Neal’s Tennessee Waltz with Greatness

Chasing the elusive “W” begins at Guntersville for the Tennessee pro

The foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains wrap around Lake Chickamauga like a glove. Grey in the morning, green in the afternoon and blue everywhere in between, their hues are a familiar sight for serious bass anglers hunting trophy bass in the depths of the Tennessee River, a signal that you’ve arrived in bass heaven, at a lake on a river that owns a reputation for lunker largemouths.

Here on Chickamauga, you’ll see 5-pound and bigger bass by the boatload. You’ll see those ever-present foothills, and if you look closely at just the right moment, you’ll see a young computer science major working the boat docks. That would be Michael Neal, the sixth-year FLW pro who finished eighth in the AOY standings in 2016.

Neal grew up on these waters, learning to fish the Tennessee River’s ledges and grass mats first as a boy, then as a college student at nearby Bryan College and now as one of the youngest, hottest FLW Tour pros on the circuit.

They call him, “The Real Deal.” But for the past three months, Neal has been without a boat.

“I haven’t had one since the end of the Norris [FLW Tour Invitational] tournament in late October,” he crackles over a cellphone. “Because of that, I’ve bass fished very little.”

As the year’s first Tour tournament gets set to blast off, Neal is re-arming himself with a new boat, and preparing mentally and physically for the two-hour trip south from his home at Chickamauga to Alabama’s Lake Guntersville. There, the landscape looks much the same. The Blue Ridge foothills lap up another Tennessee River reservoir in their southernmost reaches.

But 90 miles downstream from his boat docks in Tennessee, the stakes at Alabama are set high. At Guntersville, Neal will need to shake his offseason rust, and he’ll need to finish strong if he wants to make history.

“The first tournament of the year really sets the bar for the rest of the year,” he says. “It’s the most important tournament of the year for me. Last year, I started off by finishing in fourth place at Okeechobee, and that really helped my confidence for the rest of the year.”

Neal says that, thanks to the Okeechobee finish, he felt more focused in 2016. He says he feels hopeful about Guntersville, too. That the old Alabama standby can provide that same focus this year, that he has two wins in T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League events on the lake and that he has an intimate knowledge of Tennessee River reservoirs buoys his confidence there.

But confidence, for Neal, hasn’t always come easy. Despite a successful 2016 campaign, despite being one of the hottest young anglers on the circuit, and despite years of cutting it close, Michael Neal has yet to win a major FLW Tour title.

Since joining FLW’s top ranks in 2012, Neal has come tantalizingly close to taking home major crowns. He’s finished third at Tour events on Okeechobee and Chickamauga, second (twice) at Pickwick, and second at last year’s Forrest Wood Cup at Wheeler Lake, a waterway that’s a stone’s throw away from Guntersville.

Neal is, undoubtedly, a force to be reckoned with – especially on the Tennessee River – but the pressure of his constant, flirtatious dance with greatness has taken its toll. And, for a while, that toll was almost crippling.

“I’m not going to lie,” he says. “It’s something I do think about at times. Anytime somebody brings up the Pickwick tournaments, it stings a little. In 2015, I barely made the Cup (he finished 31st in the AOY rankings). I realized that if I had performed just a little worse in any single tournament, I wouldn’t have made it. That’s when I decided I had to reevaluate. I had a serious talk with myself the night after that Cup.”

For Neal, reevaluating meant learning to put the past behind him. It meant finding a silver lining in sudden losses and near misses.

“When you think about that kind of stuff, it usually messes with you more than it helps,” says Neal. “I really feel that mentality is at least 75 percent of fishing. That kind of stuff is going to happen, and now I just try not to think about it. When I think about it [finishing second] at the Cup, it doesn’t bother me like the Pickwick tournaments did. I learned from what happened in the past. Sometimes, all you can do is fish clean and do your best and enjoy it all.”

Neal swears he tries to take each tournament step-by-step. That means no looking ahead. But, if pressed, he’ll confess that he’s most optimistic about upcoming stops at the Potomac River, at the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wis., and, first up, at Guntersville.

“They’re all places where I can fish off the bank a little bit,” he says. “They’re all places where I can use a swim jig or a ChatterBait, and I like to do that.”

Neal has, of course, scouted the first lake of 2017. And based on his Tennessee River knowledge, he expects to cover a ton of Alabama water Feb. 2-5 with lipless crankbaits in search of that elusive, but productive winter school.

“Chickamauga and Guntersville have a lot of similarities,” he notes. “In the winter, when the water goes down, we have very little grass [at Chickamauga]. Guntersville keeps a good stand year-round, but as far as depth ranges and prespawn and postspawn patterns, the lakes are pretty similar. When I went down to check out Guntersville, it was before a bad cold front and the snow that came through in mid-January. That could make for a lake with a lot of bad water, but that means when you find them, it’s going to most likely be a pretty good school of fish.”

Two hours from home, under the shadows of the same mountains that he’s watched for most of a young lifetime, Michael Neal will have to find those schools.

“There is some pressure there, with Guntersville being almost like a second home lake to me,” he says.

Now, on the heels of a brand new season, Neal says he’s ready to handle the pressure. And if he can find those schools, he can start that new season strong. He can take the lead in his dance with greatness and – just maybe – catch a championship to bring back home.