BY DAVE LINK
Shane Starnes and Eli Sims needed a lot to go their way if they were to win their first bass fishing tournament last Saturday (Feb. 21) on Chickamauga Lake.
And it all came together for the sophomore angling duo from the Kingston High School Fishing Team.
They had a top-notch boat captain, several big bites and a flash of good fortune, landing a five-fish limit weighing 26.81 pounds and winning the East Tennessee Trail event of the Tennessee Bass Nation Series. Their bag included an 8.02-pound largemouth.
For starters, Starnes and Sims gave credit to their guest boat captain Seth Davis, a Dayton native and 10-year veteran of the Major League Fishing (Toyota) Tour.
“From being completely honest,” Starnes said, “it wouldn’t have gone down like that if we hadn’t had Seth Davis in the boat with us.”
Their victory was by a slim margin – about 1 pound.
Canyon Padgett and Levi Tomlinson of Temple Academy finished second with a five-bass bag weighing 25.88 pounds, including a 7.59-pounder.
Third place was Kingston’s Camdyn Cranfill and Turner Tharpe (five bass, 22.82 pounds, 8.35-pounder), ahead of fourth place Ayden Smith and Jake Anderson of Bledsoe County (five bass, 22.74 pounds, 7.26-pounder), and fifth place Katie Tanksley and Noah Droke of Walker Valley (five bass, 22.31 pounds, 6.43-pounder).
Cranfill and Tharpe’s big bass won Big Fish of the tournament. Kingston’s Jackson Turpin and Alex Spakes finished 17th (five bass, 16.24 pounds), helping the Yellow Jackets win top team (school) for the tournament.
Kingston’s Kaden Brasel 5.51-pounder Big Fish of the juniors’ division. He finished fifth overall among juniors.
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ASSIST GOES TO DAVIS
Starnes attends New Life Church in Harriman. That’s where he and his family got to know Davis.
Alvin Starnes, Shane’s father, captains the boat of Starnes and Sims for most bass fishing tournaments.
Sims said having Davis as captain made for a special day on the lake.
“He was a great dude,” Sims said. “He knew a lot. We learned a lot from him. We really couldn’t have done it without him.”
Sims and Starnes became friends on the baseball field years ago, and they’re fishing together on the bass circuit for a second season.
Last Saturday was their first time in the hunt for a first-place check.
They practiced on Chickamauga with Davis on the Sunday before the tournament. “We didn’t catch a thing, honestly,” Shane Starnes said.
They practiced again with Alvin Starnes the day before the tournament. “I think we only had about 13 pounds,” Shane said. “It was a decent day for us.”
It got better the next day, starting on an offshore spot during their first stop of the day.
Sims caught a 3-pound smallmouth.
“We couldn’t get any others to bite, so we left and let ’em set back up,” Starnes said. “We went and hit a shallow flat, throwing (Rat-L-Traps), and I caught that first 7-pounder doing that and we hit that deep hole again.”
Once there, it was Sims’ turn again.
They were using a live scope in deep water when Sims’ Rapala minnow got a bite.
“Something hits my line,” Sims said, “and it starts peeling (drag). It was like a 5-pound, 1 ounce smallmouth. That did pretty good for us as well.”
LANDING THE 8-POUNDER
Sims and Starnes had a four-bass bag weighing about 18 pounds in the early afternoon with a few hours left to fish.
They needed another big bass to fill their limit and were fishing shallow water, where some grass was floating on top of the water.
Starnes got the bite they needed on his rattle trap.
“I kept running that trap through the grass patches,” he said, “and whenever that fish hit it, I kind of thought it was a grass patch, but I was like, ‘You never know,’ so I set the hook anyway. And it was just dead weight. I was like, ‘I might be hung.’ I kind of reeled down and went to pull again and I felt a couple of head shakes, and I told Eli, ‘Get the net, it’s a big one.’”
Sims got the net and watched the Starnes vs. bass matchup.
“I was fighting it,” Starnes said, “and it was trying to run up under the boat and get tangled up in the power poles and everything. I was bringing that fish up, and it got up to the top, and Eli just got the net under it.
“That fish jumped, actually broke one of the treble hooks, and Eli caught it in the net right beside the boat. That bass broke the hook. It only had one of the hooks of that treble hook in its mouth, and it broke one of them.”
It also broke Starnes’ line – sending the lure back toward the boat – but Sims was able to net the 8-plus pounder anyway.
“That thing jumped and the rattle trap flies out and hits my hat and gets stuck,” Sims said. “I was able to scoop the net and catch it in the net at the last second. We were lucky to get that fish.”
It made Starnes and Sims the focus of weigh-ins a few hours later.
“Our whole team pretty much knew we had a big bag, and they were swarming us on the dock,” Starnes said. “I think the lead was 21 (pounds) and some change. We were right behind our senior team, Camdyn Cranfill and Turner Tharpe.
“They were like, ‘How’d you do?’ We told them 25 (pounds). On our scale, it said we had 25 and a half pounds, and it ended up 26.81 on the tournament scales. It kind of blew me away, honestly.”