Buddy Gross Wins 2019 FLW Tour Lake Toho with 85-12lbs!

2nd win for Gross

by Curtis Niedermier

FLW PRESS RELEASE

Key grass bed and current secure win for Buddy!
(Photo: FLW)

Buddy Gross says his experience today on Lake Toho for the final round of the FLW Tour event presented by Ranger Boats was nothing but a blessing. If you watched FLW Live this morning, you understand why. Gross rolled down to the spot that produced 14 of the 15 keepers he brought to the scale to get into first place coming into today, and he quickly banged out about 18 or 19 pounds in the rain. There were some slow periods mixed in for Gross, but not slow enough to stop him. The Chickamauga, Ga., pro culled his way up to 23 pounds, 12 ounces to cap off an 85-12 performance to handily finish his second FLW Tour victory by a margin of 4-10 over John Cox, who led the first two days.

“I still can’t believe they were there like that,” Gross says. “It was crazy, dude. I am not but kidding you it was the craziest thing I’ve seen.”

Gross came down to Toho to pre-practice before the cutoff and spent the entire time graphing the grass to learn and how it all set up. He pieced together enough good-looking spots that it took him three days of official practice to fish them all. During that time, Gross found about 10 spots where he could get bit, but only the one really paid off for him. He did catch one kicker from a shallow ditch on the way in on day three.

The winning spot was on the main span of Lake Toho just north of the lock at the lake’s southern end. It was identifiable on the surface by a V-shaped notch in a grass mat. The notch was about 30 yards wide and jutted into the mat by about 50 yards. However, it’s what was below that was really key to Gross’ success.

“[It was] two ditches with clumps in the middle,” Gross says. “Those fish were sitting in the clumps, but there was 20-foot gaps in between each clump. They’d set up in them [the clumps]. I’ve never seen this before: I could take a swim jig and my swimbait, and usually if you come out of a clump you get bit, but this particular place here I’d throw it up on top of the farthest clump away from me, reel it through the open water where there’s no grass, and as soon as I’d hit the other clump, almost like a dead-end stop, they’d eat it right off the clump. The first day that I caught them it was in the ditch. After that everything was on the clumps.”

Though Gross describes the area as having two ditches, he says the “ditches” weren’t any deeper than the surrounding area. They were just open lanes with no grass. The entire spot was about 7 feet deep.

The spot produced both prespawn and postspawn fish. Interestingly, in a tournament that will be celebrated for its parade of 8-plus-pounders, not a single one of Gross’ keepers weighed more than 5 1/2 pounds in four days. He found giants in practice, but none in the tournament.

In the end, his victory was due to consistency and finding a spot that would reload with fish every day. 

“Yesterday, I thought it was done, and I went there this morning and they fired,” Gross says. “It was a whole other school of fish. This thing was loading every day. It loaded yesterday more with postspawn fish. Today was all for the most part prespawn. I had one skinny [postspawn] fish there. If that thing had had a body on it, it would’ve been a 7-pounder.”