HUDDLESTON, Va. (Sept. 9, 2019) – Boater Rick Hawkins of Roanoke, Virginia, brought a two-day total of 10 bass to the scale weighing 31 pounds, 10 ounces, to win the two-day Bass Fishing League (BFL) Piedmont Division super-tournament on Smith Mountain Lake. Hawkins earned $4,682 for his efforts.
“I chose to fish the Roanoke arm the first day and the Blackwater arm the second day,” said Hawkins, who earned his first career victory in FLW competition. “However, it was the same pattern – finding baitfish that were relating to structure in that 20-foot-range and throwing crankbaits.”
Hawkins said that he used a variety of crankbaits to catch his fish throughout the weekend – Rapala DT14 and DT20s, a Strike King 6XD and a 6th Sense Cloud 9. He said he stuck mainly with shad-colored baits – lots of grays, silvers and whites.
“I landed six keeper bites each day,” Hawkins continued. “However, I did have a couple come off that would have helped me. The key was relating the baitfish to the cover at the right depth. If there were baitfish but no cover, there was no fish. If there was cover but no baitfish, there was no fish. I also made around 1000 casts each day. I just kept plugging – so many casts and only six bites a day.”
The top 10 boaters finished the tournament in:
1st: Rick Hawkins, Roanoke, Va., 10 bass, 31-10, $4,682
2nd: Chris Dillow, Waynesboro, Va., 10 bass, 31-10, $2,341
3rd: Bryan Humphreys, Lewisburg, W. Va., nine bass, 28-14, $1,562
4th: Rick Tilley, Moneta, Va., 10 bass, 28-5, $1,092
5th: Chris Brummett, Lynch Station, Va., 10 bass, 28-5, $936
6th: Trevis Towe, Daleville, Va., 10 bass, 25-13, $858
7th: Jack Dice, Lynchburg, Va., 10 bass, 24-6, $1,030
8th: Bryan Elrod, Mechanicsville, Va., 10 bass, 23-15, $1,002
9th: Derik Hudson, Concord, Va., 10 bass, 23-12, $974
10th: Keith Roberts, Hurt, Va., 10 bass, 22-1, $646
Tommy Little of Chester, Virginia, caught a 5-pound, 13-ounce bass – the heaviest of the event in the Boater Division – and earned the event’s Boater Big Bass award of $562. Jessup, Maryland’s Cort Gardner won the Co-angler Division and $2,622 Sunday after catching a two-day total of six bass weighing 20 pounds, 7 ounces.
The top 10 co-anglers were:
1st: Cort Gardner, Jessup, Md., six bass, 20-7, $2,622
2nd: Brian LaClair, Denton, Md., eight bass, 19-1, $1,170
3rd: Sergio Render, Christianburg, Va., seven bass, 17-5, $783
4th: Mark Blankenship, Christianburg, Va., seven bass, 17-5, $546
5th: Timothy Kinder, Manassas, Va., six bass, 12-3, $668
6th: Andre Wynn, Windsor Mill, Md., four bass, 11-15, $429
7th: William Lane, Midlothian, Va., five bass, 11-12, $390
8th: Chris Moore, Mechanicsville, Va., six bass, 11-9, $401
9th: Josh Nixon, Evington, Va., four bass, 9-13, $312
10th: Joshua Long, Hardy, Va., two bass, 8-10, $273
Gardner also caught the largest bass in the Co-angler Division, a fish weighing in at 6 pounds even. The catch earned him the event’s Co-angler Big Bass award of $281.