Lake Cumberland Top 5 Patterns Day 3
How it's going down on Cumberland
As FLW Live revealed Saturday, jerkbaits, spinnerbaits and crankbaits are coming to light as the key players in the FLW Tour event on Lake Cumberland presented by T-H Marine. Clark Wendlandt leads the event, largely from twitching a couple suspending jerkbaits in Lake Cumberland’s pockets and coves. And behind him are a host of other pros employing jerkbaits, spinnerbaits and crankbaits. Here is a closer look at how others in the top five are getting it done at Cumberland.
2. Scott Martin – Clewiston, Fla. – 46-5
Scott Martin led the tournament on day one, fell to fifth place on day two and bounced back to second on day three with a solid 14-pound, 14-ounce effort on Saturday.
Martin’s mix included two largemouths, two smallmouths and one chunky spot.
Martin is running “hollers” on Lake Cumberland with a jerkbait, trying to stay in stretches where he feels the smallmouth and largemouth zones overlap to give him the best percentage shot at both species at one time.
“The biggest thing for me is trying to keep new water in front of me,” Martin says. “I’m trying to do that because I feel like a lot of these fish are still prespawn. I’ve had a lot of followers and nippers at my bait and when I come back and try to catch them again, I can’t even get them to show themselves. So that tells me they are not spawning because if they were, I would be able to get those fish to react to something again – and that’s just not happening. Whenever I circle back around to places where I got a bite before, nothing happens and that tells me I’m better off to just keep moving and fishing new water.”
“It’s hard to do, though,” Martin says of fishing all new water every day. “You know nothing about the new areas, so it’s hard to have confidence in them. But it has worked so far so I’m going to keep at it.”
3. Barry Wilson – Birmingham, Ala. – 45-4
Barry Wilson rose to third – his best spot of the week – thanks to a 14-pound, 9-ounce catch Saturday.
Wilson is one of the few in the top 10 not running way down the lake. Instead, he is fishing in the back end of a creek for largemouths, which is what his catch consisted of today.
Wilson is sticking to a single area, roughly 50 by 100 yards, where largemouths are coming up to feed on shad. The unique area is formed by a creek channel that makes a broad sweep into a bedding flat. Though the fish are not bedding yet, they are gathering up and feeding on shad that are flicking around up on the flat.
“It’s kind of nerve wracking because I have to wait until the water temperature gets up high enough to get the shad active,” Wilson says. “Once the shad start flicking on the surface I can see bass come up and roll on them. But that activity didn’t start until about 1 o’clock today and I just kept making passes through the flat with a crankbait to catch them.”
4. Terry Bolton – Paducah, Ky. – 44-15
Terry Bolton made his first appearance in the top five on day three with a 14 pound, 15-ounce catch today.
Bolton focused his efforts on the back end of a main-lake creek, targeting largemouths with a spinnerbait.
“Each day I’ve been running the same pattern on new water,” Bolton says. “I’m mainly looking for channel swing banks where those prespawn bass are moving up before scattering into the pockets to spawn. All the fish I’ve caught have been real fat, white and pristine – like they just got there. If I catch one like that, I’ll slow down and pick everything apart to see if one or two more have moved up with it.”
5. Casey Scanlon – Lenexa, Kan. – 44-11
Casey Scanlon slipped to fifth place with a catch of 9 pounds, 7 ounces Saturday.
Scanlon’s primary play during the week has been a jerkbait and spinnerbait combination. He uses a jerkbait for numbers and the spinnerbait for quality in the backs of drains for largemouths.