JEFFERSON COUNTY, Tenn. – Stop 4 Presented by Phoenix Boats turned into a battle between shallow water at the upper end of Douglas Lake, essentially in the rivers, and the deepwater schools in the middle and lower end of the lake. The pros in the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit Presented by MillerTech made the most of both options. Some did both or worked in an extra pattern or two to boot. Regardless of the zone, a lot of old-school baits worked, and there were enough new tools in action to keep things very interesting.
1. Carter does some serious cranking
Earning the win, Carter Nutt stuck offshore and did most of his work with a plug – casting plenty and also strolling to reach the deeper schools.
A handful of deep crankbaits did most of the damage for Nutt, with a Berkley Dredger 25.5 among them. He also caught fish on a jig with a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Crud Craw, a Scottsboro Tackle Top Hook Swimbait, a Nichols Mini Magnum Flutter Spoon and a Berkley Lab Series Minnow. Using 12-pound Berkley GinClear line was key for his cranking, and he also used pretty fast reels. For his deepest, biggest baits, he used a 7-foot, 11-inch, heavy Fenwick World Class stick paired with a 6.8:1 Abu Garcia Zenon X. For his slightly lighter-duty cranking, he used a 7-11, medium-heavy Abu Garcia Veritas Winch with an 8.3:1 Zenon.
2. Dylan stays off the bank
Leading after Day 2 and eventually losing narrowly to his twin brother, Dylan Nutt used a similar approach.
Cranking, Dylan went with a Berkley Dredger 25.5, and he also caught fish on a 3/4-ounce jig with a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Crud Craw and a Scottsboro Tackle Top Hook Swimbait. He used a 7-6, medium-heavy, moderate-fast Abu Garcia Veritas Tournament Edition stick to crank with, paired with a 6.8:1 Abu Garcia Zenon X and 12-pound Berkley GinClear. For his jig, he used a 7-3, heavy Abu Garcia Fantasista X paired with an 8.3:1 Zenon X and 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon. For the swimbait, he used a 7-4, medium-heavy Abu Garcia Zenon with a 6.8:1 Zenon X and 20-pound fluoro.
“I was just scanning points for the most part – that seemed to be where they were setting up,” he said. “I was looking deeper, and then I started to find fish shallower, in the 12- to 15-foot range. Those seemed to be a little bigger. I spent a lot of time scanning around, even during the tournament. I had to relocate fish.”
3. Poche goes off the grid
Douglas and nearby Cherokee both have a history of big-time tournament success in their upper reaches, where Ott DeFoe and others have influenced tournament rules with their escapades. In this one, Keith Poche used his GatorTrax to get farther up the French Broad River than anyone else, and he reaped the rewards, catching unpressured bass with no company.
He ranked the run as an 8 out of 10 on the Poche scale, saying “it was above normal, but probably not the craziest.”
Slightly higher water flows from the Pigeon River were key to Poche making it over the first few shoals and into fishable water, which he wasn’t sure would be possible on the final day.
“I went up and looked at it. There were two boats beside me at the farthest point you can get a glass boat,” Poche said. “The Pigeon River was real key for me. They generate in the middle of the night. It pushes water into the French Broad, and it swells a little bit. That little swell was just barely enough for me to get past the first shoals. It was a zig-zagging, back-and-forth chore; I never ran it in practice, because it was not up. I probably could have tried it, but then I might have hurt something.”
Once up and fishing, Poche relied on his standards to pick apart current breaks.
His best bait was a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Stank Bug, which he fished on a jig and on a 3/8-ounce Texas rig. He also used a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General on a 5/16-ounce shaky head, especially in the cleaner water. For his shaky head, he used 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon, a 7-1, heavy Fenwick World Class rod and an 8.3:1 Abu Garcia Zenon MG-X. For the Texas rig, Poche went with a 7-5, extra heavy Fenwick World Class, 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon and the same reel.
