Kenyon Hill Wins at Clarks Hill.....Hite Second, Evers Third

Story by Brent Conway - Photos by Mark Jeffreys

Augusta, GA – Anglers at this week’s fifth stop of the 2008 Elite Series tournament trail at Clarks Hill have cautioned all week that if the weather continued to warm the Blue Back herring would get it all figured out and, consequently, the bite would improve.

Due to drought, The Pride of Georgia was being fished this year minus several acres of water – lower by several feet than in any of the previous three years the Elites have visited the famed Columbia County pond. Still, from the start, it was apparent that if you were in the right area you’re day could be the peach instead of the pit. 

Denny Brauer stormed out of the gate with a 22-pound bag, but wasn’t able to come close to it for the next three days as Edwin Evers seemingly took control of the tournament and led the charge at Sunday’s launch. However, behind him were 11 of the sports most recognized superstars – including Denny Brauer, the Day One leader.

As said previously though, the key was consistency – and who could make the most of the emerging herring presence and predictability. If you were around the herring, and had a slough of spots to back it up, your stock was on the upswing. Saturday, anglers who’d found, and made the most of the bait and the opportunity they afforded, spearheaded the Top 12.

The most dangerous man in the business, Kevin VanDam ended The Pride in fourth by bringing a Day One mirror of 13-7 to the scales in the last period giving him 55-1 overall. Local angler Casey Ashley, who had a four-day total weight of 54-10, brought 12-6 to the scales Sunday to end up once again in the Top 12 at Clarks Hill.

Rounding out the Super Six was Tim Horton, who started the day in fifth place and swapped with Ashley, with a total weight of 54-2. Horton fell off his Day Two pace and was able to bring only 11-7 to the scales Sunday and slipped down the leader board as a result.

1st Place: Kenyon Hill
Kenyon Hill has been around the bass wars now for over 20 years. In that time, he’s carved out a niche by earning three wins. However, until Sunday, a win at the Elite level has escaped the journeyman pro. 

As the model to consistency all week, Kenyon waiting until the last day to pull out all the stops and brought in his biggest bag of the week. However, it didn’t start out that way early on Sunday. “I’d found this one particular point in practice that was holding quite a few fish,” he said. 

“I was able to cull up to my 18 pounds Saturday on it and left them biting. I knew then that it was the kind of point that you can win a tournament on, but started the day there and only caught one 12 incher.”

Undeterred, or as Kenyon might say, “Hard-headed,” Hill inserted the point into his rotation and continued through his run knowing that with the number of fish there, at some point they’d have to eat. “It finally paid off,” he said. “I just kept hitting throughout the day and was able to catch a four-pounder and the seven-pounder that I weighed.”

Hill admits that this win is especially sweet given the situation his family is facing back home in Oklahoma. “This is pretty special deal for me,” he said. “My day, who taught me to fish, is fighting a tough battle with cancer right now. I’m going to get this trophy back home so that he can look at it and enjoy it for a while.

“This is really as much about him and what he’d done for me as it is about me winning the tournament.”

Key to the Win: “I just fished for the day every day rather than trying to win the tournament in a single day. When I could, like on the first day, I fished the top water. If the wind would allow it I would throw the swim bait, or at the very least, I would throw the Carolina rig. And depending on how they were reacting to it, I would use a Zoom Old Monster or a Zoom Trick worm, but I always knew that I could catch them with a rig.”

2nd Place: Davy Hite
Davy Hite has won at Clarks Hill before, and with over 25 years of history on the lake knows – particularly at this level of the game – that you can’t let yourself get behind and hope to win. Fishing all week with a “go-for-the-win” attitude, Hite knew at the day’s start he’d have to be incredibly lucky to pull out a win. 

Just as he did two years ago, Hite’s bait of choice throughout the contest was a ½ ounce brown Mop Jig from Buckeye Lures with a Yamamoto Flappin’ Hog as a trailer. However, on the final day he had to make a change to boat what he brought to the scales.

“You know, I fished as hard as I could today,” Hite explained. “It was a grind all day with the slick conditions, and I’ve fished her before when it was like that so I knew what I was in for. I actually had to break out the spinning rod today to bring in what I had because the big fish weren’t willing to eat the jig.”

