HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The sixth edition of Bass Pro Shops REDCREST Presented by MillerTech on Lake Guntersville was another excellent event with an exciting final day. It included a nice variety of patterns, and all three of the major bass species played a role in a tournament that saw Dustin Connell win his third Major League Fishing championship.
Here’s a closer look at what the top finishers used to make it to the final day on Guntersville.
1. Dustin Connell – 87-11 (27)
Connell has cemented himself as one of the best closers in tournament fishing and knows how to show up for big events. Interestingly, this event saw him go against the grain. He avoided common thinking on Lake Guntersville and stayed clear of shallow grass.
“I knew if I was going to have a chance to win this event, I’d have to do something different,” he said. “I’m not a bed fisherman, and I also don’t like dragging baits around for spawners that I can’t see. I thought my best chance was to fish the current for smallmouth and largemouth and try to make that work.”
As the event continued, Connell dialed in his pattern below the Nickajack Dam, and the heavy rain and added current during the Championship Round played right into his hands. His two top baits were a Rapala CrushCity Freeloader in gizzard shad rigged on a 1/2-ounce scrounger head and a CrushCity Mooch Minnow in the same color on a 3/16-ounce VMC Redline Tungsten swimbait head.
“I switched to the scrounger and Freeloader when I saw some fish spitting up big shad, and when they quit biting, I went with the Mooch Minnow,” he said. “I was blindly shaking that bait along the wall; I never saw a fish I caught on forward-facing sonar all week.”
2. Wesley Strader – 79-6 (29)
Wesley Strader relied on his years of experience near Nickajack Dam, fishing waters in his home state of Tennessee. He nearly ran down Connell on the final day by mixing in shallow largemouth with plenty of smallmouth bass.
“That section of the lake is only an hour and 20 minutes from the house, and me and my dad always used to go down there to catch spotted bass and smallmouth; it’s a place where you can get a ton of bites,” he said. “The smallmouth fishing there is overlooked – especially on Guntersville with so many big largemouth – and in Tennessee waters, you can only keep one smallmouth, so they don’t get fished for as much.”
Strader fished all week with confidence and a clear vision of his next move, rotating through four or five key areas with a variety of different baits. One of his primary stretches was a bank full of smallmouth spawning or guarding fry.
“I saved different areas for different days but used that bank twice during the week, and one day, I caught 18 fish there, and 17 of them were smallmouth,” he said. “I used a 5-inch Zoom Winged Fluke in Tennessee Shad with a 1/8-ounce Big Daddy Spotlighter tungsten jighead. I had my forward-facing sonar on when I could but wasn’t using it because the fish were all closer to the bank around boulders.”
Strader also had a couple shallow, grassy zones that held largemouth, and he caught them with a 3/8-ounce green pumpkin Z-Man Ever Green Jack Hammer ChatterBait with a Zoom Z-Craw on the back, as well as a 3/8-ounce Epic Baits Swim Jig with a Zoom Super Speed Craw as the trailer.
“There were some spawning largemouth back there in the grass as well as some that were guarding fry,” he said. “I also caught some back there on a wacky-rigged Zoom Zlinky in green pumpkin with a 1/O TroKar TK137 hook. Earlier in the week, I also caught some on a pearl Berkley CullShad swimbait and flipping a green pumpkin tube with a TroKar TK190 hook and 5/16-ounce Epic Tungsten weight.“
3. Zack Birge – 44-12 (17)
Zack Birge secured his fourth Top-10 REDCREST finish, having previously finished fourth twice and sixth another time. This year, he primarily relied on a vibrating jig but also slowed down with creature baits and soft stick worms.
“I was fishing 3/8- and 1/2-ounce vibrating jigs with green pumpkins and watermelons for the trailers, just trying to keep it natural,” he said. “I fished them on a 7-foot, 6-inch Alpha Angler Mag-Rebound rod and 20-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon. I was focusing on hard spots where fish would stop to spawn; some were in little notches and pockets, and I also had a little ridge with a clean spot on top of it that produced quite a few fish for me.”
While Birge didn’t visually see many spawning beds, he focused on changes he saw at the bottom.
“I couldn’t see the fish, but you’d see the white spots and cast to them,” he said. “I also threw a Zoom Baby Brush Hog around and dragged it in these areas, and a Yamamoto Senko on a wacky rig caught a lot of fish for me, too.”
4. Paul Marks Jr. – 43-5 (15)
The only angler from the Top 10 not on the Bass Pro Tour roster, Phoenix BFL All-American champion Paul Marks Jr. had an excellent showing at REDCREST. Also a rookie on the Bassmaster Elite Series, Marks is a rising star in bass fishing, and he showcased his skills on Guntersville primarily by targeting spawning bass.
“I pretty much bed fished or fished around spawning bass all week,” he said. “When we could use forward-facing sonar, I targeted deeper beds I couldn’t see with my eyes in 4 to 10 feet of water. The rest of the time, I was fishing for ones I could see, and I had four or five coves around the city of Guntersville that had quite a few spawning bass in them.”
He rotated through three main baits: a Zoom Trick Worm in green pumpkin rigged on a Neko rig with a 2/O Gamakatsu finesse wide gap hook, a green pumpkin Zoom Ultravibe Speed Worm on a 5/O Gamakatsu round bend hook, and a Zoom Z-Craw Jr. in white.
“The Z-Craw was my main bed fishing bait, and I rigged it on a 5/O Gamaktasu flipping hook and 1/4- or 3/8-ounce weight,” he said.
