Lake Tenkiller National Championship

[everythingthatswims]

What a week! You often hear tournament fishermen say "meant to be" or talk about when it is "your time". That all definitely applied to me during this year's championship. Tenkiller was fishing extremely tough, it has some incredible fish in it, but they are hard to catch this time of year. There is a TON of bait for them to eat, so they mainly just roam around, eating shad and suspending. This made for some very frustrating time on the water, but when you did connect with the right fish, things got very intense, very quickly!

 

Practice started on a bad note, I made it halfway to Oklahoma without a key to the boat. Luckily, my dad already had the aluminum boat at his house, 30 minutes from Lake Tenkiller. By complete chance, the rock quarry company he works for in Virginia moved him out there to work for 3 months this summer. My dad was at our home in Virginia when I left, and wasn't flying back to Oklahoma until the evening of our first day of practice. He was able to bring the key for the Stratos, but we had to fish in the 17' tracker until then. To put it simply, we had to use the aluminum boat on day one of practice, but would have the big boat for days 2 and 3. We decided to run wayyyyy up in the river since we had the ability to take a boat where it maybe shouldn't be, because aluminum is a lot more forgiving than fiberglass. All we found up there was one laydown with a small group (5/6) bass living on it. We pretty much wrote that off as not being worth our time, being so far out of the way and because we were sure some of the other anglers would catch those fish during practice.

 

Day two of practice was tough again, we spent our morning running and gunning points with a walking bait, but only found short fish. We spent the rest of our day graphing offshore structure. We fished both brushpiles and rockpiles, but all we found were short fish, aside from one keeper in 20FOW on a brush pile. Keepers at this event were 16", which made things even tougher.

 

Day three of practice was also spent offshore fruitlessly searching for good fish with electronics. During the last two hours of practice, I decided to take the big boat up the river and idle in the channel between trees, so I would have a GPS track to follow during the tournament. We looked at the same tree we found on day one, and still saw a handful of nice fish, and because of how fruitless our practice was, we decided that we would definitely visit it on the first day of the event.

 

Day one started off running a lot of water with a buzzbait, because that was how we caught one of two keepers in practice. Even though we covered hundreds of yards of bank, the one keeper I caught came 6' away from where I caught the other one in practice! After that, we ran up the river to "The Tree". I fished it from a distance with a wacky rig and shakey head, very thoroughly. Not a single bite so I decided to troll by and see if I saw any. I saw a 3+lb bass with one eye cruise alongside the tree, and drop out of sight. At this point we decided to back off and kill time for about 15 minutes. We then came back, positioning the boat a little differently this time. When the fish wolfpack on wood in the rivers I kayak fish, your only shot is a topwater from a long ways away, and you only get one shot, one good cast. I picked up my trusty super spook junior that has almost no paint left on it, and fired a long cast over the roots of the tree. I had walked the bait over the tree and was now 10-15' away from it, losing hope, when a shadow rose up from the depths. She followed it for 5 or 6 feet and then sucked it right under! And whaddaya know, it was ol' one eye! That was our last keeper bite of the day. We spent the last 4 hours of the day sitting on a deep spot, watching 3-4lb smallies gorge on shad, not able to get any to bite.

 

On day two, we did not have high hopes. We started off running buzzbait water, and caught a couple shorts. I did finally bring in a keeper and we were stoked to not blank. After that, we ran up river to the tree. I caught another small keeper on a spook, making the same cast as the day before. We did see a very nice fish follow the hooked one to the boat, but we could not get it to eat. We then ran back down the lake to a deep spot, where we planned to sit for the remainder of the day again.

 

I chose to throw a Berkley Dredger 25.5, the fish didn't eat a jig or worm the day before, so I figured my best shot would be getting them to react. About 10 minutes in, I bounced the bait off a brush pile and loaded up on a good one! It ended up being a 3.5lb largemouth, number 3 in the box for the day. That fish also had followers, both of them in the 3-4lb range, encouraging to see! I didn't get any more fish to eat the crankbait, but while I was working on that, I spotted a fish on the surface about 80 yards away. I could tell it was a big smallie and knew it wouldn't be up for long. But then I noticed it was chasing a pretty large fish, so I threw the trolling motor on high and picked up a walking bait. I saw fish do this to a trout at South Holston Lake last year and they stayed up for a very long time and I was able to catch one, so I was very excited about this fish once I saw what was going on. Once I was finally in range, I put my bait as close as I could to the big smallmouth. The fish swam away from the bluegill it was beating up, and got underneath my bait. It followed the bait for nearly 20 yards until it was getting close to the boat, and I began to worry. My partner and I both crouched, and it got so close that I didn't have any more line, so I just stopped the bait, and expected the fish to sink back into the depths. But then, WOOSH!!! Two seconds of fumbling and the fish was in the net, one of the coolest catches of my life! We headed to weigh in with 4 bass that ended up weighing 11lbs, 5oz. This moved us into the top 12 cut, and we headed into the final day in 9th place.

 

During weigh-in, once we realized we made the cut, we quickly got a waypoint from our other team at the event. (We are allowed to share information with other competitors before the scales close, I checked with officials before doing so just to make sure). He had found some schooling fish, and had seen many big ones, including the 4-8 he weighed in that day. The spot was where a floating dock sat over a creek channel in 65FOW, and the bass would pin shad against the docks and boats. We started there on the final day, because we needed to make a big move in order to make the top 4 for the classic bracket.

