ANDERSON, S.C.– “Don’t Suck” has been Bryan New’s outspoken goal all year long. In fact, family members watching the Saluda, S.C. native weigh-in this week at the St. Croix Bassmaster Southern Open at Lake Hartwell presented by Mossy Oak Fishing dawned t-shirts with those two words printed on the back in green lettering.
Day 1 didn’t quite live up to that expectation with a 10-pound, 8-ounce day that put New in 98th, but a giant sack on the second day of competition has New right where he needs to be.
New’s 19-0 Day 2 bag not only lifted him up to 5th place and into the final day cut with a two-day total of 29-11, it also helped him claim the Southern Opens point title with 572 points, a goal he set out for at the beginning of the season.
“The Opens is where it all started. I signed up for the Southerns because I liked the schedule and it lined up well with the Elites,” he said. “Plus this one is right down the street from my house. I finished second at Cherokee and had a good tournament at Kissimmee. Yesterday was looking really bad and I went out and busted us a bag.”
It is New’s second Angler of the Year in his short Opens history after winning the overall points race in 2020 to qualify for the Elite Series. That year, he won the first tournament of the season at the Kissimmee Chain. After nearly winning at Cherokee Lake earlier in the year, New now has an opportunity to win on familiar waters if he can catch another big bag.
Lake Hartwell has been part of Bryan New’s tournament schedule for years, long before he joined the Elite ranks, but very rarely has he ever fished it just for fun. But a day of fun fishing is more what Day 2 felt like after New scrapped his original game plan and went all in on largemouth.
“I went a long, long way in a completely different direction and the second cast I caught a big one,” New said. The next cast I caught a decent one and then went a little while and caught my biggest one. It got kind of stupid after that. It was old-school Bryan New and how he learned to bass fish. I don’t get to do that very often anymore.”
The lake has always had a tendency to backfire on him as well, but Day 2 was about as perfect as he could have asked for.
“So much of this lake has bit me. I have decent practices and it comes back to bite me. Today was the first time it didn’t bite me ever.”
Leaders Key In On Cruisers
Whether it is spotted bass out deep or largemouth up shallow, many of the top anglers are having success targeting smaller groups of bass or individual bass that are cruising around. Tristan McCormick and David Gaston, the two anglers tied for second with totals of 30-3 are fishing totally different areas of the lake, but their strategy sounds almost identical.
“I’m not really focusing on the cane and the brush,” McCormick said of his spotted bass strategy. “I have caught some out of it, don’t get me wrong, but I am looking for two or three roamers. If I make a cast, it is at a fish. I feel like the two to four fish schools will bite a lot better than a 25-fish school.”
Lucas Murphy has been fishing mostly for spotted bass but has accidentally caught some largemouth as well to land in fourth with 29-11. Similarly to McCormick, he has found the best quality spotted bass are in smaller groups.
“The bigger ones don’t seem to be in a group bigger than 3 or 4. Typically it’s groups of two or three if they are bigger ones,” he said. “If there are more than seven or eight or more in my experience this week, they are 2 pounds or less.”
Gaston, meanwhile, is targeting wolf packs of largemouth bass that are cruising shallow water areas. He is visually seeing these fish meander around and eat his topwater popper. The key for the largemouth, it seems, is having a smaller group as opposed to one individual bass.
““I’m fishing secondary points, little rolling points and little white sandy beaches,” he said. “I’m pulling up and looking for one swimming. I’m looking for wolf packs. You might see 10 fish in one school or two fish in one school. The shallower they are, the better they will bite. If you only see one and it is by himself, he ain’t going to bite.”
Does Bait Matter?
When most anglers think of the fall feed, they believe bait must be present or the bass won’t bite or aren’t in the area. On Lake Hartwell this week, that doesn’t seem to be the case necessarily and it really depends on which angler you ask.
“There is no bait present,” Gaston said of his largemouth areas. “The majority of them are coming off straight sand and clay banks with nothing on them and no bait at all.”
A key adjustment helped Murphy find a more consistent spotted bass bite, but finding bait isn’t a big part of that strategy.
“There have been some herring and a lot of threadfin, but I’m not worried about the bait,” he said. “I don’t see bait and get excited. I am just looking for the fish. Even the bass you see below the balls of bait, I don’t think I have caught one of those.”
For McCormick, however, bait is one of the biggest keys.
“There is a lot of bait around,” McCormick said. “When you get in these areas and see the bait and see the fish, 99 percent of the time those are the fish that are going to bite. I can see them swim up and eat some herring and I pitch over there to them through the bait and the bass follow it down and eat it. Majority of it is herring. Once I get off the main lake that is where the threadfin start showing up. “
Tournament leader Derek Lehtonen is making very specific casts to structure and cover, but the presence of threadfin shad has helped keep his largemouth bite going despite the water falling out of his primary spot.
Size an Issue on Day 2
Following Day 1, Matt Pangrac guessed that Lake Hartwell would fish tougher on Day 2.
His prediction proved to be correct for most anglers not named Bryan New as pressure from the 187-boat field has made the bass much more difficult to catch, particularly the better-than-average-sized bass. New landed 19-0, the biggest bag of the tournament thus far.
Even still, 154 limits were caught by boaters on Day 2 compared to the previous day, but the more difficult day shows in the size of the bags. The first day produced 1966-8 total pounds from the pro anglers while the second day only produced 1747-8.
No boater came particularly close to beating Jon Jezierski’s Big Bass from Day 1 either, a 6-6 largemouth.
