Sixty of the world’s best bass anglers, plus two average Joes, have been competing on Old Hickory Lake near Nashville, Tennessee, for the last two days at the inaugural World Bass Enterprises The Champions Tournament. What’s up for grabs? The biggest purse in bass fishing history: $3.25 million. The winner will take home $1.25 million, and the other top four finishers will all take home cash prizes ranging from $100k to $500k.
The first leg of this tournament also featured a team competition: Team Stripes (MLF anglers) vs. Team Stars (BASS anglers). After two days of fishing, Team Stars took home The Champions Cup and bragging rights. Now the top 15 anglers prepare for the final day and massive cash prizes.
Kentucky’s Matt Robertson took the unofficial lead early on Day 1 and eventually dropped 20 pounds on the scales to establish a commanding lead over second-place Fisher Anya, who weighed 15 pounds, 7 ounces. To start Day 2, Robertson returned to the bottom end of Old Hickory Lake to fish the tailraces on the Cumberland River, where he boated his day-one mega-bag of smallmouth bass.Â
Robertson quickly put three quality fish in the boat and was apologizing to spectators for ending his day early. Since he already punched his ticket to the final round, where weights would be zeroed, pulling another bass out of his honey hole would do more harm than good. So Robertson stopped fishing and went into full-blown guardian mode, spending the rest of the day guarding his spot. While he will start dead even with the rest of the field on Day 3, he has been on a bigger fish throughout the event. The average weight of bass he’s caught across two days comes in around 3-¾ pounds. If Robertson can boat five more of those tomorrow, he will almost certainly pull off the win and, in an instant, triple his career earnings with the $1.25 million first-place prize.Â
But Ron Nelson might rain on his parade. Nelson and Robertson are two of only three anglers to fish below the Old Hickory Dam so far. The duo has shared a small area in the most congenial way, something we haven’t seen in quite a while. And while a couple of casts have separated the two, Nelson hasn’t fished where the Kentucky native caught his bass, in a great display of sportsmanship. What’s been Robertson’s response? With $1.25 million on the line, the leader encouraged Nelson to keep fishing the juice until he could secure a limit and a spot in the final day.Â
Although the two have shared water all week, they have caught their bass on slightly different baits. Nelson has fished a Ned rig almost exclusively to boat his smallmouth bass, which must measure at least 18 inches to be kept here in Tennessee. And Robertson has done his damage with a small swimbait on a jighead. Each angler lets their bait drift in the current on semi-slack line to create a natural action, allowing the lures to wash around rocks and shelves into eddies where bass wait for an easy meal.
On the main lake, Fisher Anaya put his big Day 1 bag together by pairing a jerkbait with his forward-facing sonar. Chris Johnston tied with Justin Lucas for the biggest bass on Day 1, with both fish weighing 5 pounds and 3 ounces. Johnston’s big bass came on a buzzbait, a lure we’ve seen several anglers lock in their hand to try to catch a kicker. Chatterbaits and other vibrating jigs have gotten a lot of play, too, with anglers like Takahiro Omori and Zach Birge relying on these baits to make their push to make the cut. Lipless cranks, shallow-running crankbaits, spinnerbaits, urchins, and drop shots have also gotten a lot of airtime on the PPV broadcast. Ultimately, big bites have been hard to come by, which is no surprise to the anglers fishing and the fans watching. Fall fishing on this reservoir is notoriously tough.
This tournament is far from over. Smallmouth in tailraces below the dam can shut down at any time, and this area has been pressured the last two days. It should replenish, but even then, an angler could catch a big bag on the Cumberland River and still get locked out, forcing him to miss the weigh-in. We’ve seen this happen before—Gary Klein got locked out on the Ohio River, and it cost him the 1987 Bassmaster Classic. With barge traffic regularly working its way through the lock, this is a real concern for the anglers locking down.Â
We’ve seen that Old Hickory is capable of producing a 15-pound-plus bag this week. And that could be enough to get the job done on the final day, even if one of the river rats can make it down and back. Keep in mind, while Robertson has caught fish throughout the event, he never caught a keeper below the dam in practice, impressively turning the clues he got from a couple of 16- and 17-inch non-keepers into a two-day whackfest. So fishing pressure could catch up to anglers on the Cumberland River. Either way, one thing’s for certain: someone will be a bass fishing millionaire in a matter of hours.
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