Minn Kota Stage Seven Presented by Suzuki on Saginaw Bay:

Sprague sticks with smallmouth, sacks up 17-11 to lead group into Knockout Round

By Tyler Brinks 

BASS PRO TOUR

BAY CITY, Mich. – Things are getting spicy at Minn Kota Stage Seven Presented by Suzuki on Saginaw Bay, with plenty of fish biting and tight weights filling up SCORETRACKER®. It’s so close that tiebreakers were needed to decide the Group B winner and the last angler to advance to the Knockout Round.

Jeff Sprague claimed the top spot in Group B after sacking up 17 pounds, 11 ounces of smallmouth to bring his two-day total to 37-4. He swapped positions with Britt Myers (previously leading Group B), who’s doing his damage with largemouth and caught the same weight over two days. Sprague won the tiebreaker based on his biggest bass, a 4-12 he caught Friday.

The 20th and final spot to advance went to Brent Chapman with 27-5, beating out Kelly Jordon thanks to Chapman’s 3-9 big bass from the first day of Group B Qualifying. Add an ultra-tight Bally Bet Angler of the Year race, and this event is shaping up to be one to remember.

Sprague sticks to smallmouth plan

Even though both groups have been led by anglers primarily targeting smallmouth, brown fish only made up around 10% of the total catch on Friday.

Sprague is all-in on the Saginaw Bay smallmouth but was forced to scrap his plan early two days ago and head inshore for largemouth due to the wind and waves. Today, he stuck with bronzebacks as long as he needed to, believing they’re the ticket to winning Stage Seven.

“Today, the wind was in our favor and allowed us to get out there for smallmouth, and I took advantage of it,” he said. “I got some key bites and landed all of them, which is something I didn’t do our first day. I fished clean today, which was the difference.”

Sprague wasn’t trying to take the lead. He abandoned his key area after catching just four and went searching for more spots after that, eventually finding another to add to his arsenal.

“I caught four good ones and felt like I was in and then went looking and caught another one to take over the lead,” he said. “The good news about my main area is that I never saw another competitor fishing there. Guys from the other group may also be fishing it, but I won’t know for sure until tomorrow.”

Sprague will do the same thing when he returns for Saturday’s Knockout Round.

“Same plan for tomorrow; I feel like I don’t have a choice,” he admitted. “I’ll be out there for smallmouth until the weather doesn’t allow us to.”

After seeing the weights this week, Sprague has two goal weights in mind – which vary based on the conditions.

“If it’s calm, I think you’ll need at least 17 pounds to advance, and if it’s windy again, I think 16 will get you in the Championship Round,” he said.

Myers matches

Myers lost a spot in the standings on a tiebreaker decided by the biggest bass caught. There’s no bonus for winning the group, so Myers’ prize is advancing to the Knockout Round.

“I had the lead yesterday and ended up tied today, but that’s only for bragging rights,” he said. “The tournament really starts tomorrow.”

Like the first day, Myers rode a strong largemouth bite and added another solid limit, weighing in 15-13 today. He fished the same areas and did the same thing as on Group B’s first day of competition, which he doesn’t plan to change.

“I started in my primary area but slowly started working away from it,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate in this event so far because I’ve been able to practice a lot. Tomorrow, I have a few areas I’ll go to, and I won’t deviate too far from them.”

If nothing else, Myers is having a blast catching fish this week and said he couldn’t even begin to estimate how many he caught today.

“I’ve never had a tournament day where I’ve had more bites on a buzzbait than today – it was insane,” he said. “I found one area stacked with 2-pounders and purposely caught every one I could just to see if any bigger ones were mixed in. It was every third cast. I never found one over 3 pounds there.”

He believes the 15- to 16-pound mark will be what he needs to advance and has hope based on the caliber of fish that he’s on.

“I was fishing around some other guys today and some of them caught a random 4-pounder here and there, so I know there are some bigger fish in the area,” Myers said. “It should take at least a 3-pound average to make Championship Round – maybe even more.”

Points watch

This was already the closest Bally Bet Angler of the Year race in Bass Pro Tour history, and it’s going to stay that way for at least another day. Jacob Wheeler and Ott DeFoe made it to the Knockout Round, and now, they’ll be joined by current leader Alton Jones Jr. and Matt Becker, who finished 7th and 19th, respectively, in Group B.

It’s a four-horse race, with everyone else being mathematically eliminated. With weights starting at zero tomorrow, things will get exciting – and we still may not have a winner at the end of the Knockout Round.

Jones entered with 391.5 points – seven points ahead of Wheeler. Behind Wheeler is DeFoe, (just two points back) and Becker is one point behind DeFoe.

