GROVE, Okla. — Ever since the 2026 Bass Pro Tour schedule was revealed and anglers learned they’d be competing on Oklahoma’s Grand Lake O’ The Cherokees in June, there’s been one big question looming over the event: What will the lake level be?
Less than a week before the start of Zenni Stage 6 Presented by Toyota, which will take place Thursday through Sunday, that’s still the X-factor.
After a dry, stable spring, a wave of storms hit the region last week, raising the lake more than 3 feet. That should bring several new patterns into play, making an already versatile fishery even more wide open.
“The good thing about Grand is it offers a lot, from super shallow stuff to two different rivers; a lot of big bays, creeks; a bunch of main-lake stuff that’s good,” Oklahoma native Zack Birge said. “So, there’s a lot of variety of stuff that guys can do, and it all can produce a good number of fish. It should be a fun event, I think, for everybody.”
A fresh glimpse of Grand
Grand is no stranger to top-level tournaments. Throughout the history of MLF/FLW, the fishery has hosted 124 total events. And after a few lean years, locals say the lake is back to fishing like the bass factory it’s been for most of that period.
“It looks like the weights are really good in tournaments,” said fellow Oklahoman James Elam. “It seems like it had a good year last year. It seems like it’s been good this year. And the lake is fishing well. It went through like a four, five-year spell there probably three or four years ago where it was fishing real tough and the weights were down, fishing wasn’t quite as good. Now it seems like it’s not back to quite like the early 2000s Grand Lake, but certainly better than it was.”
Stage 6 could look quite a bit different than most of those past events for a couple reasons. Namely, as popular a tournament fishery as Grand has been, it rarely gets visited during the summer. This will be just the second tour-level event held there in June, the last being an FLW Tour event in 2013.
Then there’s the recent spike in water level. Whether the lake continues to rise or starts to fall back toward full pool, Elam expects anglers will have to adapt throughout practice and the event. He doesn’t think this is an instance where someone will figure out a pattern during practice and ride it all the way through the Championship Round.
“It’s going to make the fishing really mixed up where you can catch them shallow, you can catch them deep, and you can catch them in between,” he predicted. “Guys are going to be doing all three things, and all three things will work. … It’s going to be a tournament where you’re going to have to change a lot, and it’s not going to be any one thing that’s dominant.”
From Elam’s standpoint, that’s less than ideal. A rare June visit to Grand had the potential to create a local edge for the three Oklahoma anglers on the Bass Pro Tour – Birge, Elam and Edwin Evers. But both Elam and Birge think the influx of water will negate that. However, Elam does think it’ll make for a more mysterious tournament.
“I’d rather the water be low, personally, because that will give me more of a local advantage just being able to run places that I’ve caught them on in the past and just have an endless supply of that,” Elam said. “That would be more advantageous for me.”
No shortage of options in play
Offering a variety of deep and shallow habitat plus a nearly endless supply of boat docks, Grand is always a diverse fishery. Had the water stayed low, Elam thinks this would have primarily been an offshore event. Now, though, he believes anglers will spread out all over the fishery, and productive tactics could run the gamut.
Anytime there’s water in the willow bushes in Oklahoma, that’s a player. That’s how Jason Christie won the aforementioned FLW Tour event in 2013. Look for anglers to flip and frog among those. The lake also has plenty of other hard shallow cover where competitors can power fish with spinnerbaits and ChatterBaits.
And while the water clarity (or lack thereof) might hurt the offshore bite in some areas of the lake, there should still be plenty of fish to be caught offshore with crankbaits, wobble heads and dragging presentations. In fact, the one other multi-day event held on Grand in June – last year’s Abu Garcia High School Fishing National Championship – saw the winning tandem of Carson Holbert and Cooper Moon weigh an impressive 44-1 on nine bass cranking in 8 to 12 feet of water despite the lake being about 4 feet higher than it is as of this writing.
“You’re going to have some guys catch them just cranking and dragging and stuff like that out off the bank, also, if they can find places where there’s still fish hanging out deep,” Elam said. “There’s going to be plenty of that. And that might be the really good stuff to find.”
Birge said offshore fishing on Grand could look like targeting groups of fish on points or other structure or plucking individuals off brush and other cover. Either way, using forward-facing sonar for the one allotted period per day will aid efficiency, but it’s far from mandatory. Anglers have been catching offshore bass in the summer on Grand long before the advent of the technology.
“There’s a bunch of roadbeds, brushpiles,” he said. “They get on points a lot. They’ll group up on points close to the main river. So, it’ll be a combination of some good, shallow structure stuff and then brushpiles and points.”
Ultimately, both Birge and Elam expect to see the field pretty evenly split between deep and shallow, with some anglers sampling both bites.
“It’s going to be pretty much pick what you want and roll with it, I think, and you’ll be able to catch fish,” Birge said.
Grand can be fickle, especially amid significant water fluctuation. But both Birge and Elam expect plenty of bass to hit SCORETRACKER®. The lake boasts strong numbers of keeper-sized bass, and the Bass Pro Tour’s every-fish-counts format should showcase that.
Both locals predicted it will take at least 60 pounds across the two-day Qualifying Round to make the Knockout Round cut with the potential for some eye-popping days if the bite is really firing.
“Sometimes you’ll hit Grand Lake when it’s an off week, and that’s generally because of the weather or the water,” Elam explained. “We could certainly see that, or we could see it the other way around, the opposite of that; it could be really good.”
Follow all the action
Stream all four days of competition 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. Plus, stay tuned to MajorLeagueFishing.com for full coverage throughout the event.