Battle Bass on the Border at Lake Seminole

Drew Benton has tallied an impressive professional bass fishing career with top-10 performances from Central Florida’s Harris Chain of Lakes, to Oklahoma’s Arkansas River. Summarily, the pro from Panama City owes much of his foundational skills to the waters of his youth— Lake Seminole.

Located in the southwest corner of Georgia, this 37,500-acre U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-managed reservoir yawns into Florida, about an hour northwest of Tallahassee. A truly unique blend of southern habitat favorites, Seminole is kind of an all-inclusive training facility—one that Benton has learned to love and leverage.

“Growing up and fishing that lake, I learned a lot of different techniques and ways to catch them all over the country,” Benton said. “Literally everything I have been faced with on the Elite Series, I can go practice on Lake Seminole.

“That could be jerkbaiting timber, deep cranking on a ledge in the summertime, punching grass, throwing a frog. Just about everything that you would do throughout the country, you can catch fish doing it on Lake Seminole.”

Notably, Benton’s Elite Series roommate Drew Cook grew up in Quincy, FL, roughly midway between the state capital and Lake Seminole. Now making his home in Cairo, GA, Cook’s still close enough to keep tabs on the lake.

“It has the best of all the worlds,” Cook said. “There are two very big and completely different rivers flowing into it and a big creek. You combine that with all the grass, the variety of grass, the large flats, and the standing timber; you can pick your poison.”

The Layout

Lake Seminole comprises the union of the Chattahoochee River on the west side with the Flint River on the east and the aptly named Spring Creek in the middle. The smaller Fish Pond Drain tucks between the Chattahoochee and Spring Creek.

Below the Jim Woodruff Lock and Dam, which impounds Seminole, the lake’s water runs south to the Gulf of Mexico via the Apalachicola River.

“I think what makes Seminole so productive is this diverse layout,” Benton said. “You can fish the Chattahoochee or the lake side and target shallow water flats with grass, or you can fish the Flint and it’ll be shallow bars, hydrilla, stumps and things like that.

“Then you go into Spring Creek and when it’s clear, you can see down 15-20 feet. You can fish 50-foot spring holes with timber standing all around it. In the summertime, the grass can top out in that 20 feet of clear water.”

Seminole’s a big lake and describing every potential strategy for every acre would fill a couple of issues. Personal exploration would be a much more enjoyable way to learn, so for our immediate purposes, let’s look at the foundational elements of what Lake Seminole offers.

Grass Equals Bass

Seminole’s rich with aquatic vegetation; actually a mix of submersed grasses—hydrilla, milfoil, eel grass—reeds, lily pads, and spatterdock. This cover offer viable options for bass through every season of the year, from prespawn and postspawn staging, to spawning amid scattered shallow cover, to temperature moderating hideouts for summer and winter.

Having seen Seminole’s ups and downs over the past 20-plus years, Cook recalls how 2018’s Hurricane Michael (first Category 5 storm to make U.S. landfall since Andrew in 1992) ravaged the lake. After the Corps dropped the water level to accommodate a rainfall influx, wind and waves claimed a lot of hydrilla and trimmed a lot of the timber. But in the aftermath, milfoil expansion further deepened the lake’s diversity.

“For years, we had a bunch of hydrilla; we had hydrilla everywhere and we had little bit of milfoil and a little bit of coontail,” Cook said.“Michael opened up a lot of those hydrilla areas for that milfoil and stuff to grow, so it’s a more diverse grass system out there now. When you have so much of the same thing (hydrilla), it’s the same thing. Fish are just like deer, they want a transition area.”

Grass Tactics

Prespawners respond well to ripping lipless baits and bladed jigs through the vegetation, while jerkbaits are very tempting when twitched and paused over interspersing shell bars. When bass spawn amid shallow grass patches, pitching Texas-rigged soft plastics or dropshots into the red zone will tick ’em off—as will hovering a hollow body frog overhead.

Benton particularly likes new growth hydrilla early in the year because it’s easy to snap a rattlebait through the thin, brittle vegetation. Cook agrees and describes another spring favorite.

“When you’re fishing a lipless crankbait on a hydrilla flat with current, here and there will be one patch of eel grass that blocks the current,” he said. “They’ll get behind that eel grass and you can just beat on ’em. Also, when they first get into that postspawn mode, catching them on a belly-weighted swimbait in that eel grass is really fun, too.”

Summer is grass punching time, but don’t hesitate to crank the edges, drag a big worm or Carolina rig through bare spots, or pop those bladed jigs through transition areas. Where grass growth favors bass gatherings (space below mats, multiple grass types, laydowns) frogging can deliver lights-out potential—especially around bream beds.

Fall means moving baits like topwater walkers, buzzbaits, swimbaits and swim jigs—the stuff that mimics the shad those bass will be chasing. Keep a Texas-rigged creature bait and a wacky-rigged stick worm on standby—these make strategic follow ups to missed reaction bait bites.