With the incredible history Hite has at Clarks, even he was befuddled by the lack of cooperation from it’s inhabitants. “This lake has really been different this year,” he said. “The numbers of baitfish just aren’t where they normally are. The second day was my undoing because I just spent too long waiting for the bait to show up.”

At the end of it all, Hite has no complaints, but did offer a bit of insight into what potentially was his fatal flaw this week. “I fished good today, but the second day is when I dug myself a hole that was too deep to come out of,” he said. “Hind-sight is always 20/20, but this has been a really good week.

3rd Place: Edwin Evers
What at the end of the day turned out to be a good old-fashioned Oklahoma gunfight, Edwin Evers wasn’t able to reload. Knowing that he was going to have to fend off a hard-charging Kenyon Hill, Evers went back to the well hoping for the best. “I fished as hard as I possibly knew how to today,” he said. 

“I did absolutely everything I knew to do in order to win but if just didn’t happen for me. It was a rough day, but it just wasn’t happening.”

Evers threw a ½ brown and purple Booyah football jig to shallow rocky points all week long with great success; however, on the final day the finicky Clarks Hill bass just weren’t in the mood for bulky bait. “That was my main bait all week and I never go a single bite on it,” he said. 
“I caught over 90% of my fish with that jig this week, and when they would take it, it would be all the way in the back of their throats. But with the lack of wind Sunday, I wound up trying a few different things that what I’ve done all week, but it just wasn’t happening.”

Two lost fish would have given Edwin the opportunity to at least better his chances, but in the end, everything he’d been counting on during the week failed him. “I didn’t have the bites today to beat Kenyon,” he said. “I lost both of them on top water, but that’s to be expected with that technique. 

“Ultimately, I was counting on the jig bite but it let me down.”

Edwin explained that he built his game plan to win, and the Booyah jig afforded him the best opportunity to do that. Ultimately, as he explained, at least the win went to another angler from the Sooner state. “I’m obviously disappointed that I couldn’t win, but my hat’s off to Kenyon,” he said. 

“He figured out a way to catch them when it slicked off like this, so all that I can do is just be thankful that another Oklahoman won. Boomer Sooner!” 

4th Place: Kevin VanDam
Kevin VanDam, as has been said too many times to count, is the last man you want lurking in your review mirrors. The mega-everything bass fishing has a knack for being the spoiler on the final day, but the Hills (Clarks and Kenyon) proved to be too big of an obstacle. 

“The big problem for me today was the lack of wind,” VanDam suggested. “It was everything you don’t want if you expect to have a good fishing day at Clarks Hill. With clouds or some wind, I really felt like I could catch them pretty well. I didn’t have either of those today so it just turned into a real grind.”

Focusing on the shad and/or herring spawn, VanDam found that by using a StrikeKing Red-Eye Shad and covering endless miles of water, the reaction bite – something that is somewhat counter to conventional wisdom at the Georgia reservoir – proved to be his best ally. “The key for me was the opposite of what most people do here at Clarks,” he said. 

“I covered a lot of water and made a ton of casts. For me, the deal was to just fish as fast as I could to trigger the reaction strike.”

VanDam explained that due to the primary forage base of Blue Herring, the lake fishes a lot differently than most others that the Elites encounter. “The fish here at Clarks Hill are really finicky which can be awfully frustrating,” he said. “You can’t let them have too good of a look at the bait. But the tough thing today really was the conditions.”

While many would argue that you have to fish to the lake’s conditions, VanDam counters that regardless of finicky fish, for him he has but one speed. “It’s pure torture for me to try and sit up there with a drop shot hoping for a bite,” he said. “All week I was trying to trigger a reaction strike.

“I’m fishing to win every week, and the best way I know to do that is to cover water.”

Editor’s Note: “Sherrie, Jackson and Nicholas, and I will be going to New York City next week to be on the Fox & Friends show on Saturday morning. Bass Pro Shops has been asking me to it for a while, and Mother’s Day weekend is when it works out. Where going to sort of make a mini-vaction out of it.”

