GROVE, Okla. — Jake Lawrence took to Grand Lake for the second day of qualifying at Zenni Stage 6 Presented by Toyota torn about whether to catch all the weight he could in an effort to win the Qualifying Round, or scout for new spots in preparation for the weekend.
Turns out, he was able to do both.
After he built a big Day 1 lead, no one ever really challenged Lawrence’s spot atop SCORETRACKER®. He added 15 scorable bass weighing 42 pounds, 2 ounces on Friday, bringing his two-day total to 154-9. That topped Mark Rose and James Elam by more than 37 pounds, easily earning Lawrence an automatic trip to Sunday’s Championship Round, where he’ll look to win his second event in as many years on the Bass Pro Tour.
Full results can be found here.
Lawrence earns extra Championship Round prep
Fishing his 16th career Bass Pro Tour event, Lawrence has often remarked how stressful the every-fish-counts format and live scoring can be. Friday was the first time he didn’t have to sweat over every bass that hit SCORETRACKER® – a nice change of pace, especially after a largely frustrating 2026 season.
“It was really nice for everybody to kind of lay up,” Lawrence said. “My strategy worked in the sense that I was able to get far enough ahead, stay far enough ahead to where it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense for anybody to try. So, it was one of the most stressless BPT days I’ve had.”
Elam used a strong first period to pull within 17 pounds, but Lawrence answered with four scorable bass totaling 11 pounds in the final 20 minutes of the frame. After that, no one really made an effort to run him down.
That allowed Lawrence to use the third period – when he elected to utilize forward-facing sonar – to look for new groups of offshore bass and revisit schools he’d located during practice. While he didn’t catch much during Period 3 (by design), Lawrence said he “felt like he gained a lot of knowledge.”
“I was able to hold off on my forward-facing period until the third just hoping I would have the freedom to go look around,” he explained. “And I did find one new group and kind of eliminated another group – spent a lot of time looking for one that I lost touch with, and I think I’m just going to kind of write that one off. I’ve got four or five groups that I really want to kind of focus in on.”
Then again, Lawrence knows that many of his pursuers got even more practice time Friday than he did. While that’s always valuable in BPT events and especially so for anglers scanning for offshore schools, Lawrence noted that Grand has been changing fast with high, dirty water flowing through the fishery, and he expects that to continue over the next two days. So, there’s no guarantee anything he (or anyone else) learned today will hold up come Sunday.
“There’s a lot of change going on,” he said. “It’s a major creek that I’ve really been living in the whole week, and it’s been really clean for Grand right now. And yesterday afternoon, things were changing in there – a lot of mud kind of blew in. I bet half the creek is muddy today. And so that is a little concerning. But it could change and clean up just as fast as it got muddy.”
Having already secured his first Top 10 of the regular season and put himself in a much better position to requalify for 2027, Lawrence can fish free of pressure on Championship Sunday. As is often the case in summertime, offshore events, he expects timing his rotation of spots to be key. Between his wealth of experience competing on the Tennessee River and beyond this time of year and his dominance so far on Grand, he should be as strong a candidate as any to take the $125,000 top prize.
“I’m really confident,” he said. “I know we’re going to go get some bites. It’s just a matter of timing. Getting one of those schools to yourself at the right moment is absolutely crucial in this, and somebody is going to do that once if not two or three times on Sunday. That’s going to be the determining factor in who wins the event.”
What’s next at Stage 6
Aside from Lawrence, the rest of the Top 25 anglers will return to Grand with weights zeroed for Saturday’s Knockout Round. The top nine finishers there will join Lawrence in the Championship Round.
Watch all the action through Sunday on the MLFNOW! livestream from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. CT at MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MLF and MyOutdoorTV apps and the Major League Fishing channel on Rumble.
Other Notes:
Since the Bass Pro Tour limited anglers to one period per day using forward-facing sonar prior to the start of the 2025 season, most pros have opted to use the technology during the first period regardless of the time of year or fishery. On Grand, however, the vast majority have opted to wait until Period 3. Thirty-two of the 51 anglers used forward-facing sonar in Period 3 on Friday after 36 did so on Thursday. Interestingly, it hasn’t seemed to boost catch rates. According to SCORETRACKER Insider™, just 26.4% of the total weight caught by the field has come with forward-facing sonar on and used.
It looks like the race for the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year title is going to come down to a one-on-one battle. Zack Birge entered Stage 6 with a one-point lead over Jacob Wheeler, and both anglers made the Knockout Round with ease. Meanwhile, the anglers who entered in third and fourth – Drew Gill and Justin Lucas – both missed the cut. Spencer Shuffield made the Knockout Round and still has an outside shot, but after arriving at Grand 34 points back of Birge, he would need a lot to break his way. Look for Wheeler and Birge to fight for every spot on SCORETRACKER® this weekend.
Five anglers moved from below the Lucas Oil Cut Line at the start of the day into the Top 25. Brent Ehrler put together the most dramatic rally. The California pro totaled 67 pounds even on 24 scorable bass – the best day of anyone in the field – to climb from 37th place at the start of the day to eighth. That marks his sixth made cut in eight BPT events on the year. Other anglers who rallied to make the Knockout Round were Jesse Wiggins, Todd Faircloth, Wesley Strader and Ron Nelson. Wiggins also caught the Berkley Big Bass of the day, a 5-12.