GUNTERSVILLE, Ala. — The eighth season of the Bass Pro Tour got off to a fun start at B&W Trailer Hitches Stage 1 Presented by Mercury on Lake Guntersville. While the temperatures were cold, the bite was hot, and many different techniques played. The event offered a mix of both forward-facing sonar and old-school power fishing, with many of the top performers sampling both throughout the week.
Here’s a deeper look at how the top finishes caught their fish on the legendary bass factory.
1. Drew Gill – 82-4 (28)
Now in his third season on tour, Drew Gill already has his third Bass Pro Tour win. The forward-facing sonar wizard relied on the technology each day but needed to catch them afterward to hold off runs from the rest of the Top 10 on the final day.
Each morning, Gill went to work with his electronics around a bridge.
“My main deal was fishing the minnow for fish that were related to baitfish,” he said. “Technically, it was a bridge, but it was more like a causeway because there was current flowing through like a dam with a hole through it that creates current and washes the bottom out. The fish were relating to the bottom and using the shallower water that was between 10 and 14 feet to attack baitfish as they were roaming around.”
His bait of choice was a 4.25-inch Big Bite Baits Spotlight Minnow in blue gizzard with a 3/16-ounce jighead with a 2/0 hook.
“I never exceed a 2/0 hook on that bait so it rolls correctly,” he said. “I also made short casts with it, no longer than 35-feet, to get that correct horizontal posture and would fish it pretty vertically. It was almost like ice fishing as I worked it up and away from them, and they would come up and kiss it and get the bait.”
After his forward-facing sonar period, Gill focused on shallow, main-river bars with vegetation present and caught fish on both a pro blue jerkbait and a crawfish-colored shallow diving crankbait.
“If I could find a break that was where a bar and flat broke off into the river channel with depths around 4 feet with the right taper, that was the sweet spot,” he said. “I went with a diving crankbait instead of a lipless because that’s my confidence when the water is cold. I could wind the bait down and make contact with the grass and then engage my reel to get it back down to where it needs to be, which helped me control my presentation really well.”
2. Jacob Walker – 80-15 (20)
Alabama’s Jacob Walker started his Bass Pro Tour career about as well as possible without taking the win. He won the Qualifying Round and earned an automatic berth to the Championship Round, caught big bass all week and nearly ran down Gill on the final day.
While the Bass Pro Tour regular season was new to him, he did fish last year’s REDCREST on Guntersville and approached it in a similar way.
“The beginning of the day, during my forward-facing sonar period, I started fishing the Browns Creek Bridge, like I did at REDCREST,” he said. “I have a ton of confidence there, but it got progressively worse in the week, and I think bass were leaving and heading shallow.”
His bait of choice was a 6-inch silver shiner Sakamata Shad from Deps paired with a 3/16-ounce Owner Range Roller jighead. Walker fished it on a custom-made rod by Angler’s Resource using a 7-foot, 2-inch Phenix K2 blank and Fuji components.
One added step he used for his baits was to soak them in BaitFuel for weeks in advance of the event.
“I put them in a waterproof container and soaked them, which adds scent, but also helps the action of the bait,” he said. “Soaking them helps to make them a little softer and also removes some of the glossiness of the color to make them look even more natural.”
The rest of the time, Walker fished a variety of vegetation – including hydrilla, milfoil, eelgrass, and lily pad stems – in the middle section of the lake.
“The main deal was to hit places where the grass changed, and you could hit multiple different grass transitions on the same cast,” he said. “I was fishing a 3/8- and 1/2-ounce fire craw Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer ChatterBait with a 4-inch Rapala CrushCity The Mayor.“
3. Jacob Wheeler – 75-4 (22)
For the most part, Jacob Wheeler spent the whole week with a 1/2-ounce Rapala Snare lipless crankbait in classic craw in his hands, and he caught plenty of fish with it. Another key lure was a green pumpkin 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer ChatterBait with a fire craw CrushCity Freeloader on the back. He did mix in some forward-facing sonar each day and made a furious rally at the end of the final day with some smallmouth bass far up the river, which nearly gave him a come-from-behind win.
“I think everybody felt that forward-facing sonar would be the dominant pattern, especially since this was a wintertime tournament,” he said. “When we started practice, I didn’t see the bait and bass floating around as I anticipated. It seemed like you could wind around and catch fish up shallow, so that’s what I committed to, and the majority of my fish were on the lipless for fish that had already started their prespawn deal.”
Wheeler looked for defined edges of the grass, ditches, and drains within them, focusing on the area around Goose Pond.
“If there was a lot of grass in areas, I was looking for places where it would taper out, and all types of vegetation seemed to be important,” he said. “Eelgrass was key, but milfoil was also good. It seemed like all types of vegetation were in play.”
His smallmouth area was what he described as an offshore Tennessee River school.
“I knew it didn’t have a lot of fish, and once you catch a few, you can only pull so many from the school until they stop biting,” he said. “Late on the final day, I knew I had to run up there to give it another shot. I caught some on the CrushCity The Mayor in pro blue red pearl, some on the 3.5-inch Mooch Minnow in gizzard shad and some on a jig. They were slack-lining it and hitting it so hard, and then they just stopped biting.”
4. Zack Birge – 65-12 (19)
Zack Birge backed up his third-place finish at REDCREST 2025 on Guntersville with another excellent showing. The ultra-consistant pro stuck shallow and primarily targeted vegetation with a lipless crankbait between Waterfront and Goose Pond.
