COLUMBIANA, Ala. – It’s been a few years since the Phoenix Bass Fishing League Presented by T-H Marine Bama Division ventured to Lay Lake, but it’s the playing field for the second event of the 2025 Bama season. The last BFL there was a September 2021 Super Tournament that took a hair over 14 pounds a day to win, but this event should feature great fishing similar to REDCREST 2024.
In that mid-March event, Dustin Connell took the win with 28 bass for 83 pounds on the final day, with several 4-plus pound spotted bass in that total. Quality bass live here, and there will likely be many brought to the scales in the Bama Division event on March 1.
New for 2025, the BFLs will feature an expanded slate of Regional events, which will give anglers more chances to qualify for the BFL All-American and further minimize travel costs. This expansion ensures that grassroots anglers can fish closer to home on lakes they know and love for a chance to win a $50,000 Phoenix 819 Pro bass boat with a 200-horsepower outboard as a boater and a new $20,000 cash award as a co-angler, plus qualification into the All-American.
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What to expect
Tackle Warehouse Invitationals pro Jacob Walker, who lives in the Birmingham area and manages the popular Mark’s Outdoors local tackle store there, believes that conditions are setting up for excellent fishing come the March 1 BFL, due to the weather and how well Lay Lake is fishing.
“There’s a cooling trend about a week before the tournament, but it’s been really warm in Alabama the weeks before that,” he said. “That’s made the largemouth fishing and grass fishing really good, as a matter of fact, a local team trail had an event on Lay and if you didn’t have 20 pounds, you didn’t get a check.”
The lake is also very healthy and fishing well by historical standards, according to Walker.
“It’s in really good shape and we’ve seen some big bags there all fall and winter,” he said. “There’s always one section of the lake that seems to have the best fishing one weekend and that changes every week, but those catches recently have showed us there’s a great population of fish in the lake right now.”
Most of the wins on Lay Lake in the past few months come with the help of forward-facing sonar, but Walker is predicting it will be less of a factor in this event.
“Some guys will definitely catch them ‘Scoping, even some big bags, but there are so many fish shallow that I don’t think it will dominate like it did all winter,” Walker said. “That bite hasn’t been that great anywhere on the Coosa the last few weeks because the fish get shallow and get kind of weird before they spawn. I think some other techniques like crankbaits and jerkbaits will be good.”
With both largemouth and spotted bass in the lake, Walker expects both will be represented in weigh-in bags, but spotted bass will likely be in the majority.
“It’ll be dominated by spots, but there are some big largemouth in there and anglers may find them by fishing a ChatterBait in some of the submerged grass that’s started to show up on Lay,” he said. “There should be plenty of fish caught and I believe it will take over 20-pounds to win because that’s what it has taken over the past several months. A good bag that should get you in check range is 15 or 16 pounds, but there will be plenty of fish caught by both boaters and co-anglers in this one, because there’s a ton of fish in the lake right now.”