D&R Sports Classic 2025 - Hamlin Lake - Day 1

Day 1 was going to be interesting and full of gambles for us. Our plan was to just keep guessing in the lower lake for half the day and then run up and get a limit in the upper lake if we were in trouble. Boat number wasn’t all that important and I actually hoped for a bad draw on day one so we would have a good draw on day 2. Of course we got boat number 12 and of course we still didn’t get to start where we wanted.

We did get to watch that team catch one and they had a nice bag on day 1. So who knows how that could have changed our day. Our focus in the morning was fishing areas that the wind was pounding into the entire day before. I’ve seen it where that really kick starts the food chain in a lake and it was a worthwhile gamble that didn’t pan out. Neither did the next couple things that we actually had bites on in practice. We were mixing it up with mostly reaction baits. Spinnerbaits, topwaters, chatterbaits, squarebills, just anything that might give us a quick clue and allow us to cover water. Finally we got a bite and it was a good one. It came most of the way out of the water only to completely miss a topwater and never give us a chance with anything else. But it was still fairly early and just might be the clue we needed. Sometimes in the fall you can lock a big, fast moving topwater bait in your hands and really catch a nice bag. We tried it in another area that I had a lot of confidence in. I had a particular piece of offshore cover here and a weedbed close by that I had caught them pretty good in pre practice. No topwater bites but the piece of cover had a nice one and it came off on the jump. 0 for 2! We hit some weeds next that were all really solid in pre practice, just hoping to put some bass in the boat at this point.

Strike out, strike out, and strike out, like not even a bite. We were fishing finesse stuff, jigs, and mixing some reaction bites in to keep them honest even though it wasn’t very windy. The next couple hours were mostly suffering but we did put 2 small keepers in the boat. There was no panic as the morning was basically just trying to find something that would help us have a good event. At noon, we opted to make a change and head to the upper lake. No one was on a place that I felt really good about and within a couple minutes we filled out limit with a couple jig fish and a dropshot fish. They were all bigger than the lower lake fish too and if we could get a couple bigger bites maybe we could salvage the day. We hit the spot I would say was special next but it was obvious that it had been found and fished. In hindsight, I sort of regret not starting the morning on this spot but who knows, it could have been empty then too. Another offshore area nearby kicked out a decent bite that came off right at the boat.

It was obvious they were biting a bit but every swing of the bat just produced another 2 pounder. I did catch a really interesting fish with a lamprey on it. I’m not sure if it was a silver lamprey or a chestnut lamprey. You have to look at their teeth to tell for sure (for someone like me anyway). The lamprey was just stuck to the bass’s head and wasn’t actually feeding on it yet. One interesting note about both of those lampreys is that they are native and also don’t kill their hosts like sea lamprey would. They are also much smaller and I just gently separated they 2 and culled with the bass while the lamprey swam off. Maybe we could have gotten a couple more ounces with the lamprey attached? Culling by ounces wasn’t getting it done and we made the choice to leave them biting and hope to make some bigger moves in the lower lake.

We caught some more fish and culled a few more times but it just wasn’t happening for us. We had some decisions to make because the 12 pounds we had was either going to put us at the bottom of the full tournament leaderboard or the top of the teams fishing for 2nd chance money tomorrow. The 2nd chance tournament is a good option for teams like us that struggled and although sometimes that isn’t indicative of what really happened it sure was on this tournament. We were going to have to really guess to catch a big bag against all the teams that did well if we had enough weight to make the cut so we decided to just let our fish go and start fresh tomorrow.