FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. — After racking up more than 75 pounds on Day 1, Michael Neal didn’t need to catch another bass during Group A’s second day of qualifying to maintain his spot atop SCORETRACKER® at B&W Trailer Hitches Heavy Hitters Presented by Bass Pro Shops. The Tennessee pro went ahead and added seven scorable bass for 22 pounds, 5 ounces anyway, bringing his two-day total to 98-3 to win the group’s Qualifying Round by nearly 25 pounds.
While Neal’s lead afforded him a stress-free day exploring new water on Smith Mountain Lake, plenty of drama unfolded further down the standings. Jeff Sprague and Nick Hatfield both put together huge days to rally from below the elimination line and qualify for the Knockout Round. Hatfield’s 17 scorable bass included a 5-6 largemouth that earned him $10,000 as the biggest bass of the day.
Meanwhile, the elimination line jumped all the way from 24-9 at the start of the day to 53-11 at lines out. With less than 20 minutes left, Cliff Crochet boated a 3-8 to leap past Bass Pro Tour stars Jacob Wheeler and Alton Jones Jr. and claim the final Knockout Round berth. He and the rest of the top eight finishers from the group will return to the water Wednesday, when the big bass of the day will be worth $30,000 and the Top 10 finishers will earn a trip to the Championship Round.
Full results can be found here.
Neal continues to dial in pattern
Neal spent the day trying to expand and refine the bite that produced his big Day 1. He started out fishing new banks in the same general area of the riverine upper end of the lake, trying to ascertain exactly how much room he’ll have to work with during the Knockout Round.
While he didn’t find much new productive water – he didn’t catch his first scorable bass until the final minutes of Period 1 – he was at least able to eliminate certain sections based on water temperature.
“I went out with the game plan just to expand basically as far away as I could and still do the same exact thing in the same general area,” he explained. “The water temperature was way different, way colder. No signs of a bait spawn or anything like that. … Just kept working my way closer to where I was and got about to where I really anticipated that it would start picking up again. The water temperature warmed up and started getting bit again.”
From there, Neal focused on dialing in his bait choice. Whereas he caught almost all his Day 1 weight on a spinnerbait, all but one of his scorable bass Monday ate topwater lures, primarily a frog and a buzzbait. He found that the amount of shade dictated the best presentation.
“I feel like the amount of shade that’s on the bank determines what bait you need to be throwing,” Neal said. “When you get in a bunch of shade, you need to be winding something, and when you get in them little pockets, that’s when a frog or a little popper – something that stays in place more – is coming into play. And that helps me, going into this next round, know when I can cover more water and when I can’t.”
Armed with that knowledge, Neal said he is “100% committed” to fishing the rest of the event in the zone that’s produced for him so far. While fishing pressure is a concern, he’s optimistic that the bass shouldn’t be leaving the area anytime soon – if anything, more should be coming to him.
“They’re on the main drag, on the steepest banks on the main drag, so really the only choice that they’ve got is to go suspend,” he said. “Otherwise, they have nowhere else to go as far as more toward a summer pattern.
“I know the fish are there, even for more than one boat, for somebody to win.”
$10,000 bass highlights Hatfield’s big day
For the first time through three days of competition on Smith Mountain, one angler claimed the entire $10,000 prize offered for the biggest bass of the day. Two anglers tied for the honor on the first day of qualifying for each of Group A and Group B, but Hatfield’s 5-6 topped a 5-4 from Fred Roumbanis on Monday to earn him a nice bonus.
Hatfield, who caught just five bass for 15-1 on Day 1 (all in the first period), didn’t make a major adjustment to stack up 55-14. In fact, he returned to the exact same point where he caught his fish two days prior. This time, though, he never left, and it produced all but one of his scorable bass on the day.
Hatfield caught quite a few of his fish with dragging presentations, but he always kept an eye out for bass busting on blueback herring on top of the point. It was when he spotted one of those feeding frenzies that he threw a swimbait to the commotion and hooked up with the 5-6.
“I saw it come up twice, and it looked like a pretty good-sized one, and I picked up a swimbait as quick as I could and threw it as far as I could, and I didn’t make like two or three cranks on the reel and it hammered it,” Hatfield said. “I knew when I hooked it it was a big one.”
Hatfield is hopeful the point will reload during his off day tomorrow and he can earn some more money there during the final two days of competition.
“I’ve got a few other places; I don’t think they’re near as good as that one,” he said. “I’m really hoping that nobody’s fishing that place in Group B and that it can kind of rest most of the day tomorrow. There’s so many fish there – there’s probably hundreds of them on that point. And I hope that it reloads. I mean, I hammered them pretty good today. I think that I’ll for sure be able to get some more bites off of it. I don’t know that it will be another 50-pound type of hole. So, I’m probably going to have to try and do something else or find somewhere else to lean on a little bit as well. But you never know – they could be coming to it, and it could be a magical little spot that I could win the whole thing off of.”
As good as Hatfield’s day was, he didn’t even have the biggest comeback of any angler in the group. Sprague boated 21 scorable bass for 63-4 and rocketed all the way from 13th place at the start of the day to second.
Sprague, who did just about all his damage on a bladed jig, rocketed out of the starting blocks. He caught the first scorable bass of the day less than 2 minutes after lines in and proceeded to amass 34-2 on 12 fish during the first period alone.
What’s next at Heavy Hitters
Tuesday will bring the final day of the Qualifying Round, as Group B returns to the water with eight more Knockout Round bids on the line. It should be another compelling fight to finish above the elimination line, as third through 10th place in the group are separated by less than 4 pounds after one day on the water.
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