Kentucky-Barkley Super Tournament should test LBL Division anglers
With anglers in the LBL Division of the Phoenix Bass Fishing League Presented by T-H Marine having battled it out on Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley four times already this season, the two-day Super Tournament set for later this month might just determine who deserves to be called the King of Kentucky Lake. Whoever prevails will have to earn it; while the fishery’s bass population has experienced a major resurgence, late August can still make for a tricky bite.
Tournament details
Phoenix Bass Fishing League Presented by T-H Marine LBL Division
Buchanan, TN
August 24-25
About the fishery
The final reservoir on the Tennessee River before it flows into the Ohio River, Kentucky Lake spans a massive 184 miles in length. Plus, as if that weren’t enough water for anglers to explore, Lake Barkley, a Cumberland River impoundment connected to Kentucky by a canal, will also be in play.
The most accomplished pro on the fishery with three wins over the past two years, Jake Lawrence expects most competitors to stay in Kentucky Lake during the Super Tournament. However, he said they will be able to target bass just about anywhere on the giant impoundment — north to south, shallow to deep.
“They just tend to scatter a little bit of everywhere but not kind of do one particular thing in a general area of the lake,” Lawrence explained. “So, I think you can catch them from top to bottom and really kind of anywhere in between.”
Lawrence expects to see both largemouth and smallmouth well represented at weigh-in. As Kentucky Lake’s bass population has recovered in recent years, smallmouth numbers have boomed — as illustrated by the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals event in April, which turned into a spawning smallmouth slugfest.
Lawrence said the brown bass are probably easier to target (although he also noted this is a time of year when it’s not uncommon to find both species in the same spot). That said, with the daily limit for this event being three fish, Lawrence thinks finding at least one big largemouth each day will be paramount.
“I think it’s going to be a mixture between largemouth and smallmouth; however, I’m going to say that better-than-average bite is going to be a largemouth,” Lawrence said. “So, that’s something that I’m really going to target. It may actually be easier to catch smallmouth, but I think if you want to win, you really need to target largemouth.”
What to expect
The fact that the bass tend to spread out in August and September typically makes them tough to pattern. Lawrence doesn’t think this will be an event in which anglers get a ton of bites each day, and he thinks many will take a “junk fishing” approach, mixing and matching different techniques.
“You might catch one on a point, you might catch one beside a boat dock and your third big one might come on a bluff bank,” he explained. “It’s going to be one of those tournaments where you really just kind of have to run into them.”
There is, however, one major variable that could change the complexion of the event. If a storm dumps rain not just on Kentucky Lake but on any of the Tennessee River impoundments between now and the tournament, the current flowing through the system will spike. That would position bass much more predictably and make for a better bite.
“If we do have some current generating, it’ll position those fish on your normal places,” Lawrence said. “I suspect there will be some fish offshore and some fish on shallow points and a lot of different things that will be much, much more predictable.”
Assuming the fishery doesn’t get an influx of current, Lawrence thinks two different approaches could contend for the win: fast or slow. Noting it often takes one extreme or the other to coax bass that have seen baits all year into biting, he expects some anglers to cover water by burning crankbaits, lipless crankbaits or topwaters. On the flip side, he could see someone doing well by slowing down and dragging a jig or a worm.
“It seems like you’ll hear the winner say, ‘I either had to really, really slow down’ — I mean, like, dead-sticking a bait — or you’ll hear him say, ‘man, as fast as I could get my bait,’ whether he’s twitching a topwater or winding a little crankbait, whatever it may be,” Lawrence said. “It tends to be one extreme or the other this time of year to initiate those reactions.”
Whichever method is used to get there, Lawrence expects it to take between 12 and 13 pounds per day to claim victory.
“There’s too many good ones out here anymore; somebody will run into six of them,” he said. “But it’s going to be kind of a grinder deal. I don’t know that there will be just a ton of fish caught.”