Jake Lawrence Wins 2025 O"Reilly Auto Parts Stage $ Presented by Optima Batteries

Buzzbait buzzer-beater lifts Lawrence over Wheeler in instant classic on Nickajack

Jake Lawrence scored his first Bass Pro Tour event win with a clutch catch in the final seconds of Period 3. Photo by Phoenix Moore.

Mitchell Forde 

Bass Pro Tour Press Release

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Thirty hours of competition across four days at O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 4 Presented by OPTIMA Batteries boiled down to the final seconds. Separated on SCORETRACKER® by just 6 ounces, Jake Lawrence and Jacob Wheeler both set the hook.

Wheeler and Lawrence had long since distanced themselves from the rest of the field during Sunday’s Championship Round on Nickajack Lake. The latter half of the day morphed into a one-on-one prize fight: Wheeler, the longtime bully of the Bass Pro Tour, who caught all smallmouth in the current beneath Chickamauga Dam, versus Lawrence, a rookie who caught all largemouth roughly 40 miles down the lake. Lawrence had led most of the day, but with 6 minutes left, Wheeler finally passed him. Still, both anglers felt like if they could just muster one more scorable bass, they’d secure the trophy and $150,000 top prize that comes with it. 

With 45 seconds left before lines out, Lawrence made a bomb cast with his his Buckeye Buzzerk buzzbait. About halfway back to the boat – 21 seconds left – a massive mouth engulfed it. Nine seconds later, Lawrence swung the bass over the gunnel and hung it on the BUBBA scale: a 5-pound, 9-ounce buzzer-beater, easily enough to put him back in the lead. At virtually that exact moment, Wheeler hooked up with another smallmouth, but he couldn’t get it in the boat before time expired. It might not have been enough to overcome Lawrence’s late lunker anyway. 

With a total of 83-2 on 27 scorable bass, Lawrence had won his first Bass Pro Tour title in one of the most dramatic finishes in the seven-year history of the tour. More than an hour later, he still couldn’t come up with a way to describe the ending other than divine intervention.

“The only thing I can say is, man, He wanted me to do it,” Lawrence said. “Wheeler jumped me there by a couple ounces, and I said out loud, ‘Lord, if you want me to do this, you’re going to make it happen.’ I had 45 seconds left, and I had just gotten my buzzer back to the boat, and I said, alright, you can throw right, which is where I had been catching them, or you can throw somewhere totally new. And I chose to throw somewhere totally new, and it was the deal. Unbelievable.” 

Here’s how the Top 10 pros finished the Championship Round:

1. Jake Lawrence – 83-2 (27)

2. Jacob Wheeler – 77-15 (27)

3. Cole Floyd – 48-14 (17)

4. Ron Nelson – 42-7 (15)

5. Wesley Strader – 37-14 (15)

6. Michael Neal – 37-4 (12)

7. Matt Becker – 29-9 (12)

8. Drew Gill – 25-9 (11)

9. Justin Cooper – 21-12 (7)

10. Justin Lucas – 15-8 (6)

Complete results

John Cox Win 2019 Bassmaster Eastern Open on Lake Chickamauga with 66lbs!

2nd Chick Win in Weeks for Cox!
By David A. Brown
BASS PRESS RELEASE

John Cox goes wire-to-wire to win the Bassmaster Eastern Open with 66-05lbs!

Carrying a nearly 8-pound lead into the final round, no doubt, builds confidence, but John Cox readily acknowledged the good fortune that enabled him to slam the door on a wire-to-wire win in the Basspro.com Bassmaster Eastern Open on Lake Chickamauga with a three-day total weight of 66 pounds, 5 ounces.

Cox, who won an FLW Tour event on Chickamauga three weeks ago, took the early lead with a Day 1 limit of 26-11. Adding 21-12 on Day 2 gave the Debary, Fla., pro a 7-pound, 13-ounce lead going into the final round. Today, Cox sealed the deal with a five-bass limit that weighed 17-14 and gave him a winning margin of 4-11.

“It was an amazing week,” Cox said. “So many of my fish catches were so special, and it seemed like luck played into a lot of them.

“Today, I didn’t see one of my key fish — a 5-pounder — until the last second. He didn’t see me, for some reason. I flipped over to the fish and it ate my bait. When I got it into the boat, I realized I was on its blind side; it was missing his eye. If it had been any other direction, I wouldn’t have caught it.”