4. Mixing and matching works for Harkins
Making his first Top 10 on the Pro Circuit, Will Harkins might have done more things than anyone else in the Top 10.
“It all depended on the day,” he said. “I wanted to go way up the river and flip wood, but I got up there and it was a parking lot of boats on Day 1, so I caught some shallow on some shad spawn areas. Day 2, I started running some of the schools. I hopped around and landed on one that was firing – I caught all my weight off two or three schools. Day 3, I started on a school and caught 11 pounds, and the fog was so heavy I didn’t want to do a lot of running around. So, I went over to a stretch of docks in a marina and caught a couple off the get-go. So, I ran with that all day.”
For his schools, Harkins did his best work with a Strike King 8XD in green gizzard. On the docks the last day, he used a 19mm Hag’s Prickly Pear rigged with a 1/0 treble and a 1/16-ounce weight. Cranking, Harkins rolled with a 7-11, medium Ark Invoker Pro, an 8.1:1 Ark Gravity 7 and 12-pound Berkley Trilene Big Game. His setup for docks was an Ark Essence Series spinning rod paired with a 3000-size Ark Gravity 5 reel with 15-pound braid and a 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon leader.
5. One school pays big for Yavorsky
Back on track after a toughie at Wheeler Lake, Aaron Yavorsky took the lead on Day 1 and stayed in the hunt the rest of the way.
“I really had one legendary school that carried me through the whole week,” he said. “I caught four 3-pounders off it the first day. The second day, I pretty much weighed in my whole bag off it. In the mornings, they would be up in about 20, and then they would slide out to 25 or 30 as it warmed up.”
Yavorsky plied a 6th Sense Crush 500DD, a 6.7-inch 6th Sense Bounce Worm on a 1/4-ounce shaky head and a 6th Sense Divine Shaky Worm on a 3/4-ounce C-rig. He used a 7-4 Fitzgerald Bryan Thrift Series rod for the crankbait and a 7-6, medium-heavy Fitzgerald All Purpose Series stick for the Carolina rig.
6. Lovin sticks offshore with an unusual approach
Finishing up in sixth, Harbor Lovin surged up the leaderboard on Day 3, as the offshore bite seemed to be good on Sunday for a number of anglers.
“I had two places that I really think were offshore shad spawns; they were pretty much only there in the morning, maybe 16 to 22 feet deep,” Lovin said. “Then, in the afternoon, I would run up the river to ‘Scope, and I realized about halfway through my ‘Scope the second day that I was sharing water with Will Harkins. I left it for him the third day and went to a place I found in practice, and that’s why I had a big bag that third day. I thought it was obvious – there were like 5,000 there, 100 feet thick, for 100 yards. I didn’t leave the rest of the day.”
For his minnow, Lovin used a 5/16-ounce Buckeye G-Stroll head with a Rapala CrushCity Freeloader and other 4- and 5-inch minnows. Most of his fish catching came on a Strike King 8XD, but a super important bait for him was the Bull Shad Live Gizzard, a deep-diving swimbait.
“It is freakin’ nasty,” Lovin said of the Live Gizzard. “It’s kind of hard to throw; you’ve got to have a pretty primo setup to throw it. But depending on how far you can throw it, it will run 15 to 18 foot deep, and you can reel it as fast as you want.”
The schools on Douglas had a tendency to suspend and get hard to catch after being pressured. Lovin was able to combat that.
“I caught over 100 on an 8XD, but there was something about that Live Shad. It would set them back up and draw them back – it would almost reset the group,” he said. “The main tool was concentration. That was one of the neater things I’ve seen. You could just see them swim back over and get back on the line and sit back where they needed to sit. Some places, they follow it all the way to the boat, or they eat it. The second day, it basically salvaged my day. I crushed them, they quit, I threw it through them, and I continued to crush them. I did that three or four times.
