CULLMAN — Using lessons learned in their home state of Georgia, Daylon Milam and James Dubose from the University of Montevallo claimed the victory at the Strike King Bassmaster College Series at Smith Lake presented by Bass Pro Shops with a two-day total weighing 29 pounds, 14 ounces.
Milam and Dubose opened the tournament in 23rd place with 13-13 before rocketing up the leaderboard with 16-1 on Day 2. They edged out Stephen F. Austin’s Ben Burns and Grant Pursifull and their Montevallo teammates Brody Robison and Peyton Sorrow by 9 ounces.
“I’ve been watching Bassmaster all of my life, and to hold one of these trophies is something like I’ve never felt before,” Dubose said.
It is the sophomore duo’s second Top 15 finish of the year, adding this victory to their 13th-place finish at Lake Okeechobee at the end of January.
“You have to have a lot go right (to win),” Milam said. “It was just our day, I guess.”
Smith Lake served as the second stop of the Lunkers Trail season, and anglers took advantage of the warming trend that spread over the southeast this week. In total, 293 limits were brought to the scales and over 4,200 pounds of bass were weighed in over two days.
Neither Milam nor Dubose had ever fished Smith Lake before this week’s tournament, but their experiences fishing blueback herring lakes in their home state — notably Lake Lanier — helped them grasp what was happening on the Black River impoundment.
The Montevallo duo discovered their best area the first day of practice — a ¼-mile long stretch of docks in a creek they felt had the best water clarity. Docks with baitfish tended to produce the better-quality bass.
“There were a lot of people around us, but they weren’t doing the same thing we were,” Milam explained. “A lot of teams were out in the middle, and we felt like a lot of the bass were staging on the docks. The water temperature is rising, and we felt like they were staging and waiting for it to warm up a little more so they could go up and spawn.”
On the first day of the tournament, they caught the majority of their prespawn spotted bass by slowly rolling a 3.8 Keitech swimbait rigged on a ¼-ounce jighead by the floating docks. On Day 2, the bass would not touch the swimbait, so they began throwing brown ¼-ounce Spot Sticker casting jigs paired with a Spot Sticker Twin Tail grub trailer.
“It was important to use a ¼-ounce so it would fall slowly around the docks,” Milam added.
Dubose and Milam started Day 2 strong, filling out a solid limit by 9 a.m. While they weren’t catching many quality bass, Milam said they were confident they would eventually run into some bigger bass. Sure enough, they pulled up to one particular dock and saw three bass under it using their forward-facing sonar.
“I skipped my jig under there and the biggest bass of the group ate it,” Milam said. “That ended up being a 4.60 spotted bass.”
The duo searched for one more big bite the rest of the day, and around 2:30 p.m., they landed another 3½-pounder that gave them what they needed to seal the win.
“We really felt like we were one fish short,” Dubose said. “We were really nervous, though. We knew the weights were going to be tight and we knew we needed a little luck on our side to pull it off.”
Hailing from east Texas, Burns and Pursifull landed bags of 14-8 and 14-13 to finish in second place with a two-day total of 29-5. They anchored their Day 2 bag with a 4-pound spotted bass. The Stephen F. Austin team also finished fourth at the first event in the Lunkers Trail season at the Harris Chain of Lakes, putting them in position to secure the Team of the Year in the division.
“We didn’t have a good practice at all. We caught maybe seven or eight keepers,” Burns explained. “We came out a lot better than we thought we were going to, for sure. Since we did good at the Harris Chain, we are sitting up there for TOY now. It’s a pretty good finish.”
While Smith Lake looks much different than their home lakes of Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend, Burns and Pursifull were able to utilize several of their favorite techniques this week. Using their forward-facing sonar, they targeted spotted bass setting up along main-lake breaks.
A 6th Sense Ozzie in the gizzard shad color rigged on either a ¼- or ½-ounce tungsten jighead produced the bulk of their catch.
“We tried to throw at as many bass as we could,” Burns said. “There would be wolfpacks that we could see in 20 feet of water, and then there were some floaters in 8 to 12 feet of water.”
Robison and Sorrow also finished the tournament with 29-5, landing bags of 14-13 and 14-8 respectively.
“It didn’t go as planned,” Sorrow said. “We fished by the seat of our pants and went with the flow. We didn’t stress when our fish disappeared. We sat back, put our heads together and just went fishing.”
After a productive practice fishing flat banks with shaky heads and jigs, the Montevallo duo was forced to move offshore during the tournament where they targeted spotted bass in ditches and drains. The most productive drains had a flat spot in the middle where the bass would set up. The ditches with baitfish ended up being the most productive.
Sorrow and Robison rotated through three different baits depending on how deep the bass were. A 4-inch or 5-inch Z-Man Scented Jerk ShadZ paired with a ½-ounce or ¾-ounce Queen Tackle Live Sonar tungsten jighead produced several key bites. A Neko-rigged Yamamoto Sensei Worm and a Zoom Trick Worm rigged on a ¼-ounce shaky head secured several bigger bites as well.
Tyler Chmelar and Kase Kramer from Tarleton State University caught the Big Bass of the Tournament, a 5-9 spotted bass that anchored their Day 1 bag.
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