Cox caught all of his bass in shallow water, including bluegill beds, banks with deeper water adjacent and docks. Although he had planned to fish offshore shellbeds and bars in 8 to 14 feet of water, Cox found his areas too congested with other anglers on Day 1. Snooping around in the shallows quickly convinced him that’s where he needed to remain.

“The first day, I caught a couple good ones out there, but then it got really crowded in those areas,” Cox said. “I didn’t feel comfortable being around all those people, so I said ‘I’m just going to do what I like doing,’ so I got up shallow.

“Once I saw fish swimming around up there, I got sucked into it and I never went back out to those shellbars.”

Cox said his top baits were a 1/2-ounce Dirty Jigs swim jig in the tactical shad color with a white Berkley Max Scent Meaty Chunk trailer, a wacky-rigged 5-inch Berkley Max Scent General (stickbait) in the green pumpkin party color.

For his efforts, Cox won $43,800 and earned a berth in the 2020 Bassmaster Classic presented by DICK’S Sporting Goods. This win, he said, elevated Chickamauga to the top of his personal list.

“I don’t know what to say; this used to be my second-favorite lake, but after this one, it’s definitely my favorite,” Cox said. “I love it when we get to come here, I love all the people and I hope we get to come back.”

Chris Peters of Birchwood, Tenn. finished in second place with 61-10. After tying for 28th place on day one with 14-9, the local fireman who left the weigh ins to start his weekend shift, rose to fourth on Day 2 after catching 20-3. Adding 26-14 today moved him up two notches.

“It took me a little while to get dialed in,” Peters said. “On Day 1, I ran a lot of spots. I had about 30 places I wanted to try. I got them dialed in yesterday and got them dialed in better today. Everywhere I stopped today, it was (catching) one after another.

“I was throwing a big jig, but the deal was the Trixter Custom Tackle Rowdy Craw trailer. It’s a hand-poured plastic so it’s a lot softer and has a lot of action. I think that played a key role today and all week.”

Buddy Gross of Chickamauga, Ga. finished third with 58-10. Gross placed second on Day 1 with 23-8, slipped to third on Day 2 after the lack of current limited him to 15-12 and settled in the No. 3 spot after adding 19-6 in the final round.

Gross caught several of his bass this week on swimbaits and crankbaits, but today, he tempted his biggest fish on a 3/4-ounce green pumpkin Nichols casting jig with a green

John Cox Wins 2019 FLW Tour Lake Chickamauga with 83-9lbs!

Spawners, shad spawn and swim jig key to win!

by Justin Onslow

FLW PRESS RELEASE

Shallow water spawners key to Cox win!
(Photo: FLW)

John Cox considers Lake Chickamauga his favorite lake in the country. On Sunday, it cemented itself as the lake that gave Cox his favorite and most memorable win.

With 21 pounds on Championship Sunday and 83-9 for the tournament, Cox won the FLW Tour event on Chickamauga, presented by Evinrude, thanks in big part to a couple trees the nine-year Tour pro forgot about until the waning moments of day four.

“I’m telling you, it was an amazing day,” Cox says. “I can’t believe this. All day I kept going and going. Right at the end… the last ten minutes was just unreal.

“It was last-minute. I don’t know why, it just popped into [my] head, ‘Go to the trees,’ and I went to them and it was unreal. It was the first cast to them.”

The first cast he’s talking about is the cast that almost broke his heart. Cox pulled up to the pair of trees he’d fished so many times before – but not once during this tournament – with the clock ticking on the end of his day. He hooked a big fish and lost it. It might have been a $100,000 fish.

Cox then went to the next tree and landed a 4-pounder. And then right back to the previous tree, where he’d just lost a big one, to land another 4-pounder, which ultimately sealed the deal on his tournament-winning bag.

“I’m not going to lie, when I caught those two fish real quick in the last 10 minutes, I got all worked up,” he admits. “I’m running back and tears are coming out. I felt something. It felt better than any other tournament any time I’ve won before. It was overwhelming. I’m getting chills thinking about it. I’ve never felt like that before.”

And Cox has had some amazing wins. He already has more hardware than he knows what to do with, including trophies from FLW Tour wins on Hartwell and the Red River, as well as an FLW Cup win on Wheeler. But this one just felt different.