His rod for the Live Gizzard was a 7-11, extra-heavy FishUSA Flagship, and he used 20-pound K9 PRO100 fluorocarbon for it. He cranked with 12-pound K9 Original Fluoro and used K9 JDM Silk Braid on his minnow rod.
7. Miller runs the offshore play
Staying offshore, Colby Miller used a minnow and a jig.
“Literally, I was just hopping from school to school,” Miller said. “I spent my entire practice idling. I had around 35 schools found. The first day, I spent a little too much time on certain schools that ended up not being all that great. Throughout the week, I was able to figure out which ones to keep in my rotation and which ones to kick out. The final day, with only 40-somehting guys out there, there weren’t that many people fishing the same schools. They would get a break, and you’d be able to fire them up and catch a handful of them.”
Miller did his best work with the new 6.5-inch Berkley Lab Series Minnow on a 1/4-ounce head as well as a 3/4-ounce Epic Baits Tournament Grade football jig in PB&J with a matching Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Stank Bug.
8. River and minnow play for Campbell
Brody Campbell got himself back in the race for the Bass Pro Tour with a Top 10, and he mixed some wildly divergent patterns.
“I caught them each day a little different,” he said. “Day 1, I started down toward the dam throwing a 5-inch minnow around docks. I caught a 3 1/2-pounder down there in the morning and picked my trolling motor up and ran all the way as far as I could get my boat up the river and caught another 3-pounder and a bunch of fish throwing a squarebill and flipping a shaky head and a jig around.
“Day 2 and 3, I started in the river, mixing it up again between a shaky head and a squarebill, and caught all my fish mainly up the river,” he added. “Day 2, last minute, I ran down to the dam again with an hour and a half left to ‘Scope for an hour or so, and I caught a 3-11, which saved my day, because Bobby Lane put a hurtin’ on me up there in the river. Day 3, I stayed up the river and caught them all shallow.”
Campbell rotated a slew of baits; a Heddon Super Spook worked well on the last day, and he caught a lot of fish on a shaky head as well. The one mainstay was of course his Bird Dog Rods.
9. Lane stalls on the final day
Sitting in third after Day 2, Bobby Lane was in the hunt for the win. But he and a number of other anglers fishing the upper reaches of Douglas stalled out a bit on the last day, and he couldn’t compete with the big days the Nutt boys put up.
“Sunday was a different day,” Lane said. “I caught what I could, and I’m very happy to have a Top 10. It was my first Top 10 of the year. I needed the points, I needed the finish.”
Lane threw a bunch of baits, including a Berkley Cane Walker, a Berkley CullShad, and a Berkley Frittside 5. Fishing shallow and making long casts to schooling fish, Lane used 7-6 Abu Garcia Fantasista X rods, and a 7-6 Veritas PLX Winch for his crankbait. For his topwater, he used 40-pound SpiderWire DuraBraid. In Lane’s opinion, the real star of the show was the Abu Garcia Revo X VoltiQ, which allowed him to make super long casts to fish his competitors couldn’t reach.
10. Upper end of Douglas pays out for Boggs
Drew Boggs got to play to his strengths this week, and considering that Eufaula could be right up his alley, it’d be no surprise to see the Tennessee pro string three straight Top 10s together come June.
Fishing up the river, Boggs used a 1/2-ounce Greenfish Tackle Little Rubber Jig with a Zoom Super Chunk Jr., a 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer in dirty shad with a Strike King Menace and a 1/2-ounce Dirty Jigs No-Jack Swim Jig with a Strike King Rage Craw trailer.
Every day, Boggs needed to weed through numbers to catch some size.
“I caught so many. The first day and second day, I probably caught 30 each day,” he said. “Day 2, I caught one almost 4 and another over 3. I was hopscotching around with Terry Scroggins, Ott DeFoe, Chad Mrazek and Brody Campbell – we were all sharing the same stuff. Day 2, they bit better with the clouds and wind.”