Angler Peyton Dunn, 20, of Fitzgerald, Georgia, was fishing solo in an ABA bass tournament on Lake Hartwell the morning of March 16. It was cold and windy, and only about 20 anglers were competing in the Sunday event. At about 10:30 a.m., Dunn was slowly fishing the lower lake near the dam. He was working his bass boat along a ditch line in about 30 feet of water.
“I was watching my LiveScope radar and noted a couple large fish just a few feet under the surface,” Dunn told Wired2Fish. “I thought they were gar, but I made a cast toward them with a Strike King shad color ‘Z-Too’ jerkbait.
“One fish didn’t move, but the second sonar mark on my LiveScope followed the lure toward the boat, and I figured it wasn’t a gar, but a bass. She hit the lure about 30 feet away from my boat. When I felt her head jerk and I knew it was a bass. She dove right to the bottom, and headed up the ditch, never jumping, just dogging deep.”
Dunn followed the bass, fighting the fish carefully. He used spinning gear with 15-pound test braided line, and a 13-foot long 8-pound test fluorocarbon leader because Hartwell has vodka-clear water.
“She swam about 60 yards up the ditch, then back down the same ditch – deep all the time,” Dunn said. “She’d just sit on the bottom, but finally she got tired and came toward my boat.”
The bass dove under Dunn’s boat several times, staying deep. But after about a 10-minute fight he was able to work her topside and net the giant bass.
He weighed the fish on a portable scale at 11-pounds, 3-ounces. Dunn was shaking with excitement, believing the fish was a record for bass caught during a Hartwell tournament. He finished his morning by catching four more 2-to-3 pounders to fill his five fish tourney limit. It was enough to win the tournament and $500.
Dunn’s 11-3 pound largemouth measured 26.75-inches long with a 19.75-imch girth. It was released back into Hartwell.
Dunn believes it’s the heaviest largemouth ever weighed in a Hartwell tournament, and he plans one day to have a replica mount made of that bass. He says the lake is on fire now for big bass. A 9-pound largemouth was caught in another recent reservoir tourney, and Dunn says 7-pound bigmouths are taken regularly now by anglers.
“I don’t know what’s going on with the lake, but it sure is on fire for fishing, and lots of heavyweights are being caught this year,” he says.
Indeed, they are.
On March 16 Chad Mrazek caught a 6-pound, 4-ounce spotted bass during a Major League Fishing tournament on Hartwell. It’s the largest spotted bass ever taken from the reservoir.
The 24-year-old visiting angler from Texas says he caught the spot in 18-feet of water using a plastic worm and a drop-shot rig. When he landed the fish and put his hands around it, he thought it was a lake record. It was, topping the old record by nearly a pound.
Mrazek caught a five fish limit of bass that last tourney day on Hartwell. He weighed 19-5-pounds of bass, good enough to finish third in the tourney and pocketing $20,000 in winnings.
Fishing for catfish also has been extraordinary on Hartwell.
For example, in a two-hour afternoon fishing window after work, angler Aaron Riggins of Anderson, S.C. caught an unofficial Hartwell blue catfish weighing 75 pounds. That fish topped his previous big blue cat weighing 74 pounds that he caught two years ago from the reservoir.
Riggins was slow trolling multiple lines with cut baits off trolling boards. From one small stretch of drop-off water in the Seneca River arm of Hartwell, he hooked four giant cats at one time. Included in that whirlwind cat bite was his 75 pounder, a pair of blues each weighing 40 to 50 pounds and a 20-pound cat. He finished the day with seven big catfish – all released back into the reservoir unharmed.
Striped bass and hybrid striped bass fishing on Hartwell is choice, too. Fishing can be great at times nearlyyear round. But in spring fish run into the Tugaloo and Seneca River arms and action can be fast and exciting.
Watch for diving birds to show locations of striper schools and use fathomers to locate bait and striper pods that can be in deep or shallow water depending on weather.
Lake Hartwell also offers excellent crappie fishing, particularly during the spring spawn that runs into May. Live minnows, jigs and jigs-and-minnows all are deadly when worked around brush piles, deep points near creek mouths, bridges supports and prominent weedy areas near deep water.
So if you’re hankering for a hot bit this spring, Hartwell may be the ticket to that fishing end.