“I ran around and fished really flat points that came off and fell off into deeper water, and the last day, I was targeting the main river and fishing the edges of hydrilla and eelgrass,” he said. “I caught them all week on a 3/8-ounce Yo-Zuri 3DB Vibe in phantom red with 16-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon on an Alpha Angler Mag Rebound rod. The final day, I mixed in a small red crankbait as well, but I kept it pretty simple all week.”
5. Banks Shaw – 63-14 (21)
Alabama pro Banks Shaw came into the event as one of the most highly anticipated rookies in Bass Pro Tour history and lived up to the hype with some stellar days on the water. He caught them quickly each morning during his forward-facing sonar time, but he more than held his own the rest of the day up shallow. If not for a freak boat fire to start his final morning, he may have come even closer to the win.
“The main thing all week was targeting bass on baitfish, whether it was grass, bluff walls, seawalls, or bridges,” he said. “I targeted those fish that were not far offshore, but all were around baitfish, and I was catching them with a 3.5-inch CrushCity Mooch Minnow in the green shad color on a 1/8-ounce VMC Tungsten jighead.”
When he wasn’t minnowing, he went shallow with a 1/2-ounce, translucent shad-colored lipless crankbait.
“I was fishing shallow bars and mainly targeted places with eelgrass,” he said. “It seemed like the best depth range was between 3 and 5 feet deep, but it just didn’t last for me through the tournament. I could catch a few fish doing that every day, but my main area dried up on me that last day.”
6. Justin Cooper – 49-12 (18)
The winner of last year’s season opener, Justin Cooper had another excellent start to the season and mixed in both forward-facing sonar and shallow grass fishing, just like he did in 2025 at Lake Conroe.
“I used my Garmin LiveScope for the first period, all four days,” he said. “Some fish were suspended, and others were crawling right along the bottom, but the key was a 3.25-inch XPS Rock’n Shad in Tennessee shad with a 3/8-ounce jighead. That’s a new size that will be out soon and is the little brother of the same bait I won Conroe with last year, the 4-inch version.”
The rest of the day, Cooper fished just like he would back home in Louisiana.
“I did the Louisiana and Texas thing and got in those little drains and deeper depressions in the grass where it was shallower on both sides,” he said. “Those bigger fish tend to be right in the center of it this time of year.”
In the grass, he went with a 5/8-ounce lipless crankbait and a 1/2-ounce XPS Chatterbomb vibrating jig in an orange and red color called flamin’ pumpkin. On the back of his vibrating jig, he went with a fire pumpkin Bass Pro Shops Super Shad.
7. Wesley Strader – 48-8 (17)
Last year’s REDCREST runner-up, Wesley Strader had another excellent finish on the Tennessee River. His main pattern was to fish much further up the river than most, targeting fish along the main channel.
“I was fishing grass edges with some current breaks, and it was a two-pronged approach with a 3/4-ounce lipless crankbait and a 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer ChatterBait,” he said. “I was using a red lipless and fire craw ChatterBait with a Zoom Z-Craw in tilapia magic on the back. The key was keeping those baits right on the edge of the break of the grass.”
Strader said each day that the bite slowed when the third period began, so he spent time in a backwater and fished the ChatterBait.
“I don’t know what happened in the afternoon; maybe it was less water running, but the main river bite just died each day,” Strader said.
8. Mark Daniels Jr. – 44-1 (17)
Alabama’s Mark Daniels Jr. had one of the simplest approaches of the Top 10 anglers, catching nearly every bass on the same lure and in one creek. Fishing close to the Goose Pond area, he stayed ultra-shallow in less than 3 feet of water as he waited for feeding windows that would allow him to rack up weight in a hurry.
“I did the same thing all four days, fishing shallow flats that had really healthy eelgrass in them with a lot of holes,” he said. “I used one bait all week – a 3/16-ounce Bill Lewis Mini Hammer Trap in both Rayburn red craw and fire craw. When they decided they were going to bite, it was off the hook, and you could catch a bunch really fast, and then the bite went dry.”
Aside from one bass on a vibrating jig and one more single fish on a soft plastic, everything else he caught during that tournament was on the lipless.
“That was it,” he said. “I would just keep moving around in that grass and try to be there and ready when they got active again.”
9. Chris Lane – 37-10 (12)
Guntersville native Chris Lane had another stellar event on his adopted home lake and caught them at a torrid pace in the Knockout Round. His bite slowed on the final day, but it was another Top 10 nonetheless. Lane stuck to shallow grass and shared that he fished nearly every section of the lake.
“I was looking for grass and hard spots in shallow water. I tried to stay in that 4-foot zone,” he said. “The main bait for the week was a Bass Pro Shops Chatterbomb with their Rock’n Shad as the trailer. Early in the week, it was green pumpkin, but later in the week, it went to more shad patterns. For stuff that was a little deeper, a shad-pattern Bass Pro Shops XPS Staredown jerkbait was really good.”
10. Keith Carson – 36-14 (11)
Each day, Carson got on a strong forward-facing sonar bite and would then leave and head far up the river to target shallow grass the rest of the day.
“I caught a bunch of fish with Lowrance ActiveTarget, throwing a jighead minnow at them,” he said. “The area I found had an old creek channel that would funnel baitfish through, and the bass would come through to feed.”
When he switched gears to the shallow bite, Carson targeted a big channel swing up the river.
“Upriver, I was fishing a Berkley Jack 7 lipless in firetail green craw and would also mix in a Berkley Stunna 112 in the stone cold color,” he said. “It was about a 300-yard stretch of grass, and I kept going back and forth until I could get one to eat.”