Thirteen-year-old Lowell Turner, an eighth-grader at Chariho Middle School, caught only one bass last Saturday, but it was a lunker. The 6.6-pound largemouth was the largest bass Turner has ever caught, and it was big enough to win the National Guard Junior World Championship and a $5,000 college scholarship.

“It’s just hitting me now,” said Turner, three days after returning from Columbia, S.C., with his Friday-night fishing partner, Dana Cushman, his mom. The team fishes in a summer series in which Turner had caught his previous personal record, a 4-pound, 8-ounce largemouth, on Watchaug Pond, near their home in Bradford.

Forty-eight anglers competed in the qualifying round of the National Guard event on South Carolina’s Lake Monticello. Turner caught the only fish among Northeast anglers, and that gave him a berth in the championship the next day.

“The next day was kind of cloudy, and the wind was up more,” Turner recalled. “I was fishing with Ramie Colson,” a pro from Cadiz, Ky.

Colson coached Turner about where and how to present his lure, a Strike King Red Eye. The color was Sexy Shad.

Nothing was biting.

Then Turner spotted a fish feeding along the shore. He saw the bass chasing after some smaller fish.

“When it jumped, it looked like a decent fish,” he said. “I thought I might need that fish by the end of the day, so I did what I had to do to catch it.”

His presentation was on target, and the fish nailed the lure.

“It took me around the boat a couple of times,” Turner said. When the largemouth got close, Colson saw that it had only one hook in its lower jaw, and he worried aloud that the lure might come loose.

Next to the boat, the fish sounded, and Turner loosened the drag on his reel.

“That’s probably the reason I didn’t lose the fish,” he said. “My drag had been too tight.”

He cranked the bass back to the surface and Colson netted it.

That was the first and last strike of the day.

“I am totally shocked right now,” Turner said at the weigh-in. “I only had one bite all day, and that was the fifth cast I made this morning. It just happened to be huge. This was by far the biggest fish that I have ever caught.

“Ramie taught me key spots where to fish and how to present a bait. I really learned a lot throughout this whole experience.”

Nikolas Autrey of Port Angeles, Wash., finished second in the 11-to-14 age group. He caught five fish weighing 5 pounds, 10 ounces.

Kyle Raymer, 17, of Brandenburg, Ky., won the 15-to-18 age group, fishing with Team National Guard pro Scott Martin of Clewiston, Fla.

Held in conjunction with the $2-million Forrest L. Wood Cup on nearby Lake Murray, the National Guard Junior World Championship awarded $42,000 in scholarships and youth-program grants to the top six competitors in both divisions.

More information about both events is available online at http://tbf.flwoutdoors.com

tmeade@projo.com