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Several Elite Series anglers spent much of this week's tournament in what anglers call a community hole, which can be defined as any well-known fishing spot that's used extensively by numerous anglers. Typically, community holes are spots where anglers can go and fish with a reasonable expectation of catching a couple of fish in a spot that's no secret to anyone. But during the Alabama Charge, one productive community hole supported five anglers who made Sunday's final: Cliff Pace (2nd) Steve Kennedy (3rd), Aaron Martens (6th), Shaw Grigsby (8th) and Edwin Evers (9th). The area, a backwater on the backside of an island that creates an eddy in the current, is well-known as a productive smallmouth hole just downstream from Wilson Dam. But this week it produced largemouth, too. And despite the number of anglers fishing the same general area of Pickwick Lake, which is an impoundment of the Tennessee River, there were no problems with anglers fighting over the same water. "It was a great week up there," Evers said. "There was no animosity between anybody." But it wasn't always easy to concentrate on fishing. "It was really hard not to see everybody catching fish," Evers said. "That made it really hard to focus, really hard to stay focused on what you were doing." The area consists of a large flat with water depths between four and 10 feet. Kennedy said it's a well-known spawning area for Pickwick's smallmouth bass, but that this week it held more largemouth than usual. The area has multiple rock piles and plays host to fish in various stages of the spawning cycle.
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