 

We pretty much went in blind to those fish, so when we got there, I spent some time observing and deciding how to approach it. My choice was to skip a swimbait in between the boats and docks, hoping to trigger some larger bites. A 6" magdraft was the weapon of choice. My third skip of the morning produced an 18" smallmouth, and I thought it was about to get wild. I did get two more good bites after that, but they didn't stay pegged. I caught a few short fish as well. I had pinpointed where the majority of the fish were sitting, and I was able to skip a 3" EZ Shiner in there and caught a 16.5" spot, which went in the box with his brown cousin.

 

After that, we couldn't get them going again, and abandoned ship around 11:30am. We ran all the way back up the lake from the dam, to our deep spot. It was within an hour of the time I caught the deep crank fish the day before, so I lined up and started banging the bait through the brushpile just like I did previously. I connected with another solid largemouth, and it ended up being about 3lbs. We then chose to go fish the magic tree again while giving the deep spot time to rest. The sun was high now, so I knew the spook would probably not do the job up there, and I opted for the magdraft. I fired out "The Cast" and let the current sweep the bait right past the sweet spot on the tree, where the current has washed out the bottom underneath the root wad. And just like something from my dreams, a giant comes up from the depths and crushes the swimbait! I honestly thought it wasn't a bass because it was so big. After a brief battle, we netted the fish, and I guarantee everyone within a 2 mile radius heard me when that happened. We knew we had a good chance at making the bracket with that one, but knew one more keeper would put the nail in the coffin. And just like we needed, my partner stuck a 2.5/2.75lb largemouth on his first cast with a big worm once we got back to our deep spot. Our 15lb, 4oz limit jumped us from 9th to 3rd place, securing our spot inside the top 4.

 

The next step is the Classic Bracket, where 8 of us will head to @Bluebasser86's neck of the woods, where one of our lives will be changed forever!

 

 

[N Florida Mike]

Congrats on a great finish.

Your tournament summaries are the best. I hope you log them all. 

Wishing you the best with the next step.

[Oregon Native]

Sweeeet

[12poundbass]

Awesome job! It seems like everything feel into place for you guys. 

A couple questions....

1: did you guys have a camera boat following you around and any idea when it might be on TV?

2: when is the bracket tournament going to take place?

 

Again awesome job and the best of luck to you in the bracket. I'm guessing the entire Bassresource family is pulling for you! 

[BassNJake]

Great job and as always an awesome write up that put us right there!!

 

The classic is going to be close to my place(less than an hour) let me know if I can help once you win!!

[Bluebasser86]

Congrats!  I had no idea the Classic was at Milford. Yeah, I've probably been on it one or two dozen times. 

[Choporoz]

Congratulations!   Great weekend!  I always look forward to your reports.   Thank you for taking the time.

[deep]

Good show. Job well done!

[SDoolittle]

Awesome!

[Tennessee Boy]

Congratulations!  Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

[everythingthatswims]

7 hours ago, 12poundbass said:

Awesome job! It seems like everything feel into place for you guys. 

A couple questions....

1: did you guys have a camera boat following you around and any idea when it might be on TV?

2: when is the bracket tournament going to take place?

 

Again awesome job and the best of luck to you in the bracket. I'm guessing the entire Bassresource family is pulling for you! 

Camera boats only followed the top 3 or 4 boats on the final day, so we didn't get any coverage. I do believe there will be a little footage of us at weigh-in on the final day.

 

The bracket us going to be August 14th, 15th, and 16th. We get one practice day on the 13th.

[N Florida Mike]

Will it be on TV ?

[Montanaro]

Making WVU proud!

[everythingthatswims]

6 hours ago, N Florida Mike said:

Will it be on TV ?

ESPNU will be airing the show, I'm not sure on the exact dates. It will be a VERY interesting event to watch, the leaders caught fish on flutter spoons and jigging spoons with their boat pulled INTO the boat slip they were fishing!!

[OCdockskipper]

16 hours ago, Bluebasser86 said:

Congrats!  I had no idea the Classic was at Milford. Yeah, I've probably been on it one or two dozen times. 

I don't fish tournaments, but if I understand the rules correctly, anglers can only get information that is publicly available.  So does that mean you can't PM Everythingthatswims with advice, but you could start a thread on this website about your experiences on that lake?

[Bluebasser86]

37 minutes ago, OCdockskipper said:

I don't fish tournaments, but if I understand the rules correctly, anglers can only get information that is publicly available.  So does that mean you can't PM Everythingthatswims with advice, but you could start a thread on this website about your experiences on that lake?

I'm not sure how it works. It's only a 16k acre lake, so it isn't so huge that I'm sure they couldn't figure it out pretty well by themselves, but I do know a thing or two that might help find some of the 3-6 pound smallies roaming around out there.

 

[scaleface]

I enjoy your write ups . Tear the up next event . I have my fingers crossed .

[A-Jay]

@everythingthatswims Nicely Done.

You & your partner's tournament exploits are becoming quite Epic !

That was a fantastic all be it late & great charge up the leader board.

Good Luck in August.

A-Jay

[MichaelCopeland]

Congratulations on a great finish to a not so great start! Best of luck at the Classic in August! May God Bless y'all with safety and a BIG WIN! ?

[lo n slo]

just saw this on ESPNU and i was grinning from ear to ear when they finally showed you two on stage. we’re all behind you brother. git r done!

[ohboyitsrobby]

I just watched it too. What's up with the no on the water love? There was only 12 boats out that day. You'd figure all the teams would've gotten a little coverage. That's OK though, you got to flash the big smile at the end!!