Benton fishes hydrilla from the spring spawning cycle through late summer, until it gets so dense that it becomes too much of a good thing. If you don’t mind doodling around, just pick a topographically sensible area and fish ’til you find ’em.

For Benton’s time-sensitive tournament mindset, that’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“By the fall, there’s so much grass and so many places fish can get, it’s really hard to narrow them down,” he said. “I like grass in the springtime because you look at those little ditches and places they’ll stop before they go up to spawn on the flats. Then after they spawn, they’ll come back to those grass lines before it gets too hot and the bait moves out. By the fall, that grass is topped out and it can be very overwhelming if you just go up there blind.”

Benton clarifies a key late season point: While hydrilla may be choked out, milfoil’s looser growth pattern leaves more room for bass movement.

Go With the Flow

As Benton notes, the lower Flint River has plenty of running depth, but upriver from Bainbridge, there’s a lot more rock structure out from the bank, with pronounced rock shoals and rapids. The Chattahoochee has rock, wood and vegetation mostly on the bank with a navigational channel deep enough for a history of barge traffic.

Having made plenty of runs up the Flint’s treacherously shallow reaches, Cook offers this warning: “If you don’t know where you’re going you’re in trouble. You will lose your lower unit.”

Cook said the Flint’s typically cleaner later in the year and dirtier early in the year. As he explained, the proximity of farm lands impacts each river’s clarity.

“There’s a lot more agriculture around the ’Hooch closer to Lake Seminole and on the Flint, there’s a lot of ag up farther,” Cook said. “If it rains farther north, it will muddy the Flint and if it rains closer, it will muddy the ’Hooch.

“If you go up both rivers, you’ll be surprised they connect to the same place. They’re two totally separate situations.”

River Tactics

Sight fishing with Texas rigs, jigs, and dropshots will produce those spring bites closer to the mouths, while flipping all your normal shallow cover, cranking and frogging pads and grass mats accounts for plenty of action.

Up the Chattahoochee, Cook’s favorite warm-season tactics include cranking with 4- to 6-foot divers, pitching jigs and Texas-rigged creature baits to shallow cover and skipping a reeling toad under willows. In the Flint, he’s going with squarebills, ChatterBaits, spinnerbaits, topwaters, buzzbaits and frogs.

“You fish slower in the Chattahoochee than you do in the Flint,” Cook said. “Their current is probably close to the same, but the Flint gets a lot tighter and there’s a lot more fast water. A lot of times, you’re going up and drifting down, whereas on the ’Hooch, you’re fishing up.”

Doing most of his river fishing in the fall, Benton likes to cover water with topwater like Nichols Buzzbait with a Big Bite Toad for skipping undercut banks. The fish are mostly sitting in current breaks, but they’ll run out and grab a passing meal.

“If I’m in an interesting area with a lot of structure, or if I’m starting to get a lot more bites, I’ll slow down and pitch a creature bait around or maybe throw a jerkbait,” Benton said. “It depends on the clarity. If we’ve had a lot of rain, it’s gong to be dirtier, so I’ll throw a spinnerbait or a ChatterBait.”

Channel Surfing

Benton said that late summer-fall period highlights Seminole’s diversity by offering a true offshore ledge bite. On the Flint or the main lake where the old Chattahoochee river channel meanders through timber or grass flats, he’ll idle the edges and look for schools of the shad (threadfin and gizzard) or small hybrid bass that bass seek.

“You can catch them on a crankbait, a football jig or a Nichols Mini Mag spoon,” Benton said. “If I don’t see them, I know I can go fish that deep grass and catch them on a buzzbait in the morning then a big worm or a 1-ounce grass jig.

“I’ll use a Big Bite Baits Kamikaze Craw trailer for a faster fall on the edge of that grass. If the water’s a little dirtier and I want to slow that bait down, I’ll use a Big Bite Baits Fighting Frog. It’s a bulkier plastic and it’s going to make that jig slow down on the fall.”

Spring Creek

Extreme wariness resulting from this smaller artery’s gin clear water often requires a finesse touch with dropshots, Damiki rigs and the like. Cook suggests downsizing line and bait size, but notes that spring spawning rewards the stealthy.

“There are good flats in the lower part of the creek,” he said. “Where Spring Creek and the Flint meet is probably where the biggest concentration of fish are found in the springtime. It’s one huge flat that’s littered with sandbars and that’s where most of the fish spawn.”

Skeletons of Yesteryear

Seminole’s shallower stumps offer good spawning habitat, while deeper ones present year-long feeding stations. The real star of the wooden show, however, is the standing timber.

Joey Cifuentes III, formerly of Tampa, now living in north central Arkansas, won the 2023 Bassmaster Elite on Lake Seminole in late February. While most assumed a spawning event—and that was part of the mix—Cifuentes picked his way through the standing timber in 20 to 22 feet of water in a bay off Spring Creek and caught bulging prespawners staging near a major spawning flat.

