EVANS, Ga. — As a high school angler, making it to the Strike King Bassmaster High School National Championship is the ultimate goal. Taking the Day 1 lead of this prestigious event (held on Georgia’s Clarks Hill Lake) is everything you can hope for as a competitor, which is exactly what Mason Taylor and Wesley Kent of the Dekalb Fishing Team did early during weigh-in. However, Eli Herring and Hunter Lee of the Greene County Bassmasters wanted a piece of that lead as well.
At the conclusion of the Day 1 weigh-in, the Dekalb Fishing Team duo of Taylor and Kent share the lead with Herring and Lee of Greene County Bassmasters with a three-fish limit of 13 pounds, 6 ounces.
As seniors fishing their final Bassmaster High School National Championship, Taylor and Kent are thrilled to get off to such a great start.
“It’s awesome to get a great start like this,” said Taylor. “It’s such a neat feeling knowing we’re at the top of the leaderboard so far. It would really mean the world to be able to pull this thing off.”
Getting keeper bites was not a problem for the team from Central Tennessee, as they caught an estimated 20 keepers throughout the day. Needing just a three-fish limit, this meant plenty of culling throughout the day.
“We caught them all day to be honest,” said Kent. “We started out pretty quick this morning with 7 pounds or so by 7:30 or 8, then just put our heads down for the rest of the day.
“At about Noon I ended up catching that 5-11 which gave us the confidence to float around that area for the rest of the day. Then we ended up catching another 3 pounder and a 4 pounder, which was awesome.”
Knowing how tight the weights are at the top of the leaderboard, the Dekalb duo expects that they’ll need to be close to replicating their Day 1 weight over the next two days to have a chance to win.
“We have good hopes for tomorrow,” said Kent. “We really didn’t pressure our area too much today, but to do it again we’re just going to have fish clean and keep our heads down.”
Unlike Kent and Taylor, Greene County’s duo of Herring and Lee didn’t get a great number of bites, but the quality was certainly there.
“It was actually pretty tough, we didn’t get a ton of bites and really had to grind it out all day,” said Lee.
The team from Mississippi found an early morning pattern during practice, but due to the number of boats in their primary area, they had to punt on their plans and head to fish in deeper water.
“We only had 7 or 8 keeper bites, but they all turned out to be the right ones,” said Herring. “We kept it pretty simple with our approach as far as baits and really did most of our damage on one bait. Just putting our heads down was the key.”
Herring and Lee’s bag was anchored by a 6-10 game changer that was caught late in the morning.
“We only had three little small ones at the time that we caught that 6-10,” Herring said. “We pulled up to a point knowing there was a few brushpiles up there and on my first cast I hooked into that big one.
“It took us a while to get it in the boat, but when Hunter netted it we all went crazy because we knew how big of a deal it was to catch one that size here.”
Sitting at the top of the leaderboard is where you want to be after Day 1, but neither team can get too comfortable with local favorites Jack Story and Roper Putnam of Clarks Hill High School sitting just behind them in third place with 13 pounds, 3 ounces.
The big fish of the day was a 7-14 caught by the Liberty County Anglers team of Connor Crawford and Brody Beam.
The full field of 252 teams will launch from Wildwood Park beginning at 6 a.m. ET and will return for weigh-in starting at 2 p.m. The field will be cut to the Top 25 teams following the Day 2 weigh-in.
Visit Columbia County is hosting the events.
