Search Results

This time, Mighty Casey didn’t strike out. Casey Ashley, a 31-year-old bass pro from Donalds, S.C., hit a homerun on Sunday, fishing on his home water, to the cheers of an adoring, hometown crowd, winning the Bassmaster Classic with a great final-day catch of better than 20 pounds.

The final day of the Bassmaster Classic on Lake Hartwell is shaping up to be a free-for-all, with a handful of former champions sitting atop the standings with the coveted trophy and $300,000 first-place prize well within their grasp. Takahiro Omori, a Japanese angler who now makes his home in Emory, Texas, caught five fish that weighed 16 pounds, 11 ounces Saturday and claimed the lead going into Sunday’s final round with a two-day total of 31-11.

There’s four fishermen and one bass standing between Casey Ashley of Donalds and the Bassmaster Classic championship. The four fishermen are Takahiro Omori, Dean Rojas, Mike Iaconelli and Randy Howell. The one bass is the big one he hasn't caught yet.

Doesn’t it just figure that after the coldest day in the history of the Bassmaster Classic, four anglers from warm, sunny climates are sitting atop the standings?

South Carolina’s two members of the Bassmaster Classic field had widely differing views of how Friday’s first day of the tournament on Lake Hartwell went.

Besides bass and each other, the pro fishermen who kick off competition in the Bassmasters Classic on Lake Hartwell on Friday will have another opponent: Mother Nature.         

With less than 60 days until the Bassmaster Classic rolls into Lake Hartwell, many of the pros fishing in the tournament are taking advantage of the last few days of practice time before the lake officially closes to them on Jan. 1.

South Carolina bass pro Andy Montgomery sacked his third solid limit of bass on Saturday and won the BASS Southern Open on North Carolina's Lake Norman with a three-day total of 37 pounds, 10 ounces.

In 2008, bass pro Anthony Gagliardi of Prosperity had a pattern he thought would produce the kind of fish he needed to win the FLW Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Murray. But heavy rains before the tournament raised the lake level, ruined his plans and left him a disappointing 48th on his home lake.

Finally, it was Anthony Gagliardi's turn on Sunday. The bass pro from Prosperity, fishing on his home waters of Lake Murray, won the FLW's Forrest Wood Cup and its $500,000 first-prize money by a single ounce.

On Saturday's third day of the FLW's Forrest Wood Cup championship tournament on Lake Murray, the cream rose to the top. Past champion Brent Ehrlers of Redlands, Calif., and past FLW Angler of the Year Brian Thrift of Shelby, N.C., hold the top two spots, separated by just three ounces, and two South Carolina pros are in the top five.

David Dudley of Lynchburg, Va., has the reputation of always being a contender in tournaments where fishing is expected to be tough. So it's no surprise that after the first day of the FLW Forrest Wood Cup on Lake Murray out of Columbia, Dudley finds himself leading the 45-man field by better than 3 1/4 pounds.

Bass pro Davy Hite said that when the FLW Forrest Wood Cup championship kicks off this week at Lake Murray, the winning fisherman is not likely to be a one-trick pony.

This past Saturday, Frampton Ferguson and his crew won the Edisto Shark Tournament out of Edisto Island with a massive, 482-pound tiger shark. Little did they know, a shark almost three times the size of their winner was headed to the dock – just not in time for the tournament’s deadline.