Greenville’s Miller Wins Co-angler Title
Boater Adam Wood of Springfield, Georgia, caught five bass weighing 21 pounds, 3 ounces, Saturday to win the 2018 T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League (BFL) South Carolina Division event at Clarks Hill Lake. For his victory, Wood earned $4,550.
“I didn’t know where I was going the morning of the tournament, but I was boat number 38 and after I watched the first 37 boats leave takeoff and head south I decided to go north for a peaceful day on the water, and I ended up whacking them,” said Wood, who earned his first career win in BFL competition. “I spent the entire day fishing the north end of the lake, around Russell Dam. It was desolate – not another boat around me – and turned out to be an awesome day.”
Wood said that he caught nearly all of his keepers on a ¾-ounce Strike King Red Eye Shad (Chartreuse Sexy-Shad) but added one on a Jackall Squad Minnow jerkbait.
“I was fishing a point that had a good hard bottom and some scattered grass,” Wood said. “The wind had blown a big school of shad up shallow onto it, and everything that I weighed in came off of that point. I caught around 15 bass throughout the day, and a dozen of them came off of that one spot.”
Wood reported that he did catch a couple of spotted bass Saturday, but his limit that he brought to the weigh-in stage consisted entirely of largemouth.
“The spot the fish were set up on was not big – about as big as the neck of a boat. You had to be pretty precise with your casts.”
The top 10 boaters finished the tournament in:
1st: Adam Wood, Springfield, Ga., five bass, 21-3, $4,550
2nd: T.N. Thomas, Lincolnton, Ga., five bass, 18-2, $2,790
3rd: Wesley Sandifer, Chapin, S.C., five bass, 15-9, $1,451
4th: Greg Glouse, Liberty, S.C., five bass, 15-2, $1,115
5th: Jonathan Foster, Maiden, N.C., five bass, 15-0, $870
6th: Joey Sabbagha, Prosperity, S.C., five bass, 14-11, $1,098
7th: Justin Hadden, Lexington, S.C., five bass, 14-4, $725
8th: Ross Burns, Columbia, S.C., five bass, 13-8, $653
9th: Jeffrey Borne, Gilbert, S.C., five bass, 13-4, $580
10th: Barry Thames, Barnwell, S.C., five bass, 12-11, $508
Thomas caught a bass weighing 6 pounds, 6 ounces – the heaviest of the event in the Boater Division – to claim the day’s Boater Big Bass award of $615.
Michael Miller of Greenville, South Carolina, won the Co-angler Division Saturday after catching a five-bass limit weighing 14 pounds, 11 ounces. Miller earned $2,682 for his victory.
The top 10 co-anglers finished:
1st: Michael Miller, Greenville, S.C., five bass, 14-11, $2,682
2nd: Brandon Lawson, Union, S.C., five bass, 12-13, $1,138
3rd: Dalton Dawdy, Chapin, S.C., five bass, 11-6, $726
4th: Kevin Henderson, Honea Path, S.C., five bass, 10-11, $507
5th: Bobby Henderson, Charlotte, N.C., five bass, 10-4, $435
6th: James Akins, Cumming, Ga., five bass, 9-9, $399
7th: Jamie Thames, Fairfax, S.C., five bass, 9-8, $363
8th: Rodney Tapp, North Augusta, S.C., five bass, 9-5, $326
9th: Trevor Sharrett, Chesnee, S.C., five bass, 8-13, $290
10th: Brennan Gunther, Mount Pleasant, S.C., five bass, 8-9, $254
The top 45 boaters and co-anglers in the region based on point standings, along with the five winners in each qualifying event, will be entered in the Oct. 18-20 BFL Regional Championship on Lake Norman in Huntersville, North Carolina. Boaters will compete for a top award of a Ranger Z518C with a 200-horsepower Evinrude outboard and $20,000, while co-anglers will fish for a new Ranger Z518C with a 200-horsepower Evinrude outboard.
The 2018 BFL is a 24-division circuit devoted to weekend anglers, with 128 tournaments throughout the season, five qualifying events in each division. The top 45 boaters and co-anglers from each division, along with the five winners of the qualifying events, will advance to one of six regional tournaments where they are competing to finish in the top six, which then qualifies them for one of the longest-running championships in all of competitive bass fishing – the BFL All-American. The 2018 BFL All-American will be held May 31-June 2 at Cross Lake in Shreveport, Louisiana, and is hosted by the Shreveport-Bossier Sports Commission. Top performers in the BFL can move up to the Costa FLW Series or even the FLW Tour.
For complete details and updated information visit FLWFishing.com.
About FLW
FLW is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, providing anglers of all skill levels the opportunity to compete for millions in prize money in 2018 across five tournament circuits. Headquartered in Benton, Kentucky, with offices in Minneapolis, FLW and their partners conduct 286 bass-fishing tournaments annually around the world, including the United States, Canada, China, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, Portugal, South Africa and Spain. FLW tournament fishing can be seen on the Emmy-nominated “FLW” television show, broadcast to more than 564 million households worldwide, while FLW Bass Fishing magazine delivers cutting-edge tips from top pros.
By: Joe Opager, Director of Public Relations
