2010 FORREST WOOD CUP: Hobbs hanging hopes on largemouth spot
POSTED Aug. 5, 2010 / 8:40 p.m.

DULUTH, Georgia - Lake Lanier’s Kentucky-strain spotted bass played the leading role on Day 1 of the 2010 Forrest Wood Cup Thursday, as expected. But if Ron Hobbs, Jr. has anything to say about it, the lake’s less prolific largemouth population might play a bigger role on Day 2.

Hobbs settled into 12th place on the strength of two largemouth that boosted his five-fish Day 1 weight to 10 pounds, 14 ounce, leaving him just one good fish behind Day 1 leader Kevin Hawk (14-12) and exactly 1 pound out of the top 10 heading into Day 2. That one good fish – or, rather, three of them – is/are right where Hobbs left it/them: on a honey-hole that the Orting native will count on tomorrow to boost him into the Top 10, past the crucial Day 2 cut, and possibly into Day 3 and Day 4.

“I found one tree in the back of a creek on the last day of practice, and today, every time I’d pitch in there, I’d hook two fish,” Hobbs says. “I’d leave it for awhile, run down the bank for a couple of minutes, and then come back to it, pitch in and and, boom, two more fish. There seems to be a bunch of fish on that tree, and they were there all day long. I think it’s big enough to hold 6 or 7 of them at a time. I caught one there on a chatterbait the last day of practice that went 4 pounds and then just left it alone, thinking ‘There’s something special here’. I know for sure there are three nice ones swimming around down there with my hooks in their mouths.”

'Yank yank yank ... gone'
Hobbs hooked eight fish during two different afternoon stops on the tree, and lost three that he guessed to be big fish, all three of which bulldogged him down into the wood and broke off his 6-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon.

“They hit and went ‘yank yank yank … gone,’ but I could tell they were big ones – anytime you bend a 7-foot rod in half, you know it’s a big one,” Hobbs says. “Super-light line like that 6-pound, anytime you get the line tight and it’s rubbing against something abrasive, you’re going to break it.

" I’m going heavier tomorrow: I have four drop-shot rods tied up with 15-, 12-, 8- and 6-(pound) Seaguar. They’re a little line-shy, though, so I’ll see how it goes. I’ll throw the 15 if I’m fishing right up tight against the tree like I was this afternoon, but if it makes a difference in the number of bites I get, I’ll go right back to the 6 and try to figure out a way to pull them out of there.”

Hobbs spent the morning unsuccessfully trying to coax a surface bite in the 90-degree water before pulling away from boiling spotted bass to hippity-hop mainly between his tree and a dock located in the back of an adjacent creek where baitfish are moving down a narrow creek channel off the front of a shallow dock.

“I caught three or four spots out in front of the dock,” Hobbs says. “The creek has spot-tail minnows, threadfin shad and millions of bluegill way in the back of it, and they’re all moving up and down the creek channel. The channel is like a little ditch that runs through a flat, where it’s shallow on both sides and the bottom of the channel is maybe 8 feet. On the edges where the creek channel intersects the flats, it’s in about 4 feet of water. That dock is sitting out in the channel, with the end of it just about 3 feet from the other side of the channel. It acts like a funnel for baitfish. That’s why the spots are there.”
-JS

8FOLLOW THE 2010 FORREST WOOD CUP HERE and stay logged in to FLW Live throughout the course of the day for exclusive videos and updates from the 2010 Forrest Wood Cup. Check out the NWWC Bass Report regularly for exclusive on-site updates as NWWC host Joel Shangle heads to Atlanta to cover the "world championship of bass fishing".

-JS

Copyright © 2010, Northwest Wild Country Radio Network, All Rights Reserved