Top 10 baits from the All-American on Lake Cherokee
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – The Phoenix Bass Fishing League All-American Presented by T-H Marine on Cherokee Lake was a super tough tournament. With bites few and far between for most, we saw all sorts of old-school and new-school patterns work. Smallmouth were the predominant species seen at weigh-in, and they won the event; but some anglers did well with largemouth, mixing them in on purpose or by accident.
Here’s how the best got it done.
1. Marks locks in on smallmouth
Fishing points for smallmouth, Paul Marks Jr. was more consistent than anyone else in the field by a wide margin and ended up winning handily.
Staying finesse, Marks used a 3.8-inch Zoom Z-Swim on a 3/8- or 1/4-ounce Greenfish Tackle Bad Little Shad Swimbait Head. He threw it on a 7-foot, medium-light Shimano Poison Ultima with a Shimano Vanquish 3000, 10-pound Seaguar Smackdown braid and a 12-pound Seaguar Tatsu leader.
2. Silver again for O’Connell
After finishing second in last year’s All-American on Hartwell, Matt O’Connell did it again at Cherokee, this time rocketing up from eighth with the biggest bag of the tournament on the final day.
For baits, O’Connell relied on finesse to fill his limits. He used a Ned rig with a 1/6-ounce Z-Man Pro ShroomZ and a Z-Man Big TRD in green pumpkin goby and Canada craw, a drop-shot with a Megabass Hazedong Shad and a Neko rig. He also chased a shad spawn and some dock fish with a SPRO KGB Chad Shad, a 6-inch 6th Sense Whale rigged line-thru style and a Megabass Magdraft.
“Day 1 and Day 2, I tried to start on a little bit of a shad spawn bite. I got none on Day 1 and one keeper spot on Day 2. I never thought about picking up the glide bait because of how practice had gone,” he said. “Then, I worked my way up to the bridge, hitting points with specific rock — somewhat ‘Scoping, some you would just throw at a good-looking rock and see if one popped out.”
Putting his head together with fellow competitor Aspen Martin helped set up the run on Day 3.
“Aspen and I had been talking about how it seemed like there were some better fish around the marinas, but none of us had ever caught any of them,” he said. “He hit one on Day 1 that he was splitting with another guy, and the other guy told him that in pre-practice he had 22 pounds in that marina. So, I knew clearly there were some better fish. I went out and tried to make it happen on Day 3. My first cast with the glide, I had a good-looking follower on ‘Scope. In the first 15 minutes of doing it, I had a good one swirl on it, and then a couple other followers. I knew of that other marina dock that was under construction, and I ran over there, and when I got to the end of it I caught two good ones back-to-back.”
With two big ones in the ‘well, O’Connell went to fill his limit with smallmouth, and it took him literally all day to do it. He ended up catching his last keeper on a brush pile with the Neko minutes before he had to be back to weigh-in.
3. Falardeau continues a fantastic season
Finishing third with 33 pounds, 3 ounces, Dillon Falardeau was the last pro to average 11 pounds a day or better on the super tough fishery. He had one piece of rock that produced most of his kickers, but caught keepers doing a variety of things.
“I spent a lot of time on the main lake, on points and humps, close to the channel,” he said. “Every time I would pull up there, I would see hybrids and stripers. Then I started going inside the creeks, and just found rock in 15 to 18 feet of water, and there were a whole lot less stripers and hybrids in the creeks.”
Fishing inside the creeks, Falardeau used a pretty good range of tactics. A 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer with a blizzard gizzard Hog Farmer Spunk Shad accounted for some. He also rotated between a few minnows, including a 3.5-inch CAST Fishing Co. Echo on a hover rig with a 3/32-ounce tungsten nail weight and a Ryugi Hover Shot Hook or a Z-Man Scented Jerk ShadZ on a 1/8-ounce Dirty Jigs Guppy Head.
He threw his ChatterBait on a Dobyns Champion XP 736 and used a Dobyns Champion XP 703, a Shimano Vanford, 10-pound braid and an 8-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon leader for his spinning-rod applications.
4. Shallower rock piles key for Benson
Making the Top 10 in the All-American back-to-back years, Buddy Benson improved his weights each day of the event, which nobody else did.
Fishing rock offshore, Benson used a Rapala DT10 in green gizzard, a jig and a drop-shot with a 2.8-inch Keitech Swing Impact FAT in rainbow shad with a 3/8-ounce weight.
“I caught the majority of my fish the first two days on 10- to 15-foot rock piles with a drop-shot and crankbait,” Benson said. “The drop-shot, I could throw it out there, and if you just drug it, you couldn’t hardly catch anything. If you’d throw it out there and burn it up, they would chase up there and get it — they wouldn’t even let it get to the bottom again. The last day, I caught three of them on a jig, on the same kind of stuff – it seemed like if you could find real isolated stuff, that was the best.”
5. Popper gets the ball rolling for Murphy
Starting strong with 12 pounds, Lucas Murphy couldn’t quite keep up the pace as the event wore on.
