OCALA, Fla. — Jeff Sprague had no intention of taking the top spot on SCORETRACKER® during Group B’s second day of qualifying at Kubota Heavy Hitters Presented by Bass Pro Shops. But, in his words, “it got kind of silly there for a few minutes,” and the Texan took advantage.
Sprague found a fresh group of Orange Lake bass Tuesday afternoon and stacked up 37 pounds, 1 ounce on eight scorable bass. That brought his two-day total to 74-4, which earned him the Qualifying Round win for Group B – narrowly topping Mark Davis and Marshall Hughes, who totaled 73-6 and 72-7, respectively.
Meanwhile, the star of the group’s first day on the water, Michael Neal, picked up right where he left off. Less than 5 minutes after lines in, Neal caught a 9-8 lunker on a topwater walking bait. While he didn’t catch another scorable bass for the rest of the day, that was enough to earn his second $10,000 Berkley Big Bass prize in as many days on Orange Lake. Neal caught the biggest bass of the event so far, an 11-0, on Sunday.
Weights will zero overnight, then the top eight finishers from each of Group A and Group B will come together for Wednesday’s Knockout Round. They’ll not only fish for 10 spots in the Championship Round but $30,000 for whoever catches the biggest bass.
Full results can be found here.
Sprague keeps Heavy Hitters mojo rolling
Sprague took the water Tuesday morning with a plan and executed it to perfection.
After starting the day in third place, he figured he’d need to catch three or four scorable bass to assure himself a spot in the Knockout Round. He did just that in the first period, revisiting an area that produced for him on Sunday and catching four scorables for 14-2.
Then, he spent the rest of the day exploring new water. During the second period, he stumbled upon a zone loaded with biting bass. Sprague purposely avoided trying to catch all he could from the area, but as he made a few casts to get a feel for the boundaries of the productive stretch, he kept getting bit. He added four more bass during the period, including a 6-7 and an 8-5.
“It was just one of them deals where you can’t do anything wrong,” he said. “I was trying to get out of there, and just every now and again, I’d make a cast. And it seemed like when I made a cast, then I’d catch another bass. It’s a 6, and then it’s an 8. I didn’t intentionally catch those fish to try and win the round. That was a new area to me, and those were new fish, so that’s kind of how that panned out.”
No surprise, Sprague is excited to revisit that spot during the Knockout Round and see just how productive it can be. Given how small Orange Lake is fishing with its water level low, having multiple areas to turn to could give him an edge.
“Just having the confidence to know that the fish are in the area,” he said when asked what he learned Tuesday. “And here’s the thing: I think that there’s so many fish condensed right now at any given moment that new fish are coming to some of these areas. We’re pricking some, they’re moving around, and then there’s some more fish coming in there.”
Sprague is optimistic for the Knockout Round, not just because of the new area he found but how he was catching those fish. After he didn’t land a bass over 6 pounds on Day 1, he made a bait adjustment in an effort to appeal to some of the giants that live in Orange Lake. Three of his eight scorable bass Tuesday topped 6 pounds.
“I think I’ve got a little bit of a different bait, and I’m fishing a little bit differently,” Sprague said. “I’m not winding fast, and I’m not just flipping. I’m kind of dragging a big, bulky bait around.”
Seeing Sprague near the top of SCORETRACKER® at Heavy Hitters is nothing new. He’s now made the Knockout Round at each of his five Heavy Hitters appearances. Twice, including last year at Smith Mountain Lake, he’s qualified for the Championship Round and caught the $100,000 Berkley Big Bass on the final day.
Sprague attributes his Heavy Hitters success to his understanding of big bass honed during a lifetime of fishing in Texas. While he knows better than to “put the cart in front of the horse,” that’s another reason he’ll be confident when he returns to the water Wednesday.
“I like the areas and the lakes that they take us to for the Heavy Hitters,” he said. “Growing up in Texas and catching big bass, Florida-strain bass, it just falls into place for what we’re doing here. I feel like it falls into line to the way I like to fish.”
Back-to-back Berkley Big Bass for Neal
Neal enjoyed his best day ever for catching big bass on Sunday, when he caught the biggest bass of his life (the aforementioned 11-pounder) to go along with an 8-pounder and four more over 6. Those bass all came from the same area, but he opted to start Tuesday “on the complete opposite end of the lake.”
It didn’t seem to matter. On one of his first few casts of the morning, a giant largemouth jumped clear out of the water to eat his topwater bait. After a rodeo that at one point saw the fish jump on the opposite side of the boat from where Neal was fighting it, he landed it and set a big bass bar that wouldn’t be topped.
“That was about as bad a job as you could ever imagine,” Neal said with a chuckle. “If you write a script on how to not land a bass, that was pretty much it. But I was fortunate; it had the whole bait in its mouth and had a couple of the hooks. So, it definitely wasn’t going anywhere. I had to get the pliers to get it off.”
Neal hadn’t fished the area that produced the lunker before. He located the sneaky spot by using the new Power-Pole VISION units that are installed on the league-issued boats for this event to access Google Earth.
“Anytime you’re in Florida, when you look around and there’s not another competitor within sight, typically that’s a bad sign,” he said. “And there was not another tournament boat anywhere remotely close to me. … There was a depression there I saw with the Power-Pole VISION, Google Earth, and I was just following that depression. That was the only bite I had there.”
Starting the day well clear of the Lucas Oil Cut Line, that bass quickly achieved Neal’s main objective for Tuesday. He spent the rest of the day continuing to explore new water. While it wasn’t by design that he never caught another scorable bass, he was at least able to eliminate water and zero in on his plan for the Knockout Round.
“I’m going to lean on the area where I caught them the first day way harder than anything else and probably never leave sight of there,” he said. “I feel like that will be my best option. Now, whether I get too antsy to do that – if I don’t catch a fish the whole period, something like that, then you probably gotta give. But I feel like my best chance of making it is to just hunker down in one area.”
Ehrler’s late rally ends Reese’s last event
For the second day in a row, the battle to finish inside the cut line came down to the wire and featured some clutch catches in the final minutes.
With 30 minutes left in Period 3, Brent Ehrler sat nearly 7 pounds back of eighth place, and he hadn’t caught a scorable bass for 2 1/2 hours. Yet Ehrler made a late move that resulted in three quick scorable bass, which pushed him to the right side of the cut. He then punctuated his comeback with a 4-13 in the final 5 minutes.
Ehrler’s late rally bumped his fellow Californian and traveling companion Skeet Reese out of the top eight, officially bringing Reese’s Hall of Fame career to an end. Reese was competing in his final national-level event after retiring following the 2025 Bass Pro Tour season.
Watch all the action during the Knockout and Championship Rounds on the MLFNOW! livestream from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET at MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MLF and MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) apps and the Major League Fishing channel on Rumble.