By Todd Ceisner
BassFan Editor


Record-breaking cold. Plummeting water temperatures. A massive lake smack full of bass in a state of flux as a result of the arctic blast.

Everything about this year’s Bassmaster Classic at Lake Hartwell seemed to line up against the anglers to make it one of the most grueling Classics in the 45-year history of the tournament. The pressure and intensity of the event is one thing when conditions are prime and the fish are chewing, but it may be a while before this particular Classic is surpassed in terms of the unique variables the competitors had to deal with on the water.

Ice on rod guides, ice on reels, frozen livewells, boats frozen to trailers – things bass anglers typically don’t have to deal with on a regular basis – were just some of the headache-inducers the Classic qualifiers encountered during the event. For Casey Ashley, a three-time Elite Series winner who also won an FLW Tour event at Hartwell early last March, he had to deal with all of that plus the burden and expectations that come with being the hometown favorite.

Ashley displayed an unflappable confidence all through the event and, in fact, believes the ever-changing weather conditions – temperatures ranged from a low of 10 on Friday to a high of 55 on Sunday – worked in his favor. When the stakes were at their peak on Sunday, Ashley had made-to-order conditions for his under-spin pattern in the form of clouds and off-and-on rain. The low-light conditions were prime for him to target fish hanging on a creek channel edge near Party Island.

“I knew the first day I had an area with a good many fish in it and they were the right size,” he said. “Did I think I could win out of that? No, but I knew I could go in there and get a solid limit to start with and then I’d have a chance to go run my deal with a jig fishing docks the rest of the day. After two days, that checked up very short so (Sunday) with it being so overcast and raining, that is the day you want to pick to throw that (under-spin). The weather played into my hands big time.”

He posted solid weights of 15-03 and 14-11, respectively, across the first two days and faced a deficit of less than two pounds to day-2 leader Takahiro Omori entering the final day. His 20-02 stringer Sunday was the biggest among the 25 finalists and gave him the biggest win of his career and he did it by focusing on two areas not far from the Green Pond Landing launch ramp. Even he was surprised the Classic was won basically off one spot.

“I would’ve never dreamed that there were that many fish there,” he said. “I actually found those fish in practice on a jigging spoon right out in that timber after that cold snap. They were out in 44 or 45 feet and I was fishing them vertically jigging. I’ve spent a lot of time in both of those places. I’ve just never caught that many like that.

“I pulled up there the first morning of the tournament and I love to throw that blade runner. It’s what I do. I’ll always start with that. It doesn’t matter where I’m at. I eased up over top of those fish and saw that they were suspended and moved out on the flat out of the trees and I went to work on ‘em. Pretty much everything I weighed came from there and I left them biting, thinking I could do better somewhere else. I’d have burned like three gallons of gas if I’d have started there all week and been better off.”

Just 6 months after fellow Palmetto Stater Anthony Gagliardi prevailed amid the pressure of having the Forrest Wood Cup at his home lake (Murray), Ashley followed suit with his fifth career tour victory in his backyard.

“As far as doing anything different, I played sports all through high school and I’ve always been a calm guy,” he said. “In the bottom of the ninth when we need a hit to score a run, I’m not going to say I was a great athlete, but I always seemed to shine through when the pressure’s on. I don’t get rattled all that easily. I can tell you with all the hype and everybody expecting me to win and wanting me to do good, I wanted to do good, too, but all that talk doesn’t catch fish. They’re not going to jump in my boat because I’m the hometown boy. I knew I had a job to do and that’s what I did.”

Here’s how he did it.

Practice

Ashley said prep work for this Classic started roughly seven years ago, after Alton Jones took the win at the 2008 Classic at Hartwell. Ashley was still getting his footing as a tour pro back then and finished 17th in that Classic.

“We had such a big turnout here in 2008 and I was pretty sure that sometime in my career the Classic would come back to Hartwell,” he said. “I started (practicing) then. This was the tournament I wanted back very bad. I was young then and didn’t know how to handle everything. It’s been a long time coming.

“Before Jan. 1, I got to spend a lot of time on the lake. I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve got good friends and they can dang sure catch ‘em here and they can probably catch them better than anybody who fished this tournament, even me. I’ve had the opportunity to fish with some great fishermen and they’ve taught me a lot about the lake.”

In December, prior to the off-limits period, he checked on areas during the week “when nobody else was here.”

“I was hoping the lake level would stay where it’s at,” he said. “The lake level changes every year. That’s why fishermen from around here are so versatile. We get a different lake every year. Certain areas are different depending on water level. Coming into this tournament, I’d have bet this trophy that it’d be won shallow, fishing docks with a jig.”

That played right into his wheelhouse as that’s one of the tactics he employed to win the FLW Tour event last year. It held up on the first day of the pre-tournament practice period – he had 30 bites on a jig that day – and his confidence soared.

With the jig/dock pattern seemingly locked in, he started searching for secondary plans. He used his electronics to scan some channel edges near the mouths of creeks where the bottom came off a flat and dropped to 40 feet.

“I’d already fished so many places and you waste so much time fishing so I just started idling places and if you can mark them here with your big motor running, there’s a lot of ‘em there because they don’t like that in this clear water,” he said.

Competition

> Day 1: 5, 15-03
> Day 2: 5, 14-11
> Day 3: 5, 20-03
> Total = 15, 50-01

When the start of day 1 was pushed back 90 minutes due to the cold, Ashley didn’t flinch. Other competitors winced, though, as they knew they wouldn’t be able to capitalize on the fish that were feeding on herring around sunrise.



BassFan
Photo: BassFan

Ashley lands a solid keeper on day 1 of the Classic.

“I’ve never fished in a tournament this cold like it was the first day,” he said. “Not having any experience, I didn’t really know any better. I did spray de-icer in all of my lids where they shut. The one thing I didn’t think about was my livewells and that little bit of water in the bottom was frozen solid. My livewells wouldn’t work the first morning of the tournament. I had to go out in the middle of the lake and do donuts backwards to get water to flow through there and thaw it out.”

Ashley immediately went to the area near Party Island and began fan-casting with a horsehead under-spin jig his father made with a Zoom Super Fluke Junior on it. He’d let it hit bottom and then slowly crawl it back to the boat.

“It’s small and compact,” he said. “The way I fish it was a lot different than how a lot of guys fished it. A lot of guys use it for suspended fish. They’ll throw it out and as soon as it hits the water, they start their retrieve. I do that, too, when the fish are up high, but I like to fish it on the bottom where a lot of guys would like to throw a jig over get over top of them and vertical fish them. I like to make long casts and work it painfully slow.

“The first day when it was so icy, I had to dip my rod in the water twice during each cast to keep the ice off. That’s how slow I had to fish it. The reason I do that is the water is so clear and when you get over top of those fish, even though they’re in 40 feet of water, you’re not going to catch many of them. They realize pretty quickly what’s happening and they scatter. If you can stay off of them, you’re apt to catch more.”

He didn’t catch a ton of fish, but he laid a good foundation with 15-03. He caught his limit there and then went looking for upgrades with his jig around docks, but that pattern faded with the sub-freezing temperatures that knocked water temperatures down 5 to 7 degrees since practice.

“I never had a bite doing what I did in the tournament in practice,” he said. “I checked a lot of that stuff. That’s just what that cold front did to the fish.”

On day 2, with a full day to fish, Ashley went right back to the channel edge and bagged 14-11 to move up to 5th place, just 1-13 behind Takahiro Omori.

Because the water was clear where he was, he said it was critical to not give the fish a clue that he was there.

“In the tournament, when I’d go into those places, I’d stop way before I’d get to the fish and go in on my trolling motor and cut the back (Lowrance) unit off,” he said. “I always keep my front graph on because at least that tells me – when you’re fishing so deep and I’m making long casts that tells me where the fish are positioned, whether they’re on the bottom or up high. That lets me know what I need to do with my bait. I always run my front unit.”

After seeing the forecast for the final day and knowing the cloud cover would allow him to work over those fish along the creek channel, he decided to scrap his plan to run docks later in the day in search of upgrades.

“We had a lot of sun in practice last weekend and it pushed those fish out in the timber,” he said. “Then we had that cold front and that little bit of wind we had, and they drifted back up on that flat.”

The 3-pound caliber fish he was catching the first 2 days suddenly became 4-pounders and he culled throughout the day Sunday to get to 20 pounds, and by 7:30 Sunday night, he was the newest member of the Classic champions club.

“When I loaded my boat Sunday (at the ramp) and it was over and it was out of my hands, I was a nervous wreck,” he said. “I knew I had to catch a big bag, and the weather was textbook for me. It all came together, and I could just see it getting closer and closer and closer.”

He became just the third angler to win the Classic in his home state.

Winning Gear Notes

> Under-spin gear: 7’ medium-action Quantum Smoke PT Inshore casting rod, Quantum Tour Mg (6.3:1 gear ratio) and Quantum Exo (5.3:1 gear ratio) casting reels, 10-pound Hi-Seas fluorocarbon line, 3/8-oz. homemade under-spin horsehead jig (white), Zoom Super Fluke Junior (white pearl).

> About the jighead his dad built for him, Ashley said, “It’s the silliest, simplest-looking thing you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s a pony head and we use a Sampo swivel and use powder paint on the head along with a 4/0 Mustad hook with a size 3.5 willow blade. The swivel is the key to that bait and the Super Fluke Junior. It doesn’t matter how slow I turn my reel. I could lift it off the bottom and ease it back and the blade will keep turning. That’s the key.”

> He was also asked if he and his dad plan to capitalize on his Classic win by ramping up production of the homemade jig. He says it's unlikely.

“There may be a signature series horsehead spin, but it will not be me and my dad making them, I can promise you that now,” he said with a chuckle. “He doesn’t have the time or the want-to to do that. That’s a big deal around here. There are a lot of people who hand-make them, but there might be a signature series. I’ve got some ideas, but I’m a simple kind of guy. To me, less is more.”

The Bottom Line

> Main factor in his success – "Having knowledge and history on the lake. Before the tournament ever starts, the hometown advantage can either help you or it can really hurt you. It really helped this time. I’ve been very fortunate that both of the big tournaments on Hartwell it’s really helped me. The reason it helped me so much this time is I know the lake and know the areas the fish are supposed to be in this time of year. One place where I caught two key keepers, I’d checked it twice in practice and (Sunday) was the first time I went back to it. I know they live there and I know if you get bit it’s going to be a good one. I’m sure a lot of guys checked it in practice and didn’t go back, but they don’t know the history so they wrote it off.”

> Performance edge – "There were several things I relied upon – my Simms fishing gear for keeping me warm and dry; my Triton boat and Mercury motor for giving me the fastest, best-riding boat on the water; my Costa sunglasses are my number one key to success on and off the water; and without my Lowrance electronics I wouldn’t have found the fish I caught to win.”