PAST BASSMASTER CLASSIC CHAMPIONS

He's not a bass-fishing mystic like the legendary Rick Clunn. He's not the most prolific winner in the history of the sport - that title belongs to Kevin VanDam. He didn't put together a Hall of Fame-worthy resume before his 30th birthday, as did Jordan Lee.

Hank Cherry has one thing in common with that trio, though - he's a back-to-back Bassmaster Classic champion.

The 47-year-old North Carolinian captured his second straight Classic title today, catching a 13-01 stringer from Texas' Lake Ray Roberts for a three-day total of 50-15. His winning margin over runner-up and fellow Tar Heel State resident Matt Arey was 1-14.

"It's the biggest honor I could dream of as a kid," who collected his second $300,000 paycheck in the span of 15 months. "I've fulfilled my childhood fantasy twice now and I'm not even thinking about a third. It hasn't sunk in yet and it won't until I go to sleep tonight.

"I'm proud of not giving up and fighting through the heat and just proud to be representing."

Cherry built a 4 3/4-pound advantage with a 17-10 haul on weather-shortened day 2. His final-day stringer was easily his smallest of the event and only seventh-best among the 25 anglers who survived the second-day cut, but more than enough to allow him to join the list of anglers who've won multiple Classics - the three guys mentioned above, along with Bobby Murray, Hank Parker and George Cochran.

After Arey, the next two positions in the final standings were occupied by non-Elite Series competitors. Oklahoma's Chris Jones, who gained his spot in the derby by winning last year's Arkansas River Central Open, weighed a 13-00 bag to finish 3rd with 45-09. In 4th was Arizonan Justin Kerr, a B.A.S.S. Nation qualifier and longtime standout in Western events whose 12-00 sack left him with a 45-02 aggregate.

Brock Mosley, who has four Top-10 finishes on the Elite Series this year but is still seeking his first tour-level win, boxed a day-best 19-01 to finish 5th with 42-00.

Here's how the lower half of the Top 10 stacked up:

6. Scott Canterbury: 41-06

7. Matt Robertson: 40-03

8. Chris Johnston: 40-02

9. Drew Cook: 38-07

10. Patrick Walters: 38-01

The event, originally scheduled for March but delayed three months due to the coronavirus pandemic was a big-bite affair in which a lot of potential game-changing fish either broke or pulled off of anglers' lines. The lake, with its water level four feet over normal pool for this time of year due to recent torrential rains, was still in a springtime mode when it started, but took some big strides toward a summertime scenario by the time it was over as the Lone Star State experienced its warmest week of the year so far.

Cherry caught his first final-day weigh-in fish - a 2 1/2-pounder, shortly after takeoff. He popped his biggest specimen - a 4 1/2 - at about 10:30 a.m. and added two more run-of-the-mill keepers over the next 45 minutes.

Four that went to the scale came via flipping and pitching to the flooded trees. His jerkbait program (he threw a Berkley Stunna that he designed and which is scheduled to hit retail shelves in July) on rip-rap in the vicinity of the dam accounted for the other one.

"I wasn't having the best day," he said. "I was trying to force-feed them the jig and I had one wrap up in a bush and break it off. I switched to a smaller hook, a lighter weight and a smaller bait and the dumbest 4 1/2-pounder in the lake comes out and gets it. That got the whole train rolling."

He came into the event with a high confidence level after catching numerous oversized specimens during practice including a personal-best 10-13. He basically rotated through eight places throughout the derby. He flipped a Berkley Pit Boss, pitched a Picasso jig at times and employed several different bladed jigs in addition to throwing the jerkbait. The latter produced six of his 15 weigh-in fish.

"I knew I had that ace in the whole with the dam and I knew I wouldn't have to catch as many from the bushes. Anytime I can tie on that bait, I feel good about it.

"I didn't catch a lot of fish from any one place, but I caught enough to win."

Arey flipped bushes and threw three different types of frogs. He lost a big final-day fish that could've propelled him past Cherry.

Jones threw a swimjig to capitalize on the early morning shad spawn and then switched to flipping a YUM Christie Craw when the sun got high. Kerr went with an old-school flipping setup - a 1/2-ounce jig that he tied himself and an Uncle Josh pork trailer.

(Outdoor Sportsman Group Senior Digital Editor Lynn Burkhead contributed to this story.)

Notable

> Day 3 stats - 25 anglers, 13 limits, 2 fours, 5 threes, 4 twos, 1 one.

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern BassFan 6/13/21 (John Johnson)

It was fortuitous for Hank Cherry that he had a mechanical issue with his trolling motor on the official practice day for the Bassmaster Classic at Lake Guntersville.

After having the problem addressed by service technicians, he put his boat back in the water, with the first order of business to test the device. He traveled just a few hundred yards from the launch to the Brown's Creek causeway and caught a 5-pounder while putting the motor through its paces.

He proceeded to fish there throughout the derby, sans the company of fellow competitors, and won the 50th anniversary of the sport's most famous event with a three-day total of 65-05. A big portion of that came on day 1, when he caught a tournament-best 29-03 stringer (tied for third-heaviest in Classic history) to put nearly 8 pounds of separation between him and the rest of the 53-angler field.

His advantage was reduced to 4-12 after a 16-10 effort on day 2, but after a sluggish start to the final day he ended up boxing 19 1/2 pounds to win by 6-11 over runner-up Todd Auten. The victory, his first at the sport's top level for the 46-year-old from North Carolina, was worth $300,000, pushing his career earnings mark with B.A.S.S. and FLW combined past the $1 million mark.

"The biggest factors were just patience and not having anybody around me - knowing I didn't have to split those fish up," he said. "At this time of year that's one of the best-known places on the whole lake, but there was nobody there. Once I realized that, my confidence skyrocketed." Following are some of the specifics of his program.

Been There Before:

It wasn't the first time that Cherry had exploited that causeway. He used it to register a 17th-place finish in a Bassmaster Elite Series tournament in 2015 that Skeet Reese won.

That event took place a month later on the calendar, but experienced a similar weather pattern.

"The fish had been on beds and then a hard wind and cold came in," he said. "I didn't end up finding it until the end of the first day and I caught four for 19 pounds.

"Last year (when he finished 8th in the Elite Series event in June) I stayed in the upper part of the lake and I never ventured down that far."