2019 FLW Tour Lake Chickamauga Day 2: Matt Greenblatt Leads with 43-2lbs!

Canadians Richardson 83rd & Sim 109th

by Justin Onslow

FLW PRESS RELEASE

Spawning bass and wacky rig Senkos key to leaders!
(Photo: FLW)

Matt Greenblatt was one of the few pros fishing the FLW Tour’s Lake Chickamauga event this week who didn’t let off the accelerator on day two. With weights down across the board, the Port St. Lucie, Fla., pro brought 19 pounds, 13 ounces across the weigh-in stage and jumped day-one leader John Cox to take the lead with 43-2 overall.

The tournament, presented by Evinrude, hasn’t quite lived up to expectations to this point, due mainly to the odd transitional period into which it falls. Some fish are still moving up to bed, but the big ones don’t seem to be all the out to the ledges yet – a summertime staple for Tennessee River fisheries – and they haven’t been all that easy to catch up shallow, either.

Greenblatt seems to have found the magic formula, or at least the magic spot, where some big ones have been hanging out. He isn’t catching giants, but he’s been hauling in enough quality fish to put together a bag that only needs one kicker to do some damage.

The six-year Tour pro didn’t change anything up from day one, which produced 23-5 of quality Chickamauga largemouths. He simply found a great spot that’s been holding a ton of fish and went to town.

“[It was the] same thing as yesterday,” he explains. “Same spot. Same everything. That slope, I milked her for everything she was worth. Yesterday, I was hoping I was going to get decent weather [on day two]. We were expecting rain and nasty stuff.”

With rain in the forecast for day one (rain that never ended up coming), Greenblatt hammered on that spot pretty hard, but his fish seemed to replenish overnight, and even with some extra fishing pressure on it Friday, it produced nearly as well.

“Of course, you get a little bit of company, too,” he adds. “I had two other boats in there with me: Lendell [Martin Jr.] and John Hunter. John got a 3-pound average out of there. We’re hitting it pretty hard, all three of us.

“We’ve got hopefully two more days in here, and I don’t know what she’s got left.”

Should Greenblatt’s spot dry up or the weather muddy up the water enough to turn off the bite, he has a backup plan in mind.

TOP 10 BELOW

John Cox Wins 2017 BASS Southern Open on Lake Chickamauga with 68-03lbs!

Cox Newest Classic qualifier

By Andrew Canulette

BASS PRESS RELEASE

John Cox is one of the more laid-back professional anglers you’ll find. But from the start of the Bass Pro Shops Southern Open #2, he was confused.

Cox mines shallows instead of popular ledges for win.
(Photo: BASS)

He was perplexed by Chickamauga Lake and the way fishing conditions seemingly changed on him from hour to hour. He ran countless miles to find clean water, and fought for quality catches as his bites were infrequent each day. He got so worked up at times that he stopped for breaks to regroup and regain focus.

The hand wringing may have been tough for him on the water, but it all proved worthwhile on Saturday during the final weigh-in at the Bass Pro Shops location just outside of Chattanooga. Cox finished with a three-day total of 68 pounds, 3 ounces to win the Open championship.

Cox, who hails from Debary, Florida, picked up a contingency berth in the 2018 GEICO Bassmaster Classic presented by DICK’s Sporting Goods with the victory. Fishing all three Southern Opens this season will solidify that berth. He also won more than $8,000 in cash, as well as a Triton 19 TrX and Mercury 200 Pro XS boat/motor package worth $40,000.

Avoid 3 Common Ledge Fishing Mistakes with Lunker Hunt pro Michael Neal.

As largemouth bass complete the spawn, they'll slip into deeper water and school in large groups. With clusters of bass living in deep water, anglers and fish will focus on structure. At times, fishing can a fast and furious. Time it incorrectly and expect a lot of frustration.

Here's FLW pro Michael Neal, a ledge fishing expert, as he shares his knowledge with IBASSIN to help anglers avoid common ledge fishing mistakes.

Jacob Wheeler Wins the 2014 BASSFest!

Wheeler Wins his First Elite

By Deb Johnson

bass PRess release

DAYTON, Tenn. — Jacob Wheeler chose the road less traveled. It led straight to victory Sunday in the inaugural Bassmaster BASSfest event.

Jacob is now a two tour winner and
making a huge name for himself.
(Photos: BASS)

The 23-year-old from Indianapolis, Ind., amassed 90 pounds, 6 ounces over four days of competition on Chickamauga Lake. His margin of victory was 5 pounds and 10 ounces over arguably the best angler on the planet, Bassmaster Elite Series pro Kevin VanDam, who stepped up from third place to finish as the runner-up.