What’s next?

Saturday’s Knockout Round will combine the Top 20 anglers from both groups as they vie for a spot in the Championship Round’s 10-angler field. Fishing starts at 8 a.m. ET, but the action starts earlier with the MLFNOW! live stream kicking off at 7:45 a.m. You can follow the action and get live scoring updates at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

2017 Walmart FLW Tour Lake Cumberland Day 2: Clark Wendlandt Leads with 35-06lbs!

Cory Johnston 43rd, Gustafson 72th, Chris Johnston 118th & Richardson 132th 
by Rob Newell 

FLW PRESS RELEASE

“Loosey goosey” is not the next secret lure in bass fishing, or a magical spray formula that makes your reels cast farther.
Rather, it’s how Clark Wendlandt described his fishing after taking the day two lead Friday in the FLW Tour event on Lake Cumberland presented by T-H Marine with a total of 35 pounds, 6 ounces.
After weighing in four smallmouths and one largemouth for 18-7 on day one, Wendlandt backed that up with two smallmouths and three largemouths weighing 16 pounds, 15 ounces on day two.

Clark always loves the spawn. (Photo FLW)

Wendlandt used the term “loosey goosey” to explain his freewheeling approach to Cumberland as he bounced from smallmouth water to largemouth water on a whim based totally on looks and conditions.
Friday’s bright sun and high wind only seemed to help Wendlandt’s easy, breezy strategy.
“This lake is very intriguing to me,” Wendlandt says. “I’ve only fished it once before and I really liked it. It’s so huge and expansive, which gives it an open-ended feel. It’s a very freeing place to fish because your moves and decisions are not dictated by other boats or past pressure. You can just fish the moment all day long – nothing gets in the way of your gut feelings and I really love fishing that way."

2015 Walmart FLW Tour Lewis Smith Lake Day 3: Zack Birge Leads By 4 Pounds

Topwaters help anglers reach the top.

by Rob Newell

FLW PRESS RELEASE

By day three of most Walmart FLW Tour events, catch rates begin to fall off, and those atop the leaderboard start looking for ways to dig in and hold ground as weather changes and fishing pressure take their toll. Lewis Smith Lake, however, refuses to conform to that convention this week.

On day three of the event, which is presented by Evinrude, it seemed as if the fishing got even better, which is particularly ironic for a lake that is historically known as a stingy fishery – and on a day in which competition began with a 31-degree air temperature. One angler joked this afternoon, “Did they issue a 12-pound starter limit to everyone at takeoff this morning?”

Catch weights at Smith continue to be so strong that the word “slugfest” has even been tossed around a time or two. It’s certainly a case of no rest for the weary at Smith. Despite frosty windshields and iced-up rod boxes at takeoff this morning, there was no dropping back and punting today. Anglers had to stay on the offensive, striving for the 15-pound mark to even have a prayer of staying in the top 10 to fish Sunday.

Another surprising slant is that rookie pro Zack Birge, who had never laid eyes on Smith Lake before official practice, continues to bring in hefty limits of largemouth bass to hold of all his spotted bass challengers. Today he sacked yet another 17 pounds, 11 ounces of “largeheads” to take a 3-pound, 11-ounce advantage into the final day with a total of 54-8.

Essentially Birge, of Blanchard, Okla., has applied his Okie style at Smith Lake with unstoppable success. Birge continues to milk the backend of two creeks for his catches and admits that the replenishing factor of spring is working in his favor.

“This is a similar situation for springtime fishing in Oklahoma,” Birge says. “Largemouth bass are funneling into these two areas, and I’m intercepting them as they come in. They come in small waves, and I’m waiting on them when they get there.”

During the week Birge has literally watched the packs of bass migrate in along a 5-foot ditch through a flat. They move into the flooded bushes to ambush shad for a while and then pull up on the shallow flats to spawn. Earlier in the week all of Birge’s fish were prespawn. But for the first time this week, he caught several off beds.

“I made a pass through my primary area of bushes this morning and didn’t get a bite,” he recounts. “So I moved over about 100 yards into a spawning flat, and sure enough, there were new beds that I had not seen earlier.”

After spending some time plucking his limit-starters off beds, Birge made another pass through the bushes and the bite was on.

“Every day at about noon it’s like a whole new wave of them moves in off the lake into the bushes, and they start eating shad,” he says. “From noon until 3 every day is when they really eat the Santone buzzbait and a floating frog the best. To see the whole process take place – from the migration to the feeding in the bushes to the actual making of beds – is pretty neat.”

Another freeze is suppose to occur tonight, but Birge remains undeterred in his commitment to largemouths on the final day.