The causeway is about three-quarters of a mile long with riprap along both sides. There's a shallower grassy area at one end, and it was there that he caught the bulk of his massive opening-day stringer as it surrendered a 7-02, a 6-pounder and a 5 3/4. He caught another 7-02 off the causeway.

The sweet spots along the causeway were places where large rocks had tumbled into the water, forming high spots. "They could just sit there and ambush gizzard shad," he said.

On day 2, he pulled two of his weigh-in fish off the grass flat on a bladed jig, two off the causeway rocks with a jerkbait and one off a dock with a conventional jig. He made one late cull from a dock on the final day, but everything else came from the rocks.

He went the first two hours of day 3 without a bite and temporarily surrendered his lead as contenders who loaded up early and jockeyed in and out of the top slot in the standings. He reestablished command, however, with a flurry of catches between 9 and 10 o'clock, with one of those a 5-pounder. He sealed the deal when he caught one that weighed nearly 6 pounds shortly past noon.

"My cameraman was doing the weights and he had me down for like 16-10 or 17-05," he said. "I kept thinking that it was still too close. At 2:10 I got rid of a 2-pounder with the cull off the dock that got me another pound, and after that I felt pretty good." He said he had quite a few spectators in his area, but none of them were fishing. "One guy tried to, but he was promptly addressed by some locals that he needed to move on."

Winning Pattern:

Cherry said his cadence with the jerkbait in the still-chilly water was painstakingly slow, with long pauses between the double pops. "People ask me how I can (work) a jerkbait so slow, but I just try to think of the right rhythm in my head for that situation. You'll eventually get one to react."

He was heavily dependent on his Garmin electronics. "With LiveScope, I could actually follow the herds of gizzard shad and I could tell when I would see a fish if it was going to bite or not. There were several key fish that I caught that I saw coming to get the bait because it's happening right there in live action. If you do not have Garmin LiveScope, you are definitely missing out."

Winning Gear:

Jerkbait gear: 6'10" medium-light Abu Garcia Veracity rod, Abu Garcia Revo STX casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon line, Megabass Ito Vision 110+1 (GP stain reaction OB).

Bladed jig gear: 7'4" medium-heavy moderate Abu Garcia Veracity rod, same reel, 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon, 1/2-ounce Z-Man/Evergreen ChatterBait Jackhammer (red/green-pumpkin), various grub trailers of the same color.

Conventional jig gear: 7'6" medium-heavy Abu Garcia Fantasista Premier rod, Abu Garcia Revo EXD casting reel (8:1 ratio), 20-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon, Picasso Dock Rocket Hank Cherry Jig (green-pumpkin/orange), Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Chunk trailer (green-pumpkin with tips of tails dyed chartreuse).

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern BassFan 3/12/20 (John Johnson)

As easy as it would've been to spend the last year fantasizing about winning the Bassmaster Classic in his hometown, Ott DeFoe refused to give in to the temptation. "I'm one of those people who tries not to think about the kind of stuff you can't control," DeFoe said. "I try to take each day at a time and I get in trouble for that a lot because [my wife] Jennie says I don't prepare very well and I don't think very far into the future. I just worry about the here and now and take the rest as it comes." Rather than tie himself up in knots about it, he focused first on qualifying for the event and once that hurdle was cleared, the thoughts shifted to how to be productive and effective during the tournament. Winning was never an expectation, only a product of well-executed strategy combined with some good fortune.

"Once it was announced I wanted to fish well all year on the Elite Series and make sure I made it," he said. "Once that was done, I kind of let it enter my mind, but it was just about the tournament, not about winning. It was just about how I was going to catch them and how the weather would affect it and what would the water levels be doing. I kept constant tabs on that stuff from November until now. I thought about it, but it was not about the winning moment. It was always about how am I going to catch the fish once the time comes." When the time came, he committed to a shallow-water game plan focusing exclusively on hard-bottom stretches or submerged hard targets (wood, stumps) in water no deeper than seven feet. Reaction baits dominated the event and DeFoe's stringers were made up largely of bass caught on a lipless crankbait and a vibrating jig. The plan went swimmingly on day 1 as he registered the lone 20-pound bag (20-00) among the 52 competitors to take the early lead. He stumbled a bit on day 2 with a little more than 10 pounds before storming back on Sunday with 18-14 to capture the win, earning a victory lap around the inside of a packed Thompson-Boling Arena.

Practice:

DeFoe typically bypasses visiting the Classic venue before it goes off limits after Dec. 31, but having not spent any significant time on Lou-Tel in many years, he spent a couple days there in December and idled while studying what he was seeing on his Humminbird Side Imaging. "I already knew what I was looking for - shallow stuff off shore like hard spots, wood, brush, stumps, whatever, from 2 to 7 feet deep," he said. "That's what I was going to fish win, lose or draw." When the three-day practice session arrived the weekend before the tournament, he had to be cautious about what spots he was seen fishing. As the "local favorite," he didn't want to tip his hand regarding what or where he planned to fish. "Of the half dozen or so primo spots on the lake, I fished one and I got three bites on it and caught a 2-pounder," he said. "I knew I'd fish those places regardless if I got bit on them in practice or not. That's why I didn't want to spend any time on them or draw any attention to them."

Competition:

The opening day of the 49th Classic will be remembered for the stiff wind that blew against the natural current of the river. It didn't slow DeFoe down, though. He caught two smallmouth (both 18-plus inches) from the area he fished in practice and wound up weighing in four bass on a lipless crankbait and one caught on a shallow-diving Rapala crankbait. While his 20-00 total, which included a 6-pound kicker, topped the field and reinforced his pre-tournament favorite status, he knew the rest of the tournament wouldn't be a cakewalk. "I knew it wouldn't be easy because I knew how special that day was," he said. "The last fish I culled was not a 2-pounder. It wasn't like I went through a bunch of 2 1/2s. It looked really good on paper. I got five good bites and landed every one of them." He relinquished the lead on day 2 - he caught three on a vibrating jig and two on a lipless crank - and opted to channel his disappointment in an effort to get refocused for Sunday. "I was upset after (Saturday) because of having such a big bag the first day," he said. "I feel like slipping that bad, not even catching 12 or 13 pounds, which would've kept me in the lead, I majorly shot myself in the foot. Having that really bad, off day allowed me to fish a lot freer (Sunday) and not have anything to lose."

