OCONEE COUNTY, S.C. — It’s not every Bass Pro Tour event that we see a true fight for the Qualifying Round win. Often, one angler builds a sizable lead, and the other contenders concede the automatic trip to the Championship Round; or, the top Day 1 performers decide it’s more advantageous to explore new water instead of burning bass.
But all the pros who got near the top of SCORETRACKER® during Day 2 at O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 2 Presented by Lowrance on Lake Hartwell vocalized a desire to win the round. Ultimately, it turned into a two-man showdown between Takahiro Omori and Justin Lucas. Seemingly every time Lucas caught a scorable bass to get close to the lead, Omori answered with one of his own. Omori wound up with one more scorable bass and 9 more ounces, finishing with a two-day total of 88 pounds, 3 ounces on 31 scorable bass compared to 87-10 for Lucas.
As a result, Omori will advance straight to Sunday’s Championship Round, where he’ll hope to claim his first career Bass Pro Tour trophy. Lucas and the rest of the Top 25 finishers will return to the water with weights zeroed for Saturday’s Knockout Round.
Complete results can be found here.
Omori looking to pounce on prespawn opportunity
Getting official confirmation that he’d won the round prompted a fist pump from the normally stoic Omori. The dyed-in-the-wool power fisherman understands that opportunities for him to win while fishing his way don’t come around too often. This marks his first Top 10 in almost two years, since REDCREST 2024 on Lay Lake.
“This is the only time of the year I might get to out-fish those guys (who use forward-facing sonar),” said Omori, who hasn’t bothered unlocking his forward-facing sonar transducers through two days of competition. “Because the prespawn fish are coming back to the shallows.”
Hartwell is best known for its prolific spotted bass population, but 30 of Omori’s 31 scorable bass have been largemouth. He’s looking for dirty water in shallow pockets way up a river and using his trademark casting accuracy to pick apart any cover he can find – the exact type doesn’t seem to matter.
“Shallow stuff, whatever I see,” Omori said when asked what he’s been targeting. “Boat docks, laydown trees, brushpiles, whatever. Just power fishing shallow.”
Omori, who started the day about 4 1/2 pounds back of Day 1 leader Ott DeFoe, slipped to sixth after a slow first period. But as the near-80-degree air temperatures warmed the shallow water, his bite kept getting better. Around the midpoint of Period 2, Omori caught a 6-1 largemouth – easily his biggest of the event so far – to take the lead. He would only relinquish it for a few seconds the rest of the way.
“I was expecting to catch them all day,” Omori said. “For some reason this morning I had a couple of missed bites, and I only caught two in the first period. All those forward-facing sonar guys catch them so good, so I had to catch up later.”
As he kept getting updates that Lucas was closing in, Omori found himself away from his best area. There are only so many places that have the ingredients he’s looking for, and they’re spread apart, so he didn’t want to waste time running there. Still, he managed to catch three key scorable bass in the last 35 minutes. After totaling 40-12 Friday, Omori is the only angler in the field to top 40 pounds on both Days 1 and 2.
“I was not in the best area,” he said. “I kind of ran out of places to fish. But I made it up all right.”
Omori seems pretty committed to his game plan. He told MLFNOW! viewers that he’d rigged up eight identical rods Friday. But he left open the possibility that he could tweak his strategy a bit on Championship Sunday, when it’s supposed to get colder and windier.
“Who knows?” he said. “I’ve got all day tomorrow to think about it.”
Lucas dialing in his pattern
Lucas didn’t start Friday with any aspirations of contending for the Qualifying Round win. His Day 1 total of 26-0 had him inside the Lucas Oil cut line, but not by much, so his primary objective was just to ensure his spot in the Knockout Round.
It didn’t take him long to check that box. Like most of the field, Lucas opted to use his one period with forward-facing sonar during Period 1 and caught nine scorable bass for 25-5. He didn’t make any strategic shift from Day 1, when he caught four for 10-4 during his ‘Scope period. Lucas said he “just fished better.” That gave him a lot more breathing room over the cut and allowed him to run new water in Periods 2 and 3.
“I caught so much weight, I felt like I was good,” Lucas said. “And so I just went practicing and started catching a lot of fish.”
Despite changing tactics after locking up his transducers, Lucas kept his momentum rolling. A five-fish flurry late in Period 2 put him just 1 ounce back of Omori entering the final period. He wound up totaling 12 scorable bass for more than 35 pounds without forward-facing sonar. His Day 2 total of 61-10 is the best by any angler so far during the event.
Lucas attributed his big day to continuing to fine-tune his pattern. He said it’s impossible to break down a fishery the size of Hartwell in just two days of practice. Over the course of the Qualifying Round, he’s slowly zeroed in on the right areas of the lake, the right cover and the right baits.
“I’m just eliminating a lot of water, getting dialed in on what the exact pattern is with the fish,” he explained.
While Lucas would have loved to skip the Knockout Round, his grasp of that pattern has him excited entering the weekend. He said he “feels a lot better about the tournament right now than I did this morning.” He’s also not concerned about a potential weather shift hurting his bite, although he knows the bass swimming in Hartwell’s clear water can be fickle.
“My confidence is very high right now,” he said. “I feel good about it. But I also know how quickly things can change. I still have to go out there and catch their freakin’ butts tomorrow.”
What’s next at Stage 2
Aside from Omori, the rest of the Top 25 will return to the water with blank slates Saturday for the Knockout Round. The top nine finishers there will then join Omori in the Championship Round, where $125,000 will be on the line for the angler who can amass the heaviest single-day total.
Watch all the action unfold on the MLFNOW! livestream at MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MLF and MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) apps and the Major League Fishing channel on Rumble. The stream begins at 7:30 a.m. ET and ends at 4 p.m. each day.
Other notes:
Drew Gill’s winning streak has officially come to an end. After he took the trophy at the season-opening events for both the Bass Pro Tour and Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit, Gill finished 33rd on Hartwell with a two-day total of 41-7. That also snaps a streak of 31 consecutive events at which Gill had cashed a check dating back to Stage 2 of his rookie BPT season on Santee Cooper in 2024.
Keith Carson caught the Berkley Big Bass of the day and the biggest fish of the tournament so far with a 7-10 largemouth. That lunker helped power a 42-2 day for Carson – the second-best of anyone Friday, behind only Lucas. He started the day in 40th place and vaulted all the way to 12th.
Carson made the biggest rally, but he wasn’t the only angler to start the day below the Lucas Oil Cut Line and move into the Top 25. Six anglers did so in total, including Nick Hatfield and Fletcher Shryock, both of whom caught 4-pounders in the final 30 minutes to seal their spots in the Knockout Round.