How Jake Lawrence won the Chick-Nick MLF BPT event

Jake is a rookie on the Bass Pro Tour, but he’s a wily vet on TN River lakes. So much so that he beat Jacob Wheeler by a couple lbs and a couple seconds, including Round 1 on Chickamauga, Jacob’s home lake. How did Jake do it? Here we go.

Going in and practice

> “Chickamauga is not the easiest fishery to generate a lot of bites oftentimes. We really hit it at a perfect window…some late spawners, a hint of a shad spawn and a pretty strong offshore bite. Nickajack sets up totally different from any of the other TVA lakes….

> “Growing up here on the TVA, they all set up really similarly as far as that offshore bite…kinda my wheelhouse. …not a whole lot of fishing but a ton of idling. I think I had 28 groups [of fish] going into the event. I was really confident I could potentially win the qualifier [for a pass to the Championship Round] but certainly make the Knockout.

> “With this being a 2-lake tournament, they did give us a 3rd practice day. I spent the last half of the 3rd day on Nickajack. I [found] 1 area where I Scoped a couple fry-guarders and some fish roaming around and sitting on pole timber. I saw 4 bass up shallow, just cruising around…some bluegill in the area…ultra, ultra shallow.

> “Nickjack is fairly clear, it’s got a lot of eelgrass…they do this with bluegill but it’s not a super common thing on the TN River. I was really intrigued by that. It was kinda the hint that I was looking for.

> “I was n’t sure how well it would hold up – I just pushed hard to get there. I really felt like I needed to win the Qualifer and get the auto berth [into the Championship Round]….”

Tournament

Chickamauga

> “I didn’t use FFS much at all. I used it more or less to locate schools. …some of it’s due to the generation schedule, but it’s more sunlight than anything I believe…9:00-10:00 before they settle into one area and group up.

> “The schools were just starting their way out. They were not all the way to the river…late spawners. They were further behind the lower you went on the lake.

> “They were in that mid-range, 7-12’…something I like. Everyone is so good with [FFS] now, a lot of the schools on the river get found, but a lot of that secondary stuff doesn’t get looked at as much.

> “Oddly enough I couldn’t generate very many bites on a minnow or anything slow. It was very much a power-fishing plan. Whether it was a plug or a swimbait, you really had to move something fairly quickly to trigger a reaction. Seemed like if they had time to investigate any bait at all, they would follow it but never would bite.

> “I caught them using a bunch different crankbaits. One was a Bill Lewis MR-12 [and also a] boot-tail swimbait on 3/4-oz head. …wind it through there as quickly as you could and trigger that reaction.

> “The 1st qualifier day went nothing like what I expected. We had absolutely no current generation that day. The wind blew really hard from downlake upstream – the current actually flowed upstream. That really moved and shifted a lot of those schools around. It was hard to trigger the school to fire and I could tell the numbers and quality had left.

> “I caught probably 7 bass that day, and they were not hard at all hard to catch in practice.

> “The 2nd day they did generate a little bit, enough to keep the fish locked down and settle into a particular area. I was able to get those schools to fire at least once during the day.

> “I caught 20 on the crankbait the first day. The majority was on that 5-inch paddletail swimbait [green gizzard shad].”

Nickajack

It was all about imitating bluegill in ultra-shallow water in a particular creek:

> “What I didn’t realize was that Mullins Creek area where I fished had a really big spring in the back of it. That was a major factor with all the rain we got in the Knockout Round. It muddied most of the [lake] – fortunately my little area never changed.

> “I fished a Yamamoto D Shad and 5-inch Senko, both in gp – bluegill imitators. I caught a few under docks in the rain and clouds, oddly enough…on that Senko. I figured out pretty quickly that if I skipped the Senko in there and it didn’t get tapped by bluegill, you weren’t gonna catch a bass.

> “When the sun came out, I really think the bluegill repositioned somewhere else. …I could see holes in the eelgrass really shallow, maybe 10-16 inches. That’s where the majority of my scoreables came out of, and the shallower the hole the better.