Among the spots he fished was the one that produced the two smallmouth on Friday. On day 2, however, the fish seemed to bit differently. "I had four or five bites there and they'd stick for a second, then pull off. They just bit weird," he said. Still, he had confidence things would come together for him, but they never did. "I thought that it would happen well enough because the worst day of practice I had was probably 14 pounds," he added. "I knew if I had equal to my worst day of practice at that point, I'd probably be just fine." He left the dock Sunday two pounds behind leader Jacob Wheeler and landed two keepers on a jerkbait to break the ice early on. "Those were, by far, the deepest fish I caught all week," he said, guessing they were 6 or 7 feet down. "I never caught fish as deep as I thought I would. From the time practice started, they were all as shallow as I expected them to be."

From there, it was a grind until he heeded a tip he'd received from Keith Poche prior to the day-2 weigh. Poche had mentioned to DeFoe losing several quality fish along the outside of a floating dock at the Fort Loudoun Marina near Fort Loudoun Dam. DeFoe headed that way and turned his day around with a vibrating jig. Later on, he upgraded with a 4-pounder to seal the win. While DeFoe enjoyed a stellar day Sunday - his 18-14 bag was one of just five 18-pound bags caught in the tournament - others struggled as a result of the conditions. "It was primarily to do - at least 75 percent of being a tough day - with it being the second day after a front," DeFoe explained. "We were almost a half day off anyway because that front system that come through, Thursday would've really been the day for it to be a catch-fest. It was warm and windy. Most of our fronts are pretty well on time with morning and evening, but that front was kind of halfway through the day so when we went out on Friday, clouds were already starting to break up, but we still had a south wind. It was post-frontal skies, but with the south wind. That was, to me, what made Friday good. "Saturday, you had the real bluebird skies, but already had the north wind. That's typically the day-after sort of thing and Sunday was the second full day after the front where you have the coldest night. It doesn't warm up throughout the day so that throws them a big curveball. We had high, bright skies and no wind. As far as the current in the system, there really wasn't any less. It was exactly the same today as it was Saturday. There wasn't any wind to help position those fish any."

Winning Pattern:

Lipless crankbait gear: 7'6" medium-heavy Crankin' Stick casting rod, casting reel (6.8:1 ratio), 17-pound fluorocarbon line, Storm Arashi Vibe (rusty craw).

DeFoe added additional coloring to the bait with orange, red and black permanent markers).

Vibrating jig gear: Same rod as lipless, Carbonlite casting reel (7.5:1 ratio), same line, 3/8-oz. unnamed vibrating jig (chartreuse/white), unnamed fluke-style trailer (pearl white).

Crankbait gear: 7' medium-heavy Crankin' Stick casting rod, same reel as lipless, same line (14-pound), Rapala DT-4 (dark brown craw).

On the crankbaits, he swapped the stock hooks for #2 VMC hybrid short-shank trebles (lipless) and a #4 on the DT-4.

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern BassFan 3/19/19 (Todd Ceisner)

To win the latest edition of the Bassmaster Classic at Lake Hartwell, the consensus among anglers was that largemouth would likely be the dominant species. With the water elevated and warming up in recent weeks - and with plenty of new shallow cover for them to operate in - it was a logical mindset. The lake is also known for its spotted bass population, but they tend to relate to the unpredictable offshore movements of the lake's blueback herring. As practice wore on, Jordan Lee grew more wary of the largemouth with the myriad of conditions thrown the anglers' way. He felt like the spots could be more reliable. "During practice, I realized with as many ways as I fished and things I covered, the largemouth bite wasn't great," Lee said. "I looked for spotted bass, but I didn't kill the spots. It was easier to get bit doing that. I didn't think spots would win, but knew it would be easier to catch a few."

As with any tournament, though, there's always an X-factor and for Lee, that was high skies and rising temperatures. The prolonged sunny periods during the tournament, especially on days 1 and 3, positioned fish around boat docks to where he could target them with a nail-weighted, wacky-rigged soft stickbait. As the event's final stages played out Sunday, Lee discovered docks in a down-lake pocket that were laden with fish underneath them. Three culls in the afternoon are what carried him to the win. After an 18-10 bag had him in 3rd after day 1 Friday, Lee stumbled slightly with a 12-02 bag of all spots on Saturday, but still found himself in 6th place entering day 3. He was 6 1/2 pounds back of leader Jason Christie and had nary a thought about winning. Too many things had to happen - namely, Christie had to struggle and others had to stumble as well - to clear a path for him. A 16-05 stringer anchored by a couple afternoon 3-pounders changed that. It was a tougher day lake-wide for the 25 competitors on the final day, especially for those targeting shallow largemouth, perhaps a result of an overnight storm system that moved through the area late Saturday evening. Lee just went about his dock-skipping business, though, as if he were back home at Smith Lake.

When Lee weighed in Sunday, he knocked Brent Ehrler out of the lead in an eerily similar scenario to the culmination of last year's Classic in Houston. Gerald Swindle was next to the stage and fell short of Lee's mark of 47-01. Same with James Elam, Micah Frazier and Edwin Evers. All that stood between Lee and a second straight Classic win was Jason Christie, the no-BS superstar with a mantle full FLW Tour and Elite Series trophies, but no Classic or AOY hardware. The leader after days 1 and 2, Christie had struggled on day 3 and failed to fill out his limit. The door to history was open for Lee. Christie's four fish weighed 8-11, just over a pound less than what he needed to overtake Lee. And that was it - the 26-year-old became the third angler to win consecutive Classics and the sixth man to win multiple Classics. Lee's winning weight was the lowest of the three Hartwell Classics, which came as a surprise to some who thought it would take more than 50 pounds to prevail last week. In two weeks, Lee will be at the Sabine River near Orange, Texas, for the resumption of the Elite Series season. In the meantime, he'll bask in his latest unexpected triumph. "As far as the way I fished this week, it's not typically the winning pattern," he said. "I had a lot of spotted bass. I probably had half spotted bass. That typically doesn't win tournaments here. It was my best stuff."

