HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Bass Pro Shops REDCREST Presented by MillerTech is underway, and one of 50 anglers will walk away from Lake Guntersville with a $300,000 paycheck and a life-changing title. However, as the 50-angler field gathered for Wednesday’s pre-tournament festivities, the consensus seemed to be that whoever ultimately hoists the trophy hasn’t yet found the area and/or pattern that will produce said win.
Conditions are changing rapidly on Lake Guntersville, which should make for a dynamic, challenging event. While the winning baits and techniques will remain a mystery until Sunday, here’s what the competitors believe will be the biggest X-factors that will determine the champion.
1. Find a group of fish – and preferably more than one
Getting bites didn’t seem to be an issue during practice. Finding areas with a high concentration of bass might be more of a challenge.
Several anglers reported that they found spawning bass scattered around the shallows, but those fish aren’t very willing to bite and rarely in groups. With every bass over 2 pounds counting toward anglers’ total weights at this event, finding spots where they can stack up numbers in a hurry will be paramount to keeping pace on SCORETRACKER®. Michael Neal thinks that will mean finding staging areas where a fresh supply of both prespawn and postspawn bass are showing up.
“The winner of REDCREST will find a place where the fish are coming and going,” Neal said. “They’re going to catch a mixture of postspawn and prespawn fish.”
Alton Jones Jr., who has finished as the REDCREST runner-up in back-to-back years, said locating those sweet spots will be easier said than done. There might still be a few schools of bait-chasing bass that are susceptible to forward-facing sonar, but anglers are only permitted to use the technology for one of three periods each day – they’ll need to find something else, too. Plus, given the weather forecast and fishing pressure (more on those shortly), he doesn’t think one staging area can produce across three or four days.
“You’re going to have to find somewhere that you can catch them fish without your electronics, without your eyes, sight-fishing,” Jones said. “And it’s not easy to do. That’s kind of what I’ve looked for all week, and I haven’t found it yet.”
2. Adapt with the weather
Springtime tournaments are synonymous with volatile weather, and Guntersville is throwing just about every condition in the book at the 50 competitors.
Thunderstorms during practice flushed muddy water into the fishery, and more rain could be on the way. Even more impactful will be the wind, which blew hard out of the south all day Wednesday and is forecast to do the same during the first few days of competition. That will shift the swaths of floating grass in the lake, making certain areas difficult to fish. Plus, warming temperatures should encourage those bass that haven’t already done so to head to the banks.
“I think the water color is going to change in a lot of places,” Luke Clausen said. “It’s going to get muddy in some places, and (the wind) is going to blow some cool water into places. It’s going to change that water temperature and water color pretty drastically, the amount of wind we have and the different directions.”
Anglers will even have to negotiate something that won’t show up in most weather reports – pollen. As pollen saturates the water, it can render forward-facing sonar screens blurry and make spotting fish difficult to impossible.
“The final day, we’re supposed to get like inches of rain,” Jones said. “So, your visibility is going to get cut down. With the pollen, you’re not going to be able to ‘Scope that final day, because the pollen is sinking. So, you’re going to have to have something in your back pocket – possibly stuff that you’ve even saved that’s just completely different than what you’ve fished all week.”
3. Beat the pressure
With only 50 competitors taking the waters of a 75-mile impoundment, fishing pressure wouldn’t figure to be a problem. But Guntersville gets pounded by recreational anglers and local tournaments on a daily basis, meaning there’s no such thing as a sneaky spot.
Mark Daniels Jr. said that’s another thing anglers must keep in mind. Once someone shows off a productive area, it’s liable to be overrun with boats.
“(Whoever wins) will be very selective on how he fishes and where he fishes on which days, because not only do you have to think about the progression of the tournament and how things are playing out, you’ve got to fan control,” Daniels explained. “The locals want to fish some of these places that they see you fishing and catching fish. There’s a lot that you have to juggle. And so, the person that plays that mental game the best will have a great shot at winning.”
While the local pressure might be a headache for the competitors, Mark Davis believes it could make for a memorable winning pattern. He theorized that an angler who finds an unusual area or technique could make hay – and given the fact that there are no Fishing Clash Angler of the Year points up for grabs at REDCREST, more anglers might be willing to embrace that strategy.
“This lake is probably the heaviest-pressure lake that we’ve had REDCREST on,” Davis said. “The fish are pretty smart. I really think a guy who may do something kind of against the grain or out of the norm with our format being the 2-pound minimum could win.
“Ott (DeFoe) won (2021 Stage 1) on Rayburn in such a fashion. He went way up the river where all the locals don’t fish and caught a bunch of 2-pounders and won. You could see that happen here.”
Be part of the action
All four days of competition will be streamed live on MLFNOW! from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. CT each day at MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MLF and MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) apps and the Major League Fishing channel on Rumble. Additionally, the REDCREST Outdoor Expo will coincide with the event April 4-6 at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville. Admission is free – come check out the product showcase, interact with anglers and watch live interviews with the competitors each evening.