5. Jake Lawrence – 38-10 (15)
Bass Pro Tour rookie Jake Lawrence continues to impress. He utilized his forward-facing sonar to target spawning bass during the one allotted period each day but switched gears to moving baits the rest of the time.
Lawrence fished a large portion of the lake, covering water from Mud Creek to Goose Pond on the upper section of the lake for spawning bass he could see with his eyes and from the Browns Creek to Siebold areas for his forward-facing sonar fish.
“It was a multi-faceted event, and I used my ‘Scoping period to target spawning bass I couldn’t see and roamers that were just moving along the bank,” he said. “I caught the vast majority of those on a new Yamamoto minnow that will be out at ICAST.”
He also looked for light-colored areas when visually casting to bass and said stealth was key.
“I was staying way back from those light spots and bombing a cast to them,” he said. “I knew they were spawning, but if you got anywhere close to them, they were much harder to catch. I was winding a little swimbait through those areas and a 3/8-ounce vibrating jig in green pumpkin shad with a Yamamoto Shad Shape Swimmer on the back. I went with the swimbait trailer to keep the bait higher, because there was a lot of grass in those places that came up to within 6 or 8 inches of the surface.”
6. Chris Lane – 38-10 (16)
Guntersville transplant Chris Lane dominated the event’s first two days, winning the Qualifying Round to punch his ticket to the final day. He did it by staying shallow with a power fishing approach.
“I was pitching white holes in the grass with a creature bait, a Bass Pro Shops XPS Log Father in tilapia magic, just doing what I love to do on Guntersville,” he said. “I caught a few on a swim jig, a few on topwater, but couldn’t get dialed into a consistent pattern besides the creature bait. I fished it on a 1/8-ounce XPS tungsten weight and 3/O Bass Pro Shops XPS Magna SuperLock hook.”
While he still caught a decent number on the final day, the heavy rain and changing conditions were part of the reason he didn’t have the same success as he’d had earlier in the event.
“The main areas I was fishing in the mid-section of the lake got blown out with all the rain,” Lane said. “I had to make some adjustments to try to find new areas with cleaner water. That was the key to my pattern.”
7. Brent Ehrler – 37-12 (14)
Brent Ehrler had another great showing in a big event. He used a two-pronged approach, including fishing for bedding bass and targeting those staging to spawn.
“I was sight-fishing and pitching to light spots with a wacky rig and a drop-shot,” he said. “I was fishing a 6-inch Roboworm straight tail worm in morning dawn chartreuse with a 3/16-ounce Ark tungsten weight and a Size 1 Gamakatsu Stinger hook. I also fished the Yamamoto Sensei worm in green pumpkin blue flake rigged wacky style on the drop-shot so I could basically fish a wacky rig faster and more efficiently in the wind. For the (weightless) wacky rig, it was a green pumpkin Yamamoto Senko.”
For his prespawn fish, Ehrler targeted fish relating to grass and used a green pumpkin Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer ChatterBait with a matching Yamamoto Zako trailer and a host of different Lucky Craft jerkbaits.
“Those better fish were all around grass in 4 or 5 feet of water outside spawning areas,” he said. “I fished the Lucky Craft Pointer 78 and Slender Pointer 112 in a bunch of different colors depending on the light. I caught some on BE gill, some on chartreuse shad and ghost minnow, and also a few on aurora black.”
8. David Dudley – 33-8 (10)
One of the best in the game with a wacky rig, David Dudley was able to showcase those skills to the world last week. He was the Day 1 leader in the event with 23 bass for 71-8, which he largely caught with a Perfection Lures Dudley’s Wacky worm on a wacky rig and a finesse worm on a drop-shot.
“I kept it simple and spent the whole week looking for spawning bass in the shallow grass,” he said. “I was fishing both those baits in green pumpkin colors and on 7-foot, 2-inch medium-heavy KRAZY Series spinning rods from Profishiency that I designed for wacky rig fishing.”
9. Ron Nelson – 15-2 (6)
Michigan’s Ron Nelson has only fished REDCREST twice, but he’s advanced to the final day in both of them, having finished in third place last year. This time around, he kept it simple and adjusted each day.
“Every day was a little different for me, with a creature bait being the best the first day, then I switched to a ChatterBait the next day,” he said. “I’d say my strongest bait for the week was a green pumpkin 3/8-ounce jig. The biggest key with all of the baits were natural colors that imitated bluegill.”
Focusing on the middle section of the lake, Nelson sought out areas with clear water.
“I was looking for areas out of the main lake that were more protected, but those calm spots were getting fished pretty heavily by other anglers with all of the wind we had,” he said. “The best areas for me this week were in that calm water where it was cleaner. That’s the big thing the fish wanted.”
10. Bobby Lane – 8-5 (3)
Joining his brother in the Top 10 of a major championship event for the first time since the 2012 Bassmaster Classic that Chris won, Bobby Lane stuck to his wheelhouse – shallow fishing around vegetation.
“Early in the week, I caught some throwing moving baits around, and on the final day, I got one on a buzzbait, but a wacky rigged green pumpkin Berkley MaxScent The General was the main bait for me,” he said. “I was skipping it to white spots I’d see, and it looked just like a bluegill around their beds. When the wind picked up, it was hard to fish that weightless bait, so I added a weight to make it a Neko Rig and also fished a green pumpkin Berkley MaxScent Hit Worm on a drop-shot.”
While Lane is known for power fishing around vegetation, this time, it was almost exclusively a spinning rod tournament for him.
“I used some baitcasters early in the week, and then it turned into a finesse fishing deal,” he said. “But the main thing this week was keeping it simple.”