Practice:

The conditions at Hartwell less than a month ago were trending toward a shallow-water tournament with the potential for some sight-fishing. A prolonged cold front arrived prior to the start of practice to blunt that progression and bring a range of scenarios into play. "I really focused on the main lake from the launch to the dam," he said. "That's where I banked on for the tournament. I felt like the winning fish were there. I knew that rivers would get pressure and I know that it's hard to win in a creek or up the river with stained water. "I knew it was going to be tough to get bit. I had fished boat docks down the lake and mid lake and didn't get any good signs. I stuck with it. I got just enough bites - a couple here and there - to keep me doing it. I was just banking on it getting better." Lee said he didn't have a confidence-inducing practice, partly because he didn't uncover much in the way of a productive pattern and partly because practice took place an entire week ahead of the tournament. He adopted a junk-fishing mentality. "I'd heard that before about this lake," he said. "My practice was not good. I got a bite here or there. I tried to learn from those. There wasn't a lot to it." He eventually located a few spots that were reliable, but never did he tap into what he felt could be a winning pattern. "I fished new water every day and I had fun," he said. "That was my main goal coming here. A lot of people asked me if I was nervous or had any more pressure coming into the tournament. It was the opposite. I just wanted to have fun and fish the way I thought was my best chance of doing well. That's what I did."

Competition:

Each morning, Lee started on a flat just south of Knucklehead Island and was able to break the ice with some keeper spots with a jerkbait or a small swimbait. "It was a little feeding spot with a little flat on it," he said. "I found it on Google Earth before practice. "I was calling those fish out of deep water. I was sitting in 35 to 40 (feet) casting into 10. There was some bait on my graph. It was just a key spot where I could pull up and start out the morning and get bit. I didn't know that going into the tournament, but that was a key spot for me." From there, he keyed on an old roadbed where spots would school up. "It was a road bed with a little depression in it," he said. "There was a school of spots there, no giants, but all 2 1/2-pounders." With the sun high in the sky Friday, Lee's three best bites came off docks, but they were random and not something he could go back to. "They came off three random docks and I had to fish 30 or 40 docks to catch those three," he said. "They were 2 1/2, 3 1/2 and a 6. That first big bite gave me the confidence to stay with it." He tallied 18-10 and had himself in 3rd.

The clouds moved in on day 2 and the dock bite was non-existent so he relied on the roadbed spot to account for his 12-02. He started the final day with a couple keepers on a jerkbait. By 9:30, he'd caught seven keepers and had a modest limit, including two largemouth caught of shallow grass in the back of a pocket. Then came a 3-plus hour lull during which he tried to get the dock bite fired up. "I fished a lot of docks that weren't productive," he said. "I don't know how many I fished without getting bit, but it was a lot. I thought that was my best chance in this tournament. On this lake, I knew boat docks would be a player because they usually are." Last year, motor trouble on the final day of the Classic prevented him for rotating through secondary areas. It turned out to be a blessing as he throttled a massive stringer with a jig to corral the winning fish. At Hartwell, he didn't have any mechanical mishaps and he was able to run freely navigate the innumerable pockets around the lake in search of docks with

Eventually, he pulled into a pocket on the lower end and noticed right away the water was the warmest he'd seen all week. "They were just there," he said. "It's like they'd just shown up." He caught a 3 1/2-pounder, then a 3-pounder and a solid 2 1/2 to account for three key upgrades. "I knew what I wanted to do coming in," he said. "In my mind, I had a game plan with how I wanted to catch them and the weather played out perfect. "It was a tougher bite than what was expected. Looking back, it played right into how I was catching them. It wasn't a big fish bite as far as spots go."

Winning Gear:

Neko rig gear: 7'2" medium-heavy Quantum Vapor PT spinning rod, Quantum Smoke S3 spinning reel, Quantum Smoke Inshore spinning reel, 30-pound Seaguar Smackdown braided line, 8-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line (leader), #2 VMC Neko rig hook, Strike King Ocho, other soft-plastic stickbaits (green-pumpkin or green-pumpkin blue), 3/32-oz. unnamed nail weight.

"Light line around docks is scary, but I didn't break off at all," Lee said.

Swimbait gear: Same rod as Neko rig, same reel, 8-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line, 1/4-oz. Owner ballhead jig, 2.75" Strike King Rage Swimmer (pearl flash).

Vibrating jig gear: 7'4" heavy-action Quantum Vapor casting rod, Quantum Smoke S3 casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 17-pound Seaguar AbrazX fluorocarbon line, homemade vibrating jig (white/chartreuse), 4.5" Strike King KVD Perfect Plastic Blade Minnow blade minnow (white)

Jerkbait gear: 6'10" medium-heavy Quantum Vapor casting rod, Quantum Tour S3 casting reel (6.1:1 ratio), 10-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon line, unnamed jerkbait (bone).

Main factor: "Nobody thought the spotted bass were going to play (a factor). I went into not with the mindset to swing for big largemouth. I wanted to chip away and be comfortable with my fishing. I fished with moment. Those early spot places were key because I could start the day with 2 1/2-pound bites. When the dock deal wasn't producing I stuck with it. The way the weather played out is the reason I won. If it was a cloudy, rainy day, I wouldn't have won. It was sunny and hot and perfect for the docks. I didn't know where it was going to go down, but I knew it was going to happen somewhere."

Performance edge: "I have a (Lowrance) HDS 16 Carbon on dash and two Carbon 12s on bow. That set up is just confidence for me. I can clearly see what I'm looking at. That spot had a lot of bait. I was seeing fish coming up and streaking on the graph. When I saw that I backed out a little bit. The key with the spots was I'd catch one and my graph would light up and they'd follow me in. When that happened, I typically backed off a bit and it seemed like the fish stayed in that area. I was able to capitalize and catch a couple like that, too. The StructureScan, to me, is the clearest. I found several offshore places like roadbeds. It's a definitely a key to me. I ran different colored trails every day, in practice and in the tournament just to see how many pockets I went int. I ran all over the lake, just searching."