On Day 1, Murphy caught a couple good fish on a Strike King KVD Splash in natural shad, but that bite did not last. Going finesse the rest of the way, he rigged a drop-shot with either a Strike King Baby Z-Too, a 2.75-inch Strike King Rage Swimmer or a tiny crappie minnow. For his weight, he used a 1/4-ounce most of the time and a 3/8-ounce when it was windier so he wouldn’t move the bait as much.
Fishing his drop-shot around smaller rock and gravel for smallmouth, Murphy was at his wits’ end after Day 2.
“I went to Bass Pro Shops and went to the crappie section because they were puking up tiny little minnows. I don’t know what the brand was, but I just looked around for a tiny little minnow that looked real and caught a few on it,” he said. “They’d eat that Z-Too pretty solid, but it was so tough, especially at the end of the second day, when I got five bites the entire day. I was looking around for anything they might bite.”
For his popper, Murphy used a 6-foot, 10-inch Lew’s Custom Lite, a Lew’s Custom Lite SLP reel and 30-pound Strike King Tour Grade Braid. For his drop-shot, he went with a Lew’s Custom Lite SS Series reel, a 7-foot, 2-inch Team Lew’s Signature Series spinning rod, 10-pound Strike King Tour Grade Braid and a 6- or 8-pound Strike King Tour Grade Fluorocarbon leader.
6. Carnright focuses on sparser rock
Making the Top 10 after a practice marred by illness, Brett Carnright caught three limits in a row to bank $14,000 and lock in a spot in the Toyota Series Championship this fall.
Focusing on smallmouth, the New York angler used a 3/8-ounce, MB sexy melon Beast Coast O.W. Sniper with a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Lil’ General. He threw the jig on a Megabass Orochi XX “shakyhead” rod with a 2500 Daiwa Certate LT, 10-pound PowerPro braid and a 12-pound Seaguar Tatsu leader.
“I was looking for little high spots and underwater points on the mapping. I caught all my fish between 13 to 22 feet of water,” Carnright said. “I would idle these places and look for sparse rock. A lot of places on the lake have a massive amount of rock, where there’s not a lot of voids in the boulders or anything. That stuff seemed to be covered in stripers a lot of the time. If I could find these little isolated places and there was some sand or soft bottom in between the boulders, that was ideal.”
7. Variety of patterns produce for Barnes
Finishing seventh, Jason Barnes made the Top 10 without catching a limit on Day 1 or Day 2, but he managed to connect with pretty good average quality.
For baits, Barnes used a Zoom Finesse Worm on a 3/16-ounce Greenfish Tackle Clean Up Shakey Head, part of a 5-inch Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General on a 1/5-ounce head and a General and a 5-inch Yamamoto Senko on a wacky rig. He also caught some fish on a Don Iovino Spash-It.
“After looking back at some of the footage and stuff, I think I was bucking the trend,” he said. “The first day, I went largemouth fishing in some of the creeks in the middle region. I ended up catching a nice fish off a Senko on a cypress tree, and I got some bites on bluff banks, and one fish on an isolated bush on a spinnerbait. Every day, I decided I’d go down the lake at the end of the day, and I was throwing the Ned rig and that shaky head on the rock. The second day, I started in some creeks down the lake, and as I was going up, I stopped on some rocky corners, and with no wind, I pulled up on some deep brush I found in practice. The third day, between the popper and the Senko, I caught four, and then I caught my fifth keeper out of some brush down the lake.”
8. Feldermann flips
Tied for the lead on Day 1, Mike Feldermann fished an exclusively shallow pattern, running flooded bushes up the lake.
His primary baits were a Berkley PowerBait Pit Boss (green pumpkin) and a Zoom Brush Hog (junebug) on 1/2-ounce Texas rigs.
“In the isolated bushes, I’d throw that Brush Hog on the edges of them,” he said. “Some of them were like a canopy, and I could get the Pit Boss in the middle of them. The Pit Boss would penetrate the inside better; the real fluffy ones, you can’t get the Brush Hog through them, the tails would hang up.”
Feldermann used a Trokar hook, a Dobyns rod, a Shimano Calais reel and 20-pound Seaguar InvizX.
9. Tube the way to go for Leybas
Catching a big bag on Day 2 put Ian Leybas in the Top 10, and he did most of his damage with a tube.
His tube of choice was the Southern Indiana Bait Co. GOAT, which he rigged with on a 5/16-ounce head. Targeting rock in 10 to 20 feet, Leybas was not super consistent but caught good quality when he did generate bites.
10. Saele scrubs with a swimmer
Starting the final day in fifth, Pete Saele had a tough Championship Friday and dropped to 10th, but he still secured qualification to the Toyota Series Championship this fall, plus $8,000 in winnings.
“I was fishing points that had cobblestone and the big jagged pieces on the edge,” he said. “The majority of the fish were on the cobblestone, rather than the big jagged pieces on the edge. I wanted to be in contact with the bottom, you just wanted to keep it ticking along the bottom.”
His bait of choice was a 2.8-inch Keitech Swing Impact FAT with a 3/8-ounce Zorro Baits Booza Zonar FFS jig head. Saele also caught some fish flipping a Berkley PowerBait Chigger Craw on a 3/8-ounce Texas rig in bushes.