea Alliance),” Tharpe said.
Tharpe and Cranfill hope to continue their streak this weekend in the Bill Dance Giant Bass Open on Chickamauga.
“We’re going to jump in that and see if we can win some money,” Cranfill said, “and then we’ve got (at TBN event) the next weekend (Oct. 17-18) on Old Hickory near Nashville.”