> “…Buckeye Buzzerk Buzzbait with a Ribbit toad. I could cover a lot of water, keep the trolling motor on high and really not have to concentrate on my bait. I was looking for bluegill beds or little open holes in the grass. Even if they were not beds, bluegill were still using the hole. Eelgrass often is like a carpet on the bottom, so I was really looking for something to key on.

> “The buzzbait turned out to be a huge player. I assumed I was gonna run across a few doing that…when it got ultra-shallow that was really the best way to target them.

> “Once I’d locate a hole, I’d catch 1-2 on that buzzbait and then they’d wise up. Then I’d generally go to a D Shad then…deadstick a Senko in the hole and one would eventually pick it up.

> “It was super fun not – a cool new spin. As much history and wherewithal I have on the TVA chain, it was like a totally new deal. Obviously I’ve caught them around bluegill and holes in eelgrass before, but that shallow and that clean water was very unique to this chain.

> “I get super fired up when I’m able to unlock, to learn, something totally new. That’s harder to do on the TVA the more time I spend here.

> “With my Scope period I’d catch some fry-guarders but really just a lot of fish hanging around pole timber. I caught a couple on a jerkbait, the majority on a minnow [a 3-inch Yamamoto Scope Shad – moving it fast] and a few on a Neko rig. …how that particular bass set up demanded a particular technique or bait.”

Baits

> 3/8-oz Buckeye Buzzerk Buzzbait (black with gold blade – “that’s my standard…in cloudy conditions or when I’m looking at bluegill eaters”) with a 4″ Frog Factory Baby Ribbit (American bullfrog – ” by the end of the event I was throwing black because that’s all I had left”).

> 30-lb Seaguar Smackdown Stealth Grey Braid (“I can cast it an extremely long way and it’s plenty strong enough – I could actually go lighter, but the diameter gets so small it cuts into the spool a little bit”), Bates Salty Hundo Reel, 7′ 1″ MH Dobyns Kaden Series 713 Rod (“it’s more on the H M side so it’s a lighter rod and I really think it makes a big difference in allowing fish to get the bait a little better”).

> “I was bombing the buzzbait as far as I could get it from me. They would bite it in the first 10-20′ of the cast.”

> Weightless Yamamoto D Shad (gp), 5/0 Owner Haymaker Hook, 18-lb Seaguar JDM PEX8 Braid to 15-lb Seaguar Red Label fluoro, Dobyns Champion Extreme HP 703 Rod.

> Wacky-rigged Yamamoto Senko (gp), 2/0 Owner Jungle Weedless Wacky Hook, same line and rod as D-Shad.

> Bill Lewis MR12, 10-lb Seaguar Red Label fluoro, Bates Goat Reel, Dobyns 805 Champion XP Cranking Rod.

> “Color did not seem to matter a tremendous amount. Generally I like to start with something bright, like ‘citrus shad,’ which I caught the majority on, then I go to a more natural color (‘green gizzard shad’ or ‘lavender shad’).”

> When they cooled on the crank, he went to the swimbait, and then after that a Carolina rig.

Electronics

> Chick – “I very heavily used my side imaging to locate those schools. It was very important to cover a tremendous amount of water. I want to say I put 27 hours on my Mercury, and a lot of it was idling in practice.

> “I used Humminbird for SI and Garmin for LiveScope – and Humminbird Lakemaster mapping as well.

> Chick FFS: “…I was not using it to see a single or group and cast to it. All I was doing was more or less the old-school traditional way: Make a cast, get a bite, pick out a line on the bank, hit Spot-Lock on the QUEST and make that same cast.”

> Nick FFS: “…there was a creek channel out from where I had some bluegill beds and holes in the grass. [He Scoped] a couple fry-guarders in the eelgrass, but the majority were sitting or roaming around in that pole timber.”

Shoutouts

> “Bates Reels. That Salty Hundo is new favorite of mine. It has brass gears and bearings…super hardy, 1-piece aluminum…. I don’t have great big hands…that reel is extremely comfortable. The frame is more of an 80-size reel with the line capacity of a 100-size reel.