BassMaster Classic 2018 Winning Pattern BassFan 3/20/18 (Todd Ceisner)

Among the themes leading into the Bassmaster Classic at Lake Conroe was that at some point someone would run into a big stringer of fish. Not just a 20-pound bag, but a MEGA bag that would reinforce the notion that, indeed, everything is bigger in Texas. Because let's face it - that's how this Classic was billed. Big city, big venues, big fish. Despite all the inconsistency around the lake and most of the transient fish being in several phases of the spawn, there was almost a certainty that a Texas-sized limit would show up. On Sunday afternoon inside cavernous Minute Maid Park, Jordan Lee delivered such a bag. In the process, he rewrote the Classic record book for comebacks at a Classic that some thought would shatter the event's overall weight records. While that didn't materialize, Lee's 27-04 haul on day 3 will go down as one of the most memorable efforts in the Classic's 47-year history, especially when you consider how his tournament had gone until that point. He was 37th after catching three fish for 8-06 on Friday, then jumped up to 15th with a four-fish stringer for a day-2 best 21-00 on Saturday. As has been proven at three of the last four Classics, no lead is safe and no deficit is too big to overcome. Lee's stringer erased a 13 1/2-pound margin and carried him past 14 other competitors, including four-time champion Kevin VanDam and last year's winner Edwin Evers, both of whom failed to catch a limit Sunday.

Consider this when trying to process just how Lee pulled this off: VanDam was in 7th place entering the final day, but after weighing in Saturday he fumed in the media room about not believing he had a chance to mount a final-day rally. Lee said Sunday the gravity of what he'd accomplished had yet to set in. The 25-year-old is the first former college angler to win the Classic. "It does everything for you," Lee said. "I watched these guys for as long as I can remember on TV. I went to an Elite Series event and met them when I was 16 or 17. I've watched all the shows hundreds of times. I'm a fan of the sport. I can name all of the baits and how the guys caught them. I don't know how I compete with them day in and day out." Lee said this Classic felt eerily like his first - the 2014 event at Lake Guntersville, where he followed up a four-fish, 13 1/2-pound day 1 with consecutive 24-pound stringers to finish 6th. "It felt like Guntersville all over again," he said. "I never thought after the first day here that I'd be right there. The first day at Guntersville, I never thought I'd be right there. You don't ever really know what can happen in a tournament and how things change. Some fish in some areas start biting better and some fish don't."

Lee stayed with Elite Series rookie and Classic first-timer Jesse Wiggins during the initial three days of practice and Lee said Conroe was a bit confounding. "It was really tough all week for me," he said. "Usually, I have bad practices for whatever reason. It was tough. I couldn't get dialed in." Before the tournament started, Lee was asked why he thought he'd win this week. He responded with a grin, "because I'm lucky." Maybe so, but it also helped that he idled over and across many of Conroe's underwater points during practice. Initially, he was looking for brush, but when he found it he couldn't get bites. He also ruled out shallow fish because they weren't dependable. At one point during the three-day practice, he idled across the point where he ultimately caught the winning fish and was intrigued by what he saw.

"I saw what looked to be harder bottom," he said. "It just looked different. I was like, 'That looks good.'" He stopped and made a couple casts and caught a bass that didn't meet the 16-inch length requirement. Still, he filed it away to possibly revisit later. "I was running around Wednesday hitting points because the shallow fish weren't going to win," Lee said. "I didn't see the brush fish being a big deal either. I ran points the last day of practice. I was running up the lake and went back there. I made two throws and caught a 7 and 6 back to back. When that happened, it was like, 'Woah, this may be something right here.'" He tried to unlock a cranking pattern with a Strike King Series 5 plug on similar points, but it didn't materialize. "I fished a ton of points and never got bit. I couldn't run a pattern. It's not a pattern deal because I would've gotten bit somewhere else cranking, but I didn't get another bite. There must be something unique on that spot to catch two big ones back to back."

Lee started this Classic the same way he began the other two Classics he's competed in - by not catching a limit. He admitted that when the bites are few and far between, he tends to speed up rather than fish slow. Day 1 was no different. "The last two Classics have been tough places to catch limits," he said after catching 8-06 on day 1. "Grand (Lake) was tough and here, half the field won't catch a limit. I'm not the only one. It's tough to get bit and in the Classic, the hardest thing to do is slow down when the fishing's tough. I haven't figured that out yet. Maybe one day I will." He fished his best spot on three separate occasions on Friday, but he feels the wind kept him from fishing it effectively. "I couldn't fish it," he said. "It was cloudy and I don't think it was right for it." He started Saturday there, too, but couldn't coax a bite. He began to sense his tournament was going to flame out and he'd be working the Classic Expo on Sunday. He had no fish in his boat at noon, but came back to the point and grinded a Strike King 5XD crankbait across it and caught a 7 1/2-pounder. "There was a whole school of 5s and 6s swimming with it," he said. "The water turned black when they were coming in. I knew they were there and I just had to catch them." Still, he had he'd just found the winning fish.

"I never find that spot," he said. "I find spots everybody else finds. I never find spots that have 27 pounds on it." He tried a big swimbait and also mixed in a 10-inch Strike King Bullworm on a 1/2-oz. shaky-head jig. He caught two of the four fish he weighed in Saturday on the Bullworm. He started to understand that a slow presentation was required to trigger bites along the point. At one point Saturday, he made a cast with the Bullworm and then stopped to take his rain jacket off. When he picked his rod back up, there was a fish on the other end. That theme carried over to the final day, when Lee left the dock in 15th place. Still resistant to slowing down completely, Lee's hand was forced when his outboard acted up and basically stranded him at his best spot in the morning. He had no choice but to fish slow. "I wasn't really stranded, but I got to the place and wasn't able to run around," he said. "When I shut off at the (highway 1097) bridge, I was only able to idle. It was probably 30 minutes before I got my first bite."

That fish turned out to be a short one. Knowing his outboard issues were going to prevent him from running to other spots, he put his head down and tried to make the best of the situation. "I would've been spun out if I wouldn't have made it, but I got to the bridge and when I got there, my motor would just go real slow," he said. "I just crept over to the spot and I was so thankful I got there because I knew the potential. It was just a slow hour and a half and I'd finally get a bite. "I wouldn't have fished that slow if I was in second place. That was the slowest I've ever fished." And the fish started to cooperate. Making repeated casts cross the point, which had roughly six feet of water on it, the big bites started to come. "For whatever reason, I found out (Sunday) the fish wanted it slow," he said. "A few of the bites today, the bait was sitting still. It wasn't a drag it and get bit things. It was a real slow process. "That jig, I was crawling it. I was barely moving it. That's so hard to do for me." Around 2:20, he jumped in the boat of a friend from Alabama, who'd been a marshal and had brought his boat to Conroe to watch Lee on the final day. Lee got back to the ramp at Lakeview Marina about 30 minutes before the rest of the field. About five hours later, in downtown Houston, his life changed forever.