5th Place: Casey Ashley
Casey Ashley came to Clarks Hill last year as the perennial favorite and opened the tournament up as the leader right out of the gates. However, he was never able to duplicate his first day’s performance and slid down the leader board as each day progressed. 

This week the sophomore pro started the week outside the top spot but within striking distance of the top, and gathered steam each day as the tournament wore on. “I had a great tournament,” the young pro said. “This is my home lake so it’s just great to be able to come in here and have another solid top 12 finish.”

Early Sunday morning, it looked like Ashley may have a shot at being the spoiler, but the glass-like conditions that soon followed spelled the end to his shot. “It really started out with a bang this morning,” he said. “I had a limit by 9:15, but pretty quickly it just died. After 11:30 it got super-tough.”

Ashely knows as much as there is to know about the Georgia fishery, but still contents that timing is everything – and something that you can never truly know cold. “You have to have a lot of luck to do well at Clarks because the timing factor is huge,” he explained. 

“You can miss them feeding by one minute and not know there’s a fish within a mile.”

Ashley spent all week chasing schooling bass alternating between a Luck Craft Gun Fish, a Super Spook, and a Pencil popper. “Everything I weighed all week came on top,” he said. “Even after it slicked off this afternoon and got really tough, I still found some schooling fish. 

“I threw everything I had in the boat at them, but they didn’t want anything to do with it.”

With all of his history at Clarks, Ashley still contends that fishing in the moment was a critical factor in his success this week, and looking back on the tournament there is little he could change. “For me it was just being flexible and trying to fish for the day,” he said. 

“There are always of couple of decisions that you question, but at the end of the day, to finish in fifth place, you just have to be really thankful with this level of competition.”

6th Place: Tim Horton
If you could have a Mulligan in tournament bass fishing, Tim Horton would gladly pick Thursday as the “do over.” Knowing that he’d likely put himself out of contention from the start, Horton went on to have an amazing second day and put himself into the thick of it all.

If Tim would have received some help from in the form of a little breeze, it’s likely that he could’ve picked up another place or two by the end of the day. “I thought that I was going to have a really good day with how it started,” he explained. “But it slicked off and just got miserably tough on me. 

Alternating between a Super Spook, a swimbait, and a Booyah Jig over rocky points throughout the week, Horton explained that the herring spawn he’d been capitalizing on since Friday was shut down completely Sunday. “We couldn’t have had worse conditions for Clarks Hill today,” he said.

7th Place: Todd Faircloth
Final-Day Thoughts: It was pretty tough. I only caught eight keepers today when I’ve been catching 20 to 30 every other day.

Bait of Choice: Drop-shotting a Yamamoto Shake worm and a Sebile Swimbait

8th Place: Peter Thliveros
Final-Day Thoughts: I soaked my little worms today until the color would fade off. It was just a really tough day without the wind.

Bait of Choice: Carolina rig

Biggest Challenge: These fish at Clarks Hill really like to get shallow. It’s the only lake that we come to where post-spawn fish will get is shallow as they do this time of the year. It’s really amazing and super-tough to figure out.

Key to the Week: Fishing super slow with a Carolina rig.

Week in Review: I worked hard all week long. I only had three little places and just worked them over to the point where I think I basically just ran out of fish.

10th Place: Denny Brauer
Final-Day Thoughts: Today started off really good with one over three pounds. I thought that I might have a chance to do really well, but that was the only big bite that I had. I wound up working real hard to just get a limit. It was a tough day

Bait of Choice: ¾ ounce brown StrikeKing football jig with a StrikeKing Rage craw trailer

Biggest Challenge: It’s kind of hard to imagine with the way the tournament started, but finding big bites. I was sick all week and did not have a good practice at all.

Key to the Week: The first day and those big bites is the only reason that I finished where I did because I wasn’t ever able to come close to that.

Week in Review: I had a really poor practice, but was just extremely blessed Thursday. I actually had a really good week as far as catching fish goes, but I wasn’t ever able to get another big bite after that.

Week in Review: I think I maximize what I found in practice. I only got to fish a couple of my best spots because it was so crowded. Based on the way that it ended up, it’s pretty safe to say that I caught every keeper that was there.

FINAL STANDINGS