BAINBRIDGE, Ga. – The Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats Southern Division event on Lake Seminole was a great tournament, with a lot of variety on the table for anglers. With baitfish spawns, fish in timber and fish offshore on ledges, anglers could lean on their strengths.
Here’s what worked best for the top pros.
1. Faircloth wins with a Coike
Fishing a Hideup Coike Fullcast for the most part, Ridge Faircloth did his damage on a couple of schools of fish, grass fish, and fish on current-related areas.
For shallower, current-oriented fish on the final day, Faircloth used a 3/8-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer in bluegill, with a Rapala CrushCity Freeloader in green shad for a trailer. Deep and shallow, he used a scuppernong-colored Fullcast, with a 2/0 BKK Spear 21 SS treble and a 1/4-ounce worm weight inserted in the wire hole. Fishing the Fullcast a variety of ways was a big part of his success.
2. Offshore game plan powers Frankens
Wyatt Frankens will win a Toyota Series event eventually – with four runner-up finishes since 2023, it seems bound to happen. But, yet again, it was not his time this week.
“I cracked ‘em, my hands are beat up,” he said. “I won a good chunk of change, I learned a lot about Seminole, and I basically locked up making the championship in the Wild Card Division. I’m fishing really good right now. I’m not worried about anything. I’m fishing to win, fishing free. I think it will hopefully come to fruition.”
Frankens took his Texas talents to Seminole, which he thinks fished like a mix between Eufaula (the good one) and Toledo Bend – something very much in his wheelhouse. Offshore, he fished a Carolina rig with a 6th Sense Hogwalla, a 6th Sense Crush 300DD and a 6-inch 6th Sense Shindo Shad on a 4.4-gram head.
Fishing on the main river offshore, Frankens didn’t use his LiveScope much, but he did once he got into the trees in Spring Creek.
“I knew some of the fish I had found, that were more main-river related, I could line up my waypoints and fish them old school,” he said. “The second and third day, I started to be able to target a lot of those fish in the timber. I think the weather had them roaming a lot more, and they were towards the bottom. When I figured that out the second day, I was throwing back 15 pounds like it was nothin’.”
3. Hondorp crushes on Day 1 and Day 3
The team partner to Faircloth, Max Hondorp fished the same baits, but did things a little differently.
For baits, a Hideup Coike Fullcast carried the load, rigged with a 2/0 BKK Spear 21 SS treble and a 1/4-ounce worm weight inserted in the wire hole. Fishing shallow, he used a 3/8-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer in bluegill, with a Rapala CrushCity Freeloader in green shad for a trailer.
“The first day I was fishing offshore on a river ledge, looking for floating fish and fish that were sitting on stumps,” he said. “I was fishing shallow all morning, as soon as the sun popped out, I went out there and caught all my weight in an hour.”
On the last day, in the wind and rain, he hammered fish shallow with the ChatterBait.
“I was fishing hydrilla, just really shallow – 3 foot of water, just throwing a ChatterBait in it and ripping it through it,” he said. “The fish aren’t too far from where they were spawning, and I think there’s going to be a shad spawn soon.”
4. Boylan goes fishing
On Day 1, Mason Boylan blanked in his ‘Scope period, attempting to load the boat on a minnow in Spring Creek. Then, trolling out from the trees, he knocked his transducer off the trolling motor. From there, he had some serious fun.
“Seminole is always special; it’s never wide open, but I always seem to find my way of fishing somewhere, and that’s what happened,” he said. “After my three-hour period, I had a little stretch in Spring Creek where I found fish in hydrilla. I ran to that stretch in Spring Creek, I made one pass, I had 19 pounds, and I left it.”
From there, Boylan leaned on that stretch of grass and then expanded nearby, flipping and frogging and fishing both submerged and matted grass.
His best bait was probably a 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer with a Gambler Little EZ trailer. He also punched a Reaction Innovations Kinky Beaver on a 1 1/2-ounce weight, caught one big one on a buzzbait, and added fish on a SPRO Bronzeye 65.
5. “Viper” strikes for another Top 10
Knocking out his fourth Top 10 of the season with MLF, Dylan Quilatan did very well in his LiveScope periods and mixed up some staple baits to succeed.
His minnow of choice was a 7-inch Z-Man Jerk ShadZ, and he followed it up with a Z-Man SMH WormZ on a Carolina rig. He used Viper Rods, which he makes, for both, with a 6-10, medium light, fast, for the minnow and a 7-8, heavy, extra fast for the C-Rig. On the minnow, he souped it up with BaitPop in the ice out color.
“I had a few groups of fish marked from practice, and I would run through all of those,” Quilatan said. “After that, I checked new places – hard spots, stumps, anywhere there would be a current break. It seemed like every day there would be a new group somewhere, and the key was finding that group every day. The old groups, they would get harder and harder to catch.”
Staying out of Spring Creek was a big part of the plan for Quilatan, and he boosted his LiveScope sessions with an afternoon 4-pounder on the C-rig on Day 2.
