CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – Lake Chickamauga and neighboring Nickajack Lake hosted an instant classic at O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 4 Presented by OPTIMA Batteries. The epic battle and clutch final moments from Jake Lawrence and Jacob Wheeler will be hard to top the rest of the season, but there were many other great moments from the event.
This event had something for everyone, with many different ways to catch them and some excellent Tennessee bass fishing. Here’s a closer look at how the top pros caught them at Stage 4.
1. Jake Lawrence – 83-2 (27)
In just his fourth regular-season event, Lawrence has already created one of the most memorable moments of the seven seasons of the Bass Pro Tour. His last-second 5-pound, 9-ounce buzzbait bass was incredible, but the Tennessee River expert was excellent all week. He narrowly missed winning the group on Chickamauga and continued his run to the event’s final moments on Nickajack.
Unlike the offshore ledge fishing he employed on Chickamauga, Lawrence went shallow on Nickajack to target bass feeding on bluegill in the Mullins Creek area of the lake.
“I was targeting those bluegill eaters in extremely shallow water, between 10 and 14 inches deep,” Lawrence said. “It was either spawning bluegill or just hanging around in the middle of a hole in the eelgrass. It was tough to find those holes, so you had to keep your trolling motor on high to look for them, but once you found one, it was almost guaranteed you’d catch a bass.”
To target these bass, he went with a 3/8-ounce Buckeye Lures Buzzerk buzzbait with a Frog Factory Ribbit Frog in American bullfrog on the back. He also utilized a green pumpkin Yamamoto D-Shad or 5-inch Yamamoto Senko.
Lawrence targeted roaming fish and some guarding fry during his allotted forward-facing sonar period each day on Nickajack.
“I was using a jerkbait, Big Bite Baits Nekorama on a Neko Rig, and a 3-inch Yamamoto Scope Shad on a 1/4-ounce head,” he said. “The key there seemed to be speed. They wanted things working fast, so the Scope Shad on the heavier head allowed me to fish quickly.”
2. Jacob Wheeler – 77-15 (27)
Wheeler was all in on the Nickajack smallmouth after trying his hand at largemouth during practice. If not for Lawrence’s last-minute heroics, he would have won it with bronzebacks, but he still had yet another stellar finish.
“I went there during practice and spent a half of my time on the lower end, but didn’t feel like the largemouth were grouped up enough for me to win the tournament there,” he said. “I saw some spawning fish, but never got in a groove down there and spent the last part of my practice on the upper river section. I felt like the smallmouth were much more grouped up on certain spots, putting the law of averages in my favor.”
Wheeler looked for traditional moving water clues like current seams and breaks from rocks. He caught them on several lures, including two massive Tennessee River smallmouth on a Rapala PXR Jowler 127 in matte shad. That 6-2 and 4-7 came two minutes apart during the morning of the Knockout Round.
Besides the topwater flurry, Wheeler primarily employed a Rapala Crush City Freeloader in electric shad on a 1/4-ounce VMC Hybrid jighead and 1/2-ounce scrounger head.
“I was reeling the Freeloader on a scrounger, but also shaking it on the jighead when the current was a little slower in some places,” he said. “That was a good one-two punch for me.”
3. Cole Floyd – 48-14 (17)
Although he’d never fished Nickajack before the Knockout Round, Cole Floyd has plenty of TVA experience and has found success throughout the chain.
“I’ve never been there before, but I’ve spent plenty of time this time of year fishing the other lakes,” he said. “I spent all of my practice time on Chickamauga, and this sounds crazy, but I never touched a rod and re-tied anything when we switched to Nickajack. I did the same stuff on both lakes.”
The “stuff” he was doing was fishing in shallow bars on both fisheries.
“I was targeting those places in 3 feet of water or less,” he said. “I was looking for high percentage areas, places like channel bends, or where a creek would dump into the main river. That was the key, and it was all main river-related, and I didn’t mess around with the secondary places.”
His top baits were all shad imitators: a Strike King Sexy Dawg in bone, a 1/2-ounce white Strike King Thunder Cricket with a Strike King Z-Too as a trailer, and a Strike King Red Eye Shad lipless in the oyster color.
4. Ron Nelson – 42-7 (15)
When the venue switched to Nickajack, Ron Nelson ran straight to the dam, which had plenty of current coming into the lake. It worked well enough for him to advance to the Championship Round, but increased flow on the final day forced him to make a move.
“The last day, the current was too much, and I knew the fish were being flushed down further to where Wheeler was fishing,” he said. “I couldn’t hold in the current up closer to the dam to fish those current breaks and little high spots the fish were on the first day. I didn’t practice Nickajack, so I ran way down the lake and started fishing the edges of grass flats since I knew they were pulling water, and that’s where the fish should be.”
Nelson kept it simple for baits with a shad colored 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer ChatterBait with a matching Yamamoto Zako as a trailer.
5. Wesley Strader – 37-14 (15)
Nickajack Lake was a mystery to almost everyone in the Top 10, except Wesley Strader, who’s spent countless days on the fishery. He went into the final two rounds with two patterns in mind, and both worked.
“I started in the mornings with my one period for forward-facing sonar to target smallmouth up near the dam and then went down the lake to concentrate on largemouth in the grass,” he said. “The smallmouth stuff was gravel bars and little irregularities, and the fish were either still spawning or guarding fry. The largemouth areas were on those grass flats, and the best places seemed to have eelgrass with some coontail or hydrilla mixed in.”
