Mitchell Forde Bass Pro Tour Press Release
SANDUSKY, Ohio — For the first couple hours of Suzuki Marine Stage 7 Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches, it looked like the lone Ohio resident in the Bass Pro Tour field, Cole Floyd, might turn the Qualifying Round into a rout. Floyd blasted 87 pounds even on 31 scorable largemouth in the first period Thursday – the most prolific single period in Bass Pro Tour history.
At that point, Jeff Sprague, Floyd’s nearest pursuer, trailed him by more than 40 pounds. But while Floyd stalled as he started scouting for new schools, Sprague used a steady barrage of smallmouth to erase the deficit and then some.
Sprague stacked up 97-1 on 29 scorable smallmouth to take the top spot on SCORETRACKER®, 7-5 ahead of Floyd. Jake Lawrence sits third with 72-5. Complete results can be found here.
Sprague surprises himself with smallmouth
A Texas native best known for his shallow, power fishing prowess, Sprague has joked this season about how he usually doesn’t jive with deep, clear water. Thus, he initially planned to fish for largemouth on Erie. But after he spent a few days targeting green fish before the fishery went off-limits last month, he figured that wouldn’t be the way to win, and he switched gears.
“I came here and pre-practiced for largemouth and decided I was not going to attempt those,” Sprague said. “So, I went looking for smallmouth, and to be honest with you, I got lucky, for lack of better words. I can’t say that, but I did. I literally put my trolling motor down and started figuring out what depths that they wanted to be in.”
Figuring out the right depth range during practice allowed Sprague to zero in on which rockpiles and boulders to target. Still, entering Thursday, he didn’t have any inkling he might scare 100 pounds.
The biggest surprise was his productivity without forward-facing sonar. While several anglers remarked on MLFNOW! how difficult they found it to catch smallmouth without the technology, Sprague caught more than 75% of his weight with his transducers turned off.
“Everyone is really relying heavily on forward-facing sonar, and I just found some fish that are scattered out across rock piles, and these fish can be caught without it,” he said.
Entering the day, Sprague harbored no visions of topping SCORETRACKER®. That was especially true once Floyd took a huge early lead. But he wanted to catch all he could to at least secure a spot in the Knockout Round.
“They’re smallmouth – they can leave on a dime – so I just decided I was going to catch what I could catch today and give myself an opportunity to at least make the Knockout Round,” Sprague said. “And then we could see what the weather held and things like that.”
Now that he does have a chance to win the Qualifying Round, which comes with an automatic trip to the Championship Round, Sprague is committed to pursuing it. He’d love to give his fish a day to rest on Saturday. Plus, he takes pride in the fact that he’s finished in the Top 10 of the Angler of the Year standings in six of his seven previous Bass Pro Tour seasons. A high finish on Erie would give him a good chance to make it seven-for-eight.
“If it presents itself and Cole Floyd doesn’t step up tomorrow and start busting their heads, I’m absolutely going to try to win the round,” Sprague said. “There’s no reason to try to pull on them fish for more days than you have to.”
Fast start has Floyd eyeing another win
Although Floyd grew up not too far from Erie, he didn’t discover his honey hole until earlier this summer, when he was scouting the lake before it went off-limits. When he returned for official practice this week, he was pleasantly surprised to find the school still in the same spot.
He was even more surprised Thursday morning when he found out just how many bass were there. For about an hour and 15 minutes, he got bit nearly every cast.
“Before the off-limits, when I came up here, we caught a bunch,” Floyd said. “We caught 15 or 20 fish in a row. So, I knew it had potential. When I went over there in practice, though, I caught a couple, and then I just left. So, I really didn’t know. It kind of surprised me with the size and how many there was there.”
Floyd didn’t just find a school with numbers of bass but impressive quality. While some other anglers who targeted largemouth struggled to consistently catch bass bigger than the 2-pound minimum weight, Floyd landed three of 4 pounds plus. That included the biggest largemouth of the day, a 4-15, which will go a long way toward securing him a spot in Heavy Hitters 2027 on Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. Floyd has a stellar track record on the fisheries dating back to his days at nearby Bethel University.
“That was super key coming into this deal,” he said. “I wanted to make Kentucky Lake next year. I lived there for five or six years, and I know a lot about it. And I’d say we did that with a 5-pounder.”
As eye-popping as Floyd’s first period was, the fact that he did it with largemouth – not the species Erie is best known for – made his spree even more impressive. In Floyd’s own words: “I kind of felt like I was on the Tennessee River.” In fact, he was the only angler in the Top 10 to catch a scorable largemouth Thursday.
Plus, he didn’t even use the whole period. With about 45 minutes left in the frame, he left his juice and started searching for other groups of fish. He only added two more scorable bass the rest of the day.
Floyd believes that spot has the potential to produce his second win in the past three Bass Pro Tour events, so he wants to conserve as many fish as possible for the Championship Round.
“I don’t think I caught them all,” he said. “I probably only caught a quarter of what was there. I feel like I can definitely catch some more fish off of it. And I have two other places that have ‘em really good. I really don’t know how many; there might be just as many there as there was that place. I haven’t really leaned on them. So, I guess time will tell.”
Now, Floyd has a decision to make – whether to pursue the Qualifying Round win or use Friday as an extra day of practice. He said he’ll look at the weather forecast and mull the pros and cons of each approach tonight, but he’s leaning toward conceding the automatic Championship Round berth.
Either way, Floyd figures he’ll have to revisit his best spot prior to the Championship Round, and he thinks he’ll have to catch less weight to finish in the top nine during the Knockout Round than he would to beat Sprague. While that strategy carries the risk that he might not even make the Top 10, Floyd has already qualified for World Bass Enterprises’ The Champions, and he’s sitting pretty to make REDCREST 2027. So, he’s uniquely positioned to chase the win.
“I’m going to have to catch them off those places again before the final day no matter what,” he explained. “So, I hate to catch 50, 60 pounds off of it tomorrow and burn it up and have to fish the Knockout Round and catch them again. I’m honestly going to play it by ear in the morning and see what kind of pace Sprague is setting, and some of them other guys, and just kind of go from there.
“I really don’t have nothing on the line points wise. I should be sitting really good. So, I kind of want to go for the throat. You don’t get many times to do that.”
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