After leading for two days, Wheeler added a pad of 22-1 Sunday to clinch the win. He took home $125,000 and a qualification for the 2015 world championship, the Bassmaster Classic.

“I feel unbelievable,” said Wheeler, who at age 21 made a name for himself on the FLW tour by winning the 2013 Forrest Wood Cup. “To be the first BASSfest champion, and to do it in my first Elite Series event…I mean, these (Elite) guys are the best in the world. I couldn’t feel more humbled. The stars lined up for me this week.”

The Classic qualification means as much to him as the event win, he said.

“That’s so big, qualifying for the Classic,” Wheeler said. “That’s the event you want to be in for your career to advance. I’ve wanted to qualify for a Classic since I was 10 years old.”

2014 BASSFest Day 3: Lead is Jacob Wheeler's Again!

Wheeler's lead reduced to ounces. 

By Deb Johnson

bass press release

DAYTON, Tenn. — Last June in a major tournament on Chickamauga, Jacob Wheeler finished in 92nd place.

He’s a fast learner. Thursday he led the June 11-15 Bassmaster BASSfest competition on the same fishery. Saturday, he did it again.

Jacob explains that the heat, fishing pressure
 and party boats are making fishing difficult.
(Photo: BASS)

“When it’s your time, it’s your time. I put that out there on the line here. If you’re meant to win, it’s going to happen,” he said near the start of the event.

So far, so good. Wheeler, who’s won one Forrest Wood Cup and placed second in another, started BASSfest strong in seventh place. By the second day, he had a 6-pound, 12-ounce lead after weighing an eye-popping 29-13.

In Saturday’s third go at Chickamauga Lake’s bass, apparently it was still the 23-year-old’s time. With a catch of 16-2 and total of 68-5, he was able to hold the lead— but not by much.

Enter Matt Herren. The Ashville, Ala., Bassmaster Elite Series pro helped whittle Wheeler’s lead to 1 pound, 1 ounce by posting 23-6. Herren bumped up from fourth into second place at 67-4.

Elite pro Kevin VanDam of Kalamazoo, Mich., was in third place with 61-4, more than 7 pounds behind the leader. Two other Elite anglers rounded out the Top 5: Greg Hackney of Gonzales, La., fourth place at 58-7; and Terry Scroggins of San Mateo, Fla., in fifth place at 56-4.

Those five led the 12 finalists who made it to Championship Sunday.

2014 BASSFEST Day 1: Ike is King for a Day.

PLACE	NAME	DAY 1		TOTAL FISH	TOTAL WEIGHT
		FISH	WEIGHT
1	Michael Iaconelli	5	25-12	5	25-12
2	Edwin Evers	5	24- 3	5	24- 3
3	Tommy Biffle	5	24- 1	5	24- 1
4	Takahiro Omori	5	22-15	5	22-15
5	Kevin VanDam	5	22- 9	5	22- 9
6	Matthew Herren	5	22- 7	5	22- 7
7	Jacob Wheeler	5	22- 6	5	22- 6
8	Jason Christie	5	22- 5	5	22- 5
9	Davy Hite	5	21- 8	5	21- 8
10	Jason Williamson	5	21- 3	5	21- 3
11	Scott Rook	5	20-10	5	20-10
12	David Smith	5	20- 6	5	20- 6
13	Greg Hackney	5	20- 5	5	20- 5
14	Fred Roumbanis	5	20- 0	5	20- 0
15	Terry Scroggins	5	19- 7	5	19- 7
16	Brett Hite	5	19- 2	5	19- 2
16	Skeet Reese	5	19- 2	5	19- 2
18	Britt Myers	5	19- 1	5	19- 1
19	John Crews	5	18-14	5	18-14
20	Brandon Palaniuk	5	17-15	5	17-15

BASSfest Starts Today!

Anglers of all ranks chat it up during the registration.
(Photo: BASS)

BASSfest a new tournament altogether!

By Ken Duke

BASS Press Release

The 2014 Elite Series season still has four events to go, but if you're one of the competitors you'd better believe you're already coming down the home stretch. There are just two more tournaments on the schedule for you to make your move at a Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year title, a 2015 Bassmaster Classic berth or to re-qualify for the 2015 Elite season.

Those two tournaments are on the Delaware River (Aug. 7-10) and Cayuga Lake (Aug. 21-24). The other two events are BASSfest and the AOY Championship.