His primary smallmouth bait was a 5-inch Zoom Winged Fluke in Tennessee Shad on a 1/8-ounce Big Daddy’s Baits Spotlighter Tungsten jighead. For the largemouth, it was a green pumpkin 3/8-ounce Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer ChatterBait with a Zoom Z-Craw Jr. in tilapia on the back. Strader also caught fish in the grass on a redbug Zoom Mag Ultravibe Speed Worm rigged on a 3/0 TroKar TK130 hook with a 1/16- or 1/4-ounce Epic Baits Tungsten weight depending on the depth he was fishing.
6. Michael Neal – 37-4 (12)
Although Michael Neal lives close and could be considered a local, his Nickajack experience was next to nothing. He said he had not been there in years and some of his trips there were as a child with his grandfather to troll.
Still, his vast Chickamauga experience got him to the final day, and he secured yet another Top-10 finish on the Bass Pro Tour.
“On Chick, I was targeting deeper schools on ledges, and when we went to Nickajack, I was fishing all main river stuff with eelgrass,” Neal said.
The two lakes were also different in his bait selection.
“The first two days, I primarily caught them cranking with a SPRO Fat Papa 70 in nasty herring,” he said. “I also caught some on a 6-inch Roboworm in red crawler on a drop-shot rig. At Nickajack, it was a dirty shad or green pumpkin shad 1/2-ounce vibrating jig with a Big Bite Baits Kamikaze Swimon trailer.”
7. Matt Becker – 29-9 (12)
Matt Becker, another Chickamauga Lake area pro, had limited prior knowledge of Nickajack but spent the final day of practice on the lake. This gave him a clue and two patterns to work with.
“That practice gave me a little bit of an idea of what was going on and one thing I found was a group of spotted bass and largemouth on the Nickajack Dam on the lower end,” he said. “That became my base, fishing the face of the dam around the lock, throwing a jerkbait and small swimbait. The secondary pattern was fishing shallow on flatter points with grass and sand spots mixed in.”
His shallow fish were caught with a bluegill colored OSP Louder popper as well as 5-inch Yamamoto Senko in various green pumpkin and watermelon colors Texas-rigged on a 3/O TroKar Pro-V Worm Hook.
“I went with the Texas rig instead of a wacky rig because I could work it almost like a fluke around the grass and then let it flutter back down,” he said. “It’s got a whole different action than a wacky rig that seemed to work better this week.”
8. Drew Gill – 25-9 (11)
When the event shifted to Nickajack, Drew Gill employed a bold strategy and spent nearly two full periods idling and scanning before making a cast in competition. This allowed him to scour for deeper beds and then return with his forward-facing sonar and catch them.
“I was looking for beds in 4 to 6 feet of water, and many of them were on isolated grass clumps,” he said. “Being isolated was important and not just a field of grass. Clean bottom around them was also critical; there was a lot of gravel and sand around those spawning areas.”
To target these fish, Gill used a Big Bite Baits Nekorama worm in the morning dawn and green pumpkin and rigged it on a drop-shot with a Size 1 Roboworm Rebarb hook and either a 1/8- or 1/4-ounce. A jerkbait also came into play during his forward-facing sonar time.
“I went with the 1/8-ounce drop-shot weight when I wasn’t using forward-facing sonar and just blind casting around, just to get me to slow down and feel the bottom more, and went with the heavier weight when I could see them,” he said. “If the fish acted spooky or funky and would ignore my worm, sometimes I could get one to react to a jerkbait fished just above their head. They would come up and slap at it and wouldn’t get hooked very well, but that allowed me to catch a few fish I couldn’t catch any other way.”
9. Justin Cooper – 21-12 (7)
Justin Cooper logged another Top 10 on the season and rose to eighth place in the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year race with the help of a vibrating jig and a Neko Rig.
“For the most part, everything I caught on Nickajack came on a 1/2-ounce Bass Pro Shops XPS ChatterBomb in the flamingo color with a white Bass Pro Shops XPS Super Shad on the back,” he said. “I was fishing grass and main river ledge-type stuff. Some were current breaks along that ledge or behind islands, but they were sitting in that grass.”
Cooper also employed a Neko Rig with a Bass Pro Shops Cut Tail worm in watermelon candy with red flake rigged on a Size 1 Owner Stinger hook with a 3/32-ounce Epic Tungsten nail weight inserted into the bait.
“I was fishing it on a roadbed during my forward-facing sonar period and was able to catch a 5-6 doing that on Nickajack,” he said. “That was the same setup I used at Chickamauga and got me to the Knockout Round.”
10. Justin Lucas – 15-8 (6)
Alabama’s Justin Lucas had Lake Chickamauga figured out better than anyone and won the automatic qualification to the Championship Round after catching 127 pounds over two days. He went with a traditional ledge approach and mixed in some bedding bass to boost his total weight.
“It was standard Tennessee River ledge fishing, targeting 12 to 18 feet of water with a deep diving crankbait and a Neko Rig,” he said. “I was fishing the Neko with a green pumpkin Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Magnum Hit Worm. When I was fishing for bedding fish, it was a wacky-rigged Berkley MaxScent The General in green pumpkin, and I was also throwing a Berkley Powerbait Maxscent Creature Hawg in sprayed grass on a Texas rig.”
At Nickajack, Lucas decided to head to the dam first and try his hand in the current, but he never found active fish, so he ran down the lake in search of something else.
“I tried catching them on the deep crank but only caught one scoreable bass, so I went shallow at the end and caught what I caught on a vibrating jig in the last hour and a half,” he said.