6. Punching bite boosts Thibodeaux
Earning his third Top 10 of the year with MLF, Levi Thibodaux mixed modes for a good finish at Seminole.
Offshore, the young pro used a Yamamoto Hinge Minnow on a 1/8-ounce head as well as a Strike King 10XD – a strong one-two punch. Shallow, he actually punched, using a 1-ounce weight and a Big Bite Baits Fighting Craw and a Big Bite Baits YoMama. He used Zook rods across the board, including the Zook LT Custom minnow rod for his minnow needs.
“In the morning, I would start on offshore schools and throw a 10XD and the minnow,” he said. “I never caught my full bag doing that in the morning, when that fizzled out, I would go in the timber in Spring and ‘Scope roaming fish. Then I’d go punch and frog the rest of the day.”
Thibodaux added a lot of fish punching, which definitely put him in the Top 10. It was a bit of a break from the normal plan for the young angler.
“I spent a lot of time, more than I usually would, looking for a no-‘Scope deal,” he said. “I had four and a half days of practice, so I put in a lot of time. I found some stuff up the river, punching mats, it was cool to get to do that. On Day 1 I caught three of them ‘Scoping, and two of my biggest ones punching. Day 2, they were not biting punching at all, I weighed four off ‘Scope, then yesterday I caught two 4-pounders on Day 3 punching mats.”
7. Baty drops hard on Day 3
Leading going into the final day, Matt Baty looked pretty inevitable. Fishing on his home lake, things seemed to be going to plan – unfortunately, the fish didn’t cooperate with that narrative.
“I caught plenty of fish, they just got smaller,” Baty said. “I feel like I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Fishing offshore for the most part, Baty used a Berkley Dredger 25.5, a Berkley Lab Series Finesse Worm on a 1 1/4-ounce Carolina rig, and a knockoff 19-millimeter Coike (Westside Bait and Tackle has inventory) with a 1/8-ounce Nako Nail Weight and a 3/0 Berkley Fusion19 Heavy Cover hook.
8. Panzironi rallies
Eric Panzironi entered the event with his mind on the Toyota Series Championship – but, after only catching two fish on Okeechobee in the opener, he needed to close strong. Knocking out a Top 10, he did just what he needed to do, finishing 24th in the points and making Pickwick.
His best bait was a Hideup Coike Fullcast, which he rigged with a quad and used a split ring to attach a 1/8-ounce weight to the eye. He used 17-pound P-Line Tactical Fluorocarbon and a 7-1, medium-heavy B. Moore rod.
“I was fishing around grass, I had some grass that they were pretty loaded in, but they kept moving on me each day, so I had to relocate them,” Panzironi said. “I culled on a crankbait the second day, I had a cranking spot on a grass flat – the second day, it was every cast, 3-pounders. My co (angler) was struggling, so I gave him my rod and he caught his limit.”
Panzironi also caught some single fish in trees that he’d found and marked in practice.
9. Campbell locks down 7 Brew Angler of the Year
Earning his second Toyota Series Angler of the Year title in two years, Brody Campbell finished 13th at Okeechobee and runner-up at the Kissimmee Chain before locking down 7 Brew Angler of the Year in the Southern Division with a ninth-place finish at Seminole.
Traveling and fishing constantly, AOY isn’t always on his radar, but Campbell was still happy to lock down his second.
“It’s a goal, there are a ton of great anglers, to be the top guy is awesome,” Campbell said. “I don’t really think about it, I just try to make money, but I’m super pumped about it.”
At the event, he did his best work with a 1/4-ounce drop-shot with a 6-inch Roboworm Straight Tail Worm, of course, fished on a Bird Dog Rod.
“I was just dragging a drop-shot through scattered hydrilla,” he said. “I found one zone for blind dragging without ‘Scope, and caught them pretty good each day. The weather changed, it got nastier, I was catching big bags with ‘Scope in practice. If it was sunny, I would have smoked them ‘Scoping, they were setting up in the trees, but the weather set me back.”
10. Mixing and matching works for Anderson
Slipping into the Top 10 by ounces, Caz Anderson fished a few different patterns.
His best baits were a 6.5-inch Berkley Lab Series Minnow in the highland shad color on a 1/8-ounce head, and a 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer with a cut-down 5.25-inch Berkley Lab Series Minnow for a trailer.
In practice, Anderson found a unique baitfish spawn and he also keyed in on a bite in the grass with the ChatterBait.
“I think it was a needlefish spawn,” he said. “I looked and looked for a shad spawn, I didn’t find one, nobody found one. The lake has always been loaded with needlefish – this time, they were all over the top of the water. Like how herring will nip at your bait and follow it, if you threw a Kanata or a big Spook they would be all over that thing. It was wild. When you got your color matched up, the bass would choke it.”
Anderson minnowed and then fished his ChatterBait in voids in the grass he found on side scan.
“I figured out a way to work the ChatterBait, you had to worm it – painfully slow,” he said. “They would thump it.”