Winning Pattern:

Lee said the point he fished was a non-descript point that resembled many other points at Conroe. For some reason, the fish hung around this particular one. "It was a hard bottom on a point," he said. "There are tons of points on this lake. In practice, I didn't think I'd catch 'em good shallow. Some guys did, but I never found it good. There was a subtle depth change where it might've come up a foot. I side scanned it once in practice. It was just a point in mouth of a cove. I could feel it with a crankbait. My jig would get hung up a little bit. "I'm sure someone fished it in practice. There wasn't a ton of fish there. I didn't just wreck them when I got there."

He said it was tough to tell what phase the fish were in, but every fish he caught had some girth to it. "I think they were mostly post-spawn," he added. "I caught a couple that I couldn't tell. The cove looked like every cove on the lake with seawalls and docks. It didn't look like anything. Nothing stood out about the area."

Winning Gear Notes:

Jig gear: 7'4" heavy-action Quantum Tour KVD casting rod, Quantum Smoke HD 200 casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 17-pound Seaguar AbrazX fluorocarbon line, 1/2-oz. homemade round head jig (brown), Strike King Rage Craw (summer craw) or Space Monkey trailer (green-pumpkin).

He dipped the claws of the Rage Craw in chartreuse dye.

The jig he used was a round-head jig that he says is a "confidence thing from home. It's just a bait I always throw out deep."

Also caught some on Strike King 5XD (using 12-pound InvizX) and Series 5 crankbaits (citrus shad) and on a 10" Strike King KVD Perfect Plastic Bullworm rigged on a 1/2-oz. shaky-head jig.

Main factor in his success - "Being forced to fish slow. I learned it the second day. I caught a fish when it was just sitting there. The fish weren't grouped up. Going into the final day and feeling like I was out of it, it made me slow down."

Performance edge - "My rod, reel and line combination. I didn't lose any fish. I felt like my set ups were perfect. That 17-pound AbrazX was great because when you're catching those fish like that on hard bottom you worry about breaking off and losing fish. I could hit them hard and not worry. There was never a worry one was coming off."

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern BassFan 3/28/17 (Todd Ceisner)

Edwin Evers said he spent a total of 15 minutes in the Elk River during practice leading up to the Bassmaster Classic. The water was clearer there than anywhere else on the Grand Lake system, something others discovered as well. In those 15 minutes, he caught a 7-pounder and shook off two other good fish. He never went back - until he had to. In what may go down as one of the shrewdest calls in Classic history, Evers opted to wait until Sunday when he faced a deficit of more than 6 pounds to check the area of the Elk where he'd been in practice. It was hardly new water to him. He's fished the Elk for years, but if he had his druthers - and conditions were right - he would've spent this year's Classic on the lower end of the lake where the bigger population of big fish lives. The floods from December had deposited plenty of logs and other wood along a wide flat near where the rivers narrows down as it flows out of Missouri. Those same floods had laid waste to the clear water on the lower end of Grand and forced anglers to rethink their strategies. For Evers, that meant the Elk and Neosho rivers would figured prominently his tournament strategy.

After catching 13-12 on day 1 (with just four fish) in the mid-lake section, Evers got back into contention with a 17-08 bag out of the Neosho on day 2. That put him in 3rd place, a fair amount (6-05) behind close friend and Elite Series traveling partner Jason Christie, who led after days 1 and 2. "It's a 3-day tournament," he said. "I spent my time in three different places and without those first 2 days, today doesn't matter." Over the span of 2 hours Sunday morning, Evers put on a river fishing clinic, capitalizing on the windy conditions that helped him target the fish he'd found in practice to the tune of 29-03. No Classic winner had ever caught a heavier stringer on the final day of the event. With Christie struggling to generate bites with the spinnerbait that had carried him to the lead, the door was open for Evers and he blew it down, winning by more than 10 pounds with a 3-day total of 60-07. "Never in 100 years would I have dreamed that I could've caught Jason," he said. "It was a great, great day." The Classic was Evers' 200th Bassmaster tournament and the victory wipes away the label that had followed him around for a while - best angler without a Classic or AOY title. "It feels so much better," Evers said. "It wasn't going to kill me. It was bothering me for a while and then last year it didn't seem like a big deal. If I quit tomorrow, I'd have nothing to be ashamed of over my career. I've had a good career, but this sure makes it a lot better." After posting back-to-back Elite Series wins in 2015 - he was the first do that - and then adding a Classic trophy to his mantle, Evers wants to keep the momentum rolling. The 2016 Elite Series season kicks off next week at the St. Johns River, where Evers won an Elite event in 2011. "I don't want to be satisfied with it," he said. "I'm not done yet."

Evers finished 25th at the 2013 at Grand, largely due to his unwillingness to adjust. "I got stubborn and tried to catch them where I wanted them to be in the clear water," he said. He vowed to not let that happen again this year. He didn't fish Grand in December while the water was on the rise as a result of the heavy rains. He'd spent a day there with a friend last November, but he focused on the lower end and caught small fish. The bulk of his prep work was done on the water last winter when conditions were much different. "I spent so much time at Grand last winter," he said. "I didn't care if it was 20 degrees and snowing. I was trying to do all I could to get ready for this event. We had crystal clear water and then boom; we get rain - record rain - and the lake's 13 feet high. The whole end of the lake that I'm most familiar with - the bottom end was mud." Prior to the start of practice last week, he drove around the perimeter of the lake in an effort to see if any areas had cleared up enough. They hadn't. "Last winter, I never made a cast above Horse Creek. Not one time, so this tournament was really brand new to me," he said. "I know the lower end really well and that's where I wanted it to go down, but it was just muddy and it wasn't anything like I needed it to be. "It's weird how these things work out. Here I am, Classic champion on a whole completely different end of the lake that you could've told me it would be won and I'd have said, 'No. There's no way.' Now I'm sitting here, next to this trophy." In practice, he explored the mid-lake section and the river arms. "I established in practice that I could catch them on a crankbait on shallow banks in the backs of pockets and along the last channel swing," he said. All of the crankbait fish would hit the bait when he paused it. He offered up a jig and spinnerbait and a creature bait when fishing in the rivers around wood.