“I was using my Garmin LiveScope (forward facing sonar) with the LVS34 transducer on the edge of the spawning flats on the outside edge of the grass. I was looking for where the main channel swing came in, where fish would be coming and going.”

Finding his greatest consistency in areas where two to three trees clustered, Cifuentes caught most of his fish on a dropshot with a 6-inch hand-poured finesse worm. Texas-rigging his dropshot bait on a 1/0 hook minimized snagging.

Jerkbaits and swimbaits also excel in the timber, especially with forward-facing sonar realtime views allowing more targeted casts and retrieve adjustments to close the deal. Today, screen-savvy anglers commonly tease and tempt indecisive fish they never would have seen a decade ago.

Cook favors timber in the fall and early winter, as nomadic bait chasers hunt down pods of threadfin and gizzard shad hiding amid the trees. Covering the water column with a mix of reaction baits and flipping to particularly attractive trees can lead to jackpot moments.

“I’ve seen one tree in the middle of Spring Creek have 100 fish on it,” Cook said. “If they’re really on that bait and the water is clear, you can have some awesome days.”

Isolated clean bottom spots amid the timber welcomes cranking or dragging a jig or shaky head. Don’t get too ambitious, though, or you’ll donate a lot of tackle.

The Wrap Up

Acknowledging Seminole’s tendency to overwhelm, Benton brings the focus back to vegetation abundance. His experience has shown him that one of the most important details he can strive to understand on Seminole is how the fish are relating to the grass in a given timeframe.

“Grass is always a factor, whether it’s early season when you’re just looking for a little bit of new growth, or it’s late in the year and you’re trying to figure out if they’re on the edges of the grass or if they’re in these ditches,” Benton said. “If can understand what type of grass they want to be in that time of year, or just a depth range — that grass is always a player.

“Even if a lot of fish are offshore, there’s still a population of fish that never leave the grass. I think that’s what has helped me become a good grass fisherman when we go to other places—that’s had to be a part of my (Lake Seminole) game.”

Summarizing his view of Lake Seminole success, Cook nods to the lake’s diversity. Essentially, don’t try to force feed one effective pattern everywhere you go. Observe, adjust, adapt and Seminole will show you many ways to make that rod bend.

Also, from the Flint’s shallow reaches, to the main lake timber and stumps, Seminole guards its bounty with non-negotiable sentries.

Navigational safety is no joke on this lake, so know before you go and even then, don’t get cocky.

“If you don’t know it, stay in the buoys,” Cook said with a hint of hard earned wisdom. “There are channel markers everywhere. Even if you do see someone drive through something, that doesn’t mean it’s safe. Some people are just really lucky.”

Many Species of Bass Call Lake Seminole Home

While largemouth bass dominate the Lake Seminole playlist, you’ll also find stripers, white bass, sunshine bass (striped/white hybrid) and spotted bass (mostly up the Chattahoochee). Complementing this assortment, Seminole also claims a unique species called the shoal bass. One of the feistier members of the black bass clan, “shoalies” lack the dark lateral band characteristic of largemouth, while vertical stripes adorn their flanks. Another difference is a lower jaw that does not extend past the red eye.

As the name implies, these fish prefer rocky, current-washed river habitat and Bassmaster Elite angler Drew Cook directs interested anglers to the Flint River, which sets up perfectly for this species.

“They’re like southern smallmouth,” Cook said. “A lot of times, you’re just throwing something up on the bank and they’re going to pin it up there and eat it.

“You catch them a lot flipping a jig into an eddy. Some of the biggest ones get caught flipping a jig, frogging or throwing a swim jig. You’ll also catch them on Carolina rigs, ChatterBaits, topwaters, squarebills, flukes, and jerkbaits.”

The good thing is shoalies reach impressive sizes (4- to 6-pounders live there). The downside: hostile habitat. Primarily a feeding stye, but perhaps also a defense strategy, shoal bass like shallow runs with rocks; lots of rocks. Rocks that break the surface and others that hide just below.

“If you’re not careful up there in the Flint, you’re going to damage your equipment,” Cook said.

To that point, traditional fiberglass bass boats are limited in their ability to reach prime shoal bass waters. Aluminum boats, tunnel hulls, jet boats, kayaks and canoes are better suited for slipping through these treacherous waters.

Taking safety first, Cook suggests targeting outer bends with exposed limestone and strong current. Also, the downstream sides of inside bends where the current passes slack water, eddies create feeding opportunities that shoal bass favor.

”Also, everywhere you can see the water rippling over a shoal, there will are a shoal bass on that spot,” Cook said. “That shoal comes up from deeper water to maybe 2 feet on top and it’s blocking all that current behind it.

“The shoal bass will get up on top of it to feed and then they’ll be able to sit right behind the shoal and wait for the next meal.”

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• This article was featured in the September 2024 issue of Florida Sportsman magazine. Click to subscribe.

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