GROVE, Okla. — Banks Shaw’s thrilling comeback will go down as the lasting memory of Zenni Stage 6 Presented by Toyota, and for good reason. In what could easily be described as the best Period 3 in Bass Pro Tour history (more on that to come), Shaw erased a near-30-pound deficit to claim what will almost certainly go down as the first of many BPT wins.
But long before the last period, Oklahoma’s Grand Lake served up a spectacular summertime event.
High water and changing conditions forced the anglers to adapt, and as a result, fans watching on MLFNOW! got to see bass caught with just about every technique in the book. Crankbaits ranging from squarebills to 20-foot divers produced bites in bunches. Other offshore staples like hair jigs, football jigs and Carolina rigs played. In the shallows, some anglers used flipping sticks and frogs to pick apart flooded bushes, while others wound bladed jigs and swim jigs through water willow.
And despite the changing conditions, it never turned into a grind. Jake Lawrence’s Day 1 total of 112 pounds, 7 ounces represented the single best day for a BPT pro all year, and Shaw’s winning total of 82-15 was also a season high. Even though he narrowly missed out on the win, runner-up Dustin Connell came away from Grand eager for a return visit.
“Grand is incredible,” he said. “That’s one of my new favorite lakes. I have a list of lakes that I love, and Grand is definitely on it now. I’ve always said this – I love going to really good fisheries, because you can get bites and get on a pattern. Some lakes, you can’t really do that; they only live in certain sections. Grand Lake’s got them from the top all the way to the dam. So, that’s what’s cool.”
Before we look ahead to the season finale on Lake Erie and all the storylines and points implications that come with it, here are a few more notes from a Grand event that lived up to its name.
Contextualizing Shaw’s comeback
Anyone watching Shaw’s furious final period knew they were witnessing something special. He totaled 55-10 on 17 scorable bass during Period 3 to turn a 28-9 deficit into a near-9-pound win, jumping from fourth place to first in the process.
But it took a little time to dig into whether his rally was the best we’ve ever seen on the Bass Pro Tour.
You could easily make the case that it’s No. 1 based on the simple fact that no angler has ever overcome a larger deficit entering the final period and gone on to win a Championship Round. In fact, it’s not even close. Previously, the biggest comeback belonged to Ott DeFoe, who trailed by 19-7 entering the third period on Lake Athens in 2020.
After looking through the SCORETRACKER® archives, there are two other contenders that at least belong in the same conversation as Shaw’s in terms of best BPT comeback. The first and perhaps most comparable was DeFoe’s aforementioned rally at Stage 3 in 2020. DeFoe entered that third period in fifth place and fell as far behind as 22-7 with 1 hour, 15 minutes before lines out. He then proceeded to blast 57-4 to win by more than 18 pounds.
The other contender actually occurred at the Bass Pro Tour’s one prior visit to Grand– Bobby Lane’s dramatic 2022 REDCREST win. While he was only 11-1 back of the lead, Lane entered the third period of that event in eighth place – the lowest on the leaderboard any BPT winner has started the final frame. Of course, Lane famously went on to win the $300,000 top prize by a scant 1-3 after getting his last bass to hit the 2-pound minimum on his second re-weigh.
Connell did everything right
Another noteworthy aspect of Shaw’s comeback was the last angler he passed to take the top spot on SCORETRACKER®. Entering Stage 6, Connell had earned a reputation as the best closer on the Bass Pro Tour. He’s the only angler with multiple REDCREST titles (having won three), he ranks second in total BPT victories with seven, and he’d emerged victorious 35% of the time he’d made the Championship Round – easily the best rate on tour.
So, it might have surprised some folks that the über-competitive Connell didn’t seem too distraught by finishing second. In fact, at the ramp, he greeted Shaw with a hug.
“It’s just realizing when it’s your time, it’s going to happen,” Connell said. “I was thankful for the opportunity, and I had a fun day of fishing. I mean, I literally played that perfectly. It was just his time.”
Easing the sting was the fact that Connell didn’t feel he could have done anything different. He figured all week he’d need to combine the shallow and offshore patterns he’d found on Grand to win, and he executed that strategy masterfully during the Championship Round. He walloped 41-15 on a swim jig in Period 1, then used his forward-facing sonar to catch nearly 24 pounds offshore during Period 3.
Had he known that he’d need well over 80 pounds to win, Connell said the one thing he would have changed would be trying to hit a new school late in Period 3. Still, there’s no guarantee that would have materialized.
“I did everything perfect in that tournament,” Connell said. “I had the winning combo and everything. And it worked out great, but I wish (Shaw) had made that run about an hour earlier, that way I could make some adjustments. But it was too late in the game that I could really adjust to it. That’s offshore fishing for you. That’s the beauty of it; you can get well in a hurry, and he dang sure did.”
Something in the water at Grand
For some reason, Grand has a special knack for producing dramatic tournaments. Stage 6, which saw three different anglers hold the lead in the last hour, was a veritable blowout compared to the three prior national events contested on the fishery.
We already mentioned REDCREST 2022, when Lane caught the winning bass with less than 5 minutes before lines out to top both Luke Clausen and Jacob Wheeler by less than 2 pounds. Each of the other two tournaments – the 2025 Toyota Series Championship and a 2019 FLW Tour event – both came down to a tiebreaker.
Last fall, Roger Fitzpatrick got the nod over Drew Gill after both anglers totaled 41-1 over three days (and five other anglers finished within 17 ounces of that total). In 2019, Jeremy Lawyer and Michael Mathee weighed 62-12 apiece over four days, and Lawyer got the win thanks to being ahead in the previous day’s standings.
Stage 6 by the numbers
881,703: Amount (in dollars) of tournament earnings for Shaw since the start of the 2025 season (including his $50,000 Angler of the Year prize on the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit last season). He added a cool $225,000 during a pair of June tournaments in Oklahoma.
211: The number of 4-plus-pound bass weighed across four days of competition on Grand. Over the past two Bass Pro Tour seasons (since the limitation of forward-facing sonar), only two fisheries have produced more – Lake Guntersville (289) and Lake Murray (212). Note that Murray only edged Grand by one fish despite there being 66 anglers in that field compared to 51 this week.
28.5: Percentage of weight across the field caught by anglers using forward-facing sonar during Stage 6, according to SCORETRACKER Insider™. Excluding Heavy Hitters on Orange Lake, that’s the lowest rate of the year.
8: Top 10s in the past 10 Bass Pro Tour starts for Spencer Shuffield dating back to last year. Shuffield continued his heater with a seventh-place showing at Grand.
6: Top 10s in seven BPT events this season for Zack Birge. He extended his Fishing Clash Angler of the Year lead with a third-place finish and will carry a 12-point advantage over Wheeler into the season finale.