The Berry’s Team Tournament Trail classic event was held May 16-17. After eight regular tournaments equally split between Lake Oconee and Lake Sinclair, a classic event was held with one day of competition on Lake Oconee and one day of competition on Lake Sinclair. The classic event crowns the winning team with a $10,000 first place prize and awards around $25,000 in total for the event.

The 93 teams qualifying for the classic fished Lake Oconee on Saturday, May 16, and 81 teams fished Lake Sinclair on Sunday, May 17. The combined weight for the two days determined the winner of the classic. The finish was very close as the top three teams were separated by less than one pound.

Overall, the anglers caught 313 largemouth bass weighing 677.61 pounds on Saturday at Lake Oconee and caught 285 largemouth weighing 551.90 pounds at Lake Sinclair on Sunday.

The winning team of Tony Couch from Buckhead and George Goodman from Monticello caught five fish limits at both Lake Oconee and Lake Sinclair for a total two-day weight of 28.36 pounds. The pair of anglers fished shaky heads around docks to take home the first-place prize of $10,000. 

Finishing in second place only .04 ounces behind the first-place team with 10 fish weighing 28.32 pounds and winning $5,000 was the team of Matt Henry from Milledgeville and Justin Kimmel from Athens. They used large worms and topwater to win $5,000.

Rounding out the top three teams was John Duvall from Madison and Will Sizer from Sparta. Their 10 fish weighed 27.49 pounds. They used spinnerbaits and worms to win $2500.

The big bass at Lake Oconee was caught on a big crankbait by Vince Farrow from Covington and weighed 6.83 pounds winning the angler a check for $930. The big bass at Lake Sinclair weighed 7.61 pounds and was caught on an Ol Monster Zoom worm by Kim Carver from Milledgeville. Carver took home $930. 

The classic event was a great finish for this very popular local tournament trail. The Berry’s Team Tournament Trail is split equally between Lake Oconee and Lake Sinclair and runs from early December into May each year. Berry’s also has a fall tournament each year that runs from September till November and separate fall trails are run for Lake Sinclair and Lake Oconee.  

The 2020 fall series is already posted on the website. For more information on these tournament trails call Bobby Berry at 770-787-6179 or visit their website at www.berrysbass.com. 

Good fishing and see you next week.  

—Outdoors columnist Bobby Peoples can be reached at brpeoples995@gmail.com.