Competition:

He relied on the crankbait pattern on day 1, but he sensed it wasn't going to hold up all 3 days, especially with high skies and a warming trend on the way. "That pattern was dying because of the warming water," he said. "The water temperature was 44. It was going away. With bass, you want to find where they're going." He was initially disappointed with having just four fish for 13-12 to start off the event, but after realizing many of his competitors had an equally hard time, he changed his tune. "I thought it was a failure until I saw the weights," he said. "I survived it. I'd thought I let the Classic slip away. It was a tough day." He shifted to "damage control" mode on day 2, but it went better than expected. He simplified his approach, flipped with a Zoom Z-Hog Jr., his "all-time confidence bait," and came out with 17-08, the best bag of the day, to rise from 13th to 3rd. "I just looked at new stuff," he said. "I had no bites at 10:30 a.m. and went up the Neosho. I was thinking, 'That's not where you go to win,' but I caught a nice stringer. I never would've gone up that river if it had been a normal Grand year because that's about the max you can get from up there - 17 pounds. It just all worked out good." That nice stringer kept him within shouting distance of Christie, who for two straight days small-eyed his fish and built lead of 5-11 that few thought was surmountable. He basically had a one fish cushion on the field. When Evers got up Sunday, he noted the stiff south wind and knew the Elk would be viable option for the final day. "Those fish were there all week," he said. "I didn't know there were that many fish, though. The Elk is so finicky. I've told so many people that it won't be won there, but sure enough..." He went to town with a small finesse jig tied with living rubber strands.

"It's something you need in a clear-water situation," he said. "I caught them pretty early, within 90 minutes to 2 hours." Because of how clear the water was, he made long pitches and short casts to logs that were wedged on the flat, which was 3 to 5 feet deep and had a mixed silty and rocky bottom. "Those fish were relating to the veins in the flat where it's a little deeper," he said. "The best laydowns had an undercut next to them and that dark spot is where they could hide, facing up current." Fortunate for Evers, 5th-place finisher Randy Howell fished right through the same area on day 2, but didn't catch much, likely because the wind wasn't as intense. "This lake is so phenomenal," Evers said. "When you hit it right, you don't always see the big weights because the big fields they get divide it up. With 50 guys, if the lake was in prime condition, we could catch that. It's special. I've never caught that kind of bag on this lake. With a major accomplishment crossed off his career to-do list, Evers has little time to soak it in. The Elite Series season kicks off next in Florida. "I'm going to enjoy this for a few minutes, but don't think for a second I'm not going to try to win Angler of the Year this year," he said. "I haven't given any event two seconds of thoughts since they announced the schedule. All of my energy and thoughts have all been about Grand."

Winning Gear Notes:

Jig gear: 7' heavy-action casting rod, casting reel (6.2:1 gear ratio), 12-pound fluorocarbon line, 5/16-oz. Andy's Custom Bass Lures E Series Finesse jig (green craw), Zoom Critter Craw (green-pumpkin) trailer.

Cranking gear: 7' medium-action crankin' stick, same reel, 10-pound fluorocarbon line, Megabass Flap Slap (sexy French pearl).

Evers applied some wire to the front of the Flap Slap so it would suspend like a jerkbait - that was key since a lot of the bites he got on it would come on the pause. Evers caught most of his day-2 fish flipping a Zoom Z-Hog Jr. (black/blue) on a 3/0 Mustad Denny Brauer Grip Pin Max flipping hook. He also caught fish on a 1/2-oz. War Eagle tandem willow spinnerbait (chartreuse/white).

Main factor: "I think it was making good decisions all week. I made good decisions on day 2 and caught 17 pounds. I fished three completely different areas all three days."

Performance edge: "The new Lowrance StructureScan. Being able to see so far left and right in that really shallow water. I could see those objects from a long way away, especially after it got windy and I couldn't see them visually. I could line up on a log and make a long cast to it. That stuff's amazing and how far you can see in the shallow water."

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern BassFan 3/8/16 (Todd Ceisner)

Record-breaking cold. Plummeting water temperatures. A massive lake smack full of bass in a state of flux as a result of the arctic blast. Everything about this year's Bassmaster Classic at Lake Hartwell seemed to line up against the anglers to make it one of the most grueling Classics in the 45-year history of the tournament. The pressure and intensity of the event is one thing when conditions are prime and the fish are chewing, but it may be a while before this particular Classic is surpassed in terms of the unique variables the competitors had to deal with on the water. Ice on rod guides, ice on reels, frozen livewells, boats frozen to trailers - things bass anglers typically don't have to deal with on a regular basis - were just some of the headache-inducers the Classic qualifiers encountered during the event. For Casey Ashley, a three-time Elite Series winner who also won an FLW Tour event at Hartwell early last March, he had to deal with all of that plus the burden and expectations that come with being the hometown favorite. Ashley displayed an unflappable confidence all through the event and, in fact, believes the ever-changing weather conditions - temperature ranged from a low of 10 on Friday to a high of 55 on Sunday - worked in his favor. When the stakes were at their peak on Sunday, Ashley had made-to-order conditions for his under-spin pattern in the form of clouds and off-and-on rain. The low-light conditions were prime for him to target fish hanging on a creek channel edge near Party Island. "I knew the first day I had an area with a good many fish in it and they were the right size," he said. "Did I think I could win out of that? No, but I knew I could go in there and get a solid limit to start with and then I'd have a chance to go run my deal with a jig fishing docks the rest of the day. After two days, that checked up very short so (Sunday) with it being so overcast and raining, that is the day you want to pick to throw that fish head. The weather played into my hands big time."

He posted solid weights of 15-03 and 14-11, respectively, across the first two days and faced a deficit of less than two pounds to day-2 leader Takahiro Omori entering the final day. His 20-02 stringer Sunday was the biggest among the 25 finalists and gave him the biggest win of his career and he did it by focusing on two areas not far from the Green Pond Landing launch ramp. Even he was surprised the Classic was won basically off one spot. "I would've never dreamed that there were that many fish there," he said. "I actually found those fish in practice on a jigging spoon right out in that timber after that cold snap. They were out in 44 or 45 feet and I was fishing them vertically jigging. I've spent a lot of time in both of those places. I've just never caught that many like that. "I pulled up there the first morning of the tournament and I love to throw that blade runner. It's what I do. I'll always start with that. It doesn't matter where I'm at. I eased up over top of those fish and saw that they were suspended and moved out on the flat out of the trees and I went to work on 'em. Pretty much everything I weighed came from there and I left them biting thinking I could do better somewhere else. I'd have burned like three gallons of gas if I'd have started there all week and been better off." Just six months after fellow Palmetto Stater Anthony Gagliardi prevailed amid the pressure of having the Forrest Wood Cup at his home lake (Murray), Ashley followed suit with his fifth career tour victory in his backyard. "As far as doing anything different, I played sports all through high school and I've always been a calm guy," he said. "In the bottom of the ninth when we need a hit to score a run, I'm not going to say I was a great athlete, but I always seemed to shine through when the pressure's on. I don't get rattled all that easily. I can tell you with all the hype and everybody expecting me to win and wanting me to do good, I wanted to do good, too, but all that talk doesn't catch fish. They're not going to jump in my boat because I'm the hometown boy. I knew I had a job to do and that's what I did."

Ashley said prep work for this Classic started roughly six years ago after Alton Jones took the win at the 2008 Classic at Hartwell. Ashley was still getting his footing as a tour pro back then and finished 17th in that Classic. "We had such a big turnout here in 2008 and I was pretty sure that sometime in my career the Classic would come back to Hartwell," he said. "I started (practicing) then. This was the tournament I wanted back very bad. I was young then and didn't know how to handle everything. It's been a long time coming. "Before Jan. 1, I got to spend a lot of time on the lake. I'm not going to lie to you, I've got good friends and they can dang sure catch 'em here and they can probably catch them better than anybody who fished this tournament, even me. I've had the opportunity to fish with some great fishermen and they've taught me a lot about the lake." In December, prior to the off-limits period, he checked on areas during the week "when nobody else was here." "I was hoping the lake level would stay where it's at," he said. "The lake level changes every year. That's why fishermen from around here are so versatile. We get a different lake every year. Certain areas are different depending on water level. Coming into this tournament, I'd have bet this trophy that it'd be won shallow, fishing docks with a jig." That played right into his wheelhouse as that's one of the tactics he employed to win the FLW Tour event last year. It held up on the first day of the pre-tournament practice period - he had 30 bites on a jig that day - and his confidence soared. With the jig/dock pattern seemingly locked in, he started searching for secondary plans. He used his electronics to scan some channel edges near the mouths of creeks where the bottom came off a flat and dropped in to 40 feet. "I'd already fished so many places and you waste so much time fishing so I just started idling places and if you can mark them here with your big motor running, there's a lot of 'em there because they don't like that in this clear water," he said.

Competition:

When the start of day 1 was pushed back 90 minutes due to the cold, Ashley didn't flinch. Other competitors winced, though, as they knew they wouldn't be able to capitalize on the fish that were feeding on herring around sunrise. "I've never fished in a tournament this cold like it was the first day," he said. "Not having any experience, I didn't really know any better. I did spray de-icer in all of my lids where they shut. The one thing I didn't think about was my livewells and that little bit of water in the bottom was frozen solid. My livewells wouldn't work the first morning of the tournament. I had to go out in the middle of the lake and do donuts backwards to get water to flow through there and thaw it out." Ashley immediately went to the area near Party Island and began fan casting with a horse head under-spin jig his father made with a Zoom Super Fluke Junior on it. He'd let it hit bottom and then slowly crawl it back to the boat. "It's small and compact," he said. "The way I fish it was a lot different than how a lot of guys fished it. A lot of guys use it for suspended fish. They'll throw it out and as soon as it hits the water, they start their retrieve. I do that, too, when the fish are up high, but I like to fish it on the bottom where a lot of guys would like to throw a jig over get over top of them and vertical fish them. I like to make long casts and work it painfully slow. "The first day when it was so icy, I had to dip my rod in the water twice during each cast to keep the ice off. That's how slow I had to fish it. The reason I do that is the water is so clear and when you get over top of those fish, even though they're in 40 feet of water, you're not going to catch many of them. They realize pretty quickly what's happening and they scatter. If you can stay off of them, you're apt to catch more." He didn't catch a ton of fish, but he laid a good foundation with 15-03. He caught his limit there and then went looking for upgrades with his jig around docks, but that pattern faded with the sub-freezing temperatures that knocked water temperatures down 5 to 7 degrees since practice. "I never had a bite doing what I did in the tournament in practice," he said. "I checked a lot of that stuff. That's just what that cold front did to the fish."

On day 2, with a full day to fish, Ashley went right back to the channel edge and bagged 14-11 to move up to fifth place, just 1-13 behind Takahiro Omori. Because the water was clear where he was, he said it was critical to not give the fish a clue that he was there. "In the tournament, when I'd go into those places, I'd stop way before I'd get to the fish and go in on my trolling motor and cut the back (Lowrance) unit off," he said. "I always keep my front graph on because at least that tells me - when you're fishing so deep and I'm making long casts that tells me where the fish are positioned, whether they're on the bottom or up high. That lets me know what I need to do with my bait. I always run my front unit." After seeing the forecast for the final day and knowing the cloud cover would allow him to work over those fish along the creek channel, he decided to scrap his plan to run docks later in the day in search of upgrades. "We had a lot of sun in practice last weekend and it pushed those fish out in the timber," he said. "Then we had that cold front and that little bit of wind we had, and they drifted back up on that flat." The 3-pound caliber fish he was catching the first two days suddenly became 4-pounders and he culled throughout the day Sunday to get to 20 pounds, and by 7:30 Sunday night, he was the newest member of the Classic champions club. "When I loaded my boat Sunday (at the ramp) and it was over and it was out of my hands, I was a nervous wreck," he said. "I knew I had to catch a big bag, and the weather was textbook for me. It all came together, and I could just see it getting closer and closer and closer." He became just the third angler to win the