Major League Fishing Pros Dominate in The Classic
From the champion, all the way through the rest of the 52 competitors, the 20 MLF pros who competed in the Bassmaster Classic on Lake Hartwell in South Carolina this weekend performed well and made the best of changing conditions on a tough lake.
New MLF Pro Jordan Lee came out on top, making him the third-ever (and youngest) back-to-back Classic Champion. MLF Pros Brent Ehrler and Jason Christie closed out the Top 3, and 13 of the MLF Pros made the Top 25 cut to fish on Championship Sunday, where a weather change had a big effect on the fishing.
“It was tougher than I thought it would be,” MLF Pro Ott Defoe said. “I was expecting to catch more every day and more big fish to be caught. I think it had to do with the weather. It had been really warm a few weeks earlier then fell to cold temperatures and finally warmed back up right before and during the event.”
MLF Pro Jacob Wheeler tied with Defoe in total weight but received 7th place instead of 6th because of B.A.S.S.’s tie-breaker rules.
“I told that sucker he has to buy me dinner,” Wheeler joked when we caught up with him on his drive back to Tennessee.
Wheeler said he did pre-fish before the Jan. 1 cutoff, but the conditions on the lake this week were very different from what he experienced both in pre-fishing and in previous times on Lake Hartwell.
“I’ve had a lot of issues on Lake Hartwell, you know I started my professional career there in 2012 and I’ve seen a lot of things change through the years,” Wheeler said. “This event was tougher because the water had come up 10 feet from the cutoff for pre-practice time. Fish were scattered out a lot more than usual.”
Mike McClelland didn’t pre-fish the lake because of his previous Classic experience fishing there but said he was surprised by the weather changes and conditions during the week.
“The weather turning on us for practice was a positive to me. I didn’t want it to be a deal where everyone was on the bank the entire time,” McClelland said. “I would have been happy with it being cold all week.”
The key pattern for all anglers seemed to be a rotating cast of different baits based on the conditions at any given moment on the lake.
“I caught fish on five different baits and a lot of different techniques,” Lee told Bassmaster.com.
Christie said he was switching between everything moving: spinnerbaits, bladed jig, and flipping a jig as he worked his way from starting in the grass each morning then later, based on wind or sun, following the fish underneath docks.
Defoe used a similar set-up: a bladed jig and Terminator spinnerbait fished them in dog fennel vegetation and around boat docks.
“It didn’t matter if the docks were shallow or deep, fish just needed to be en route to their spawning areas and that’s where I caught bigger fish, we call them staging fish since they’re almost to where they’re going to spawn,” DeFoe explained.
Wheeler said he was working with a few primary baits: a Gene Larew Hammer Craw on a buzzbait, a chatterbait on docks, a wacky worm and a swimbait.
“I was fishing cleaner water up in the lake so for me, the swimmer on the underspin in 8-10 or 25-30 feet was where I started, then when wind blew or we had shade or cloud cover or fish were active I picked up my SPRO McStick 110 and my SPRO RKcrawler 55,” McClelland said.
All the anglers we spoke with mentioned the weather change for the last day negatively impacted the fishing overall for the Championship.
Christie, who is headed off to a few appearances this week before enjoying some time with his family for Spring Break and some fishing on his own time, said the compliments spoken by his fellow competitors on stage meant a lot to him in the face of a tough loss.
“There’s no bigger compliment in this business than to get compliments from your peers and especially like what they were saying up there,” Christie said. “To finish 3rd I’m not going to lie and say it was a great event. These are just missed opportunities for me.”
Although only one pro can win each Classic, many of the anglers we spoke with mentioned how much fishing the MLF format has helped change their mentality and their preparation for high-pressure events like the Classic.
“When I look back at what’s transformed me to become a better angler, MLF has helped me hone my fishing skills better than anything else,” Wheeler said. “I feel like I’ve become a better decision maker and angler during the Bassmaster season—MLF anglers are the best group of anglers ever assembled, and I feel like when you fish against the hammers day in and day out you have to show up and fish every single day and that’s a different mentality than my early days when I was happy to get checks or make Forrest Wood Cups or Championships. Our format has no doubt helped me.”