OCONEE COUNTY, S.C. — South Carolina’s Lake Hartwell has earned its reputation as one of the top bass tournament venues in the country. The Savannah River impoundment has hosted 92 MLF/FLW events through the years, including two editions of the BFL All-American, as well as four Bassmaster Classics.
Thus, just about everyone knows what to expect from Hartwell. But fishing fans and anglers alike will get to see the lake through a new lens this week when O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 2 Presented by Lowrance brings the Bass Pro Tour field to the fishery Thursday through Sunday. This will mark the first high-level tournament on Hartwell with every-fish-counts scoring.
Hartwell is chock-full of bass, which would make it a good fit for the BPT format just about any time of year; but given the warming weather this week, anglers who know the lake well think fans could be in for an explosive event.
“It’ll definitely make for a good event,” South Carolina native Mitchell Robinson said. “There will be a lot of fish biting. You’re going to see some pretty good weights, I think.”
A massive playing field
At 56,000 acres and with almost 1,000 miles of shoreline, Hartwell is a huge fishery – and fellow Palmetto State native Casey Ashley said it fishes even bigger than that. Ashley noted that the lake has been known to “swallow up” a 200-boat field. So, with only 51 BPT anglers on the water, the field should have no problem spreading out.
“I think there’s a good chance that you could fish all four days and not see another boat,” Ashley said. “I’m sure there will be some guys that do find the same areas, but this lake is really big.”
That could be especially true this week, as both Ashley and Robinson think bass should be accessible in lots of different depth ranges and with a myriad of techniques. The recent cold weather that hit the Southeast crashed water temperatures, but they’ve been steadily climbing over the past couple weeks. With highs in the 70s forecast for the first couple days of competition, Ashley thinks the bass should be getting increasingly active, with some starting to push shallow.
Ashley, who has won two national-level events on Hartwell, including the 2015 Bassmaster Classic amid frigid conditions, quipped that he was hoping for the weather to stay cold. That would have played into his local knowledge. With temperatures warming, he expects anglers to be able to catch fish just about however they want to.
“There will be a lot more fish caught,” he said of the warming trend. “It will open up the door to do a lot more stuff as far as fishing different styles, different techniques. It’s going to make the shallow bite even better.”
That said, Robinson predicted the shift in weather might also make the bass difficult to pin down, as they could be spread between winter haunts and prespawn staging areas, transitioning by the day.
“I think it’s going to be hard to tell from the beginning of the week who is going to win or what’s going to win, because it’s going to be changing every day with the warming water,” said Robinson, who won last year’s Tackle Warehouse Invitationals event on Hartwell. “Someone might start out crushing them offshore, and his fish might start to move shallower, and then a shallow guy might crush them, or maybe the opposite. It’s going to be several different ways to catch them, and I think every end of the lake is going to play, the very upper end to the very lower end.”
All about the spots
Both anglers think the biggest key will be finding a reliable way to target Hartwell’s healthy spotted bass population. While the lake has largemouth, too – and we’ll surely see some hit SCORETRACKER® – it’s a lot easier to catch numbers of spots, which will be key given the every-fish-counts scoring.
“We’ll see a little bit of both, but I’m thinking spots are going to be the main target in this one,” Robinson said.
From targeting pelagic bass eating blueback herring to schools holding in the “guts” of pockets to those staging around brushpiles, cane piles, docks and other shoreline cover, there should be no shortage of ways to get a bite. One factor to keep in mind, per Robinson, is that the lake is low, which he thinks will hinder those who want to get super shallow.
“The water is really low right now, so I’m thinking probably that finesse fishing is going to be the main deal,” the BPT rookie said. “Usually on a clear, spotted bass lake, that’s the main deal to win. But I think you’ll be able to have a good tournament doing anything if you play it right.”
These days, “finesse fishing” has become synonymous with shaking a jighead minnow for bass on forward-facing sonar. And while both Ashley and Robinson said anglers will need to take advantage of their one period per day with modern sonar if they want to contend at this event, they don’t necessarily expect it to be a minnowfest.
“The fish are really used to it on Hartwell; they’re really smart about it,” Robinson said. “So, it might not play a ton, but I think someone could have a really good tournament off of it.”
“I think the (suspended) forward-facing fish are really going to be hard to find,” Ashley said. “Those fish are so nomadic because of the blueback herring. You may find them today; tomorrow, they might be 10 miles from there.”
Instead, we could see a lot of anglers ‘Scoping around cover like brushpiles, docks and points with finesse worms and fuzzy dice. Robinson leaned on a shaky head and a Neko rig to win on Hartwell last March – those will surely be a popular tool this week. And don’t discount the possibility of a few anglers making hay on deep schools. It’s not uncommon to catch bass 50 feet and deeper on Hartwell.
“You’re not going to be able to even come close to winning this tournament unless you figure out the forward-facing,” Robinson said. “Hartwell is not a lake like Guntersville, where you can get in an area and just catch 20, 30 fish without LiveScope. It’s really hard to do that. So, you’re going to have to catch them in your ‘Scope period to do really good.”
The other key will be finding populations of bigger-than-average size. Robinson noted that there are lots of bass under the 2-pound minimum scorable weight in Hartwell, and you don’t want to be wasting time weeding through too many of those fish.
All in all, both he and Ashley expect to see similar weight totals to Stage 1 on Lake Guntersville. Robinson guessed it will take about 35 pounds a day during the two-day Qualifying Round to advance to the Knockout Round, while Ashley pegged the cut weight at 40 pounds per day.
“To make the cut, I’m just going to go with 40 a day, which is about where Guntersville was,” Ashley said. “I don’t think you’re going to see quite the quality that we had at Guntersville, but you’re going to see a lot more numbers.”
Don’t miss any of the action
All four days of competition will be streamed live on MLFNOW! from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET Thursday through Sunday. Watch the action at MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MLF and MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) apps and the Major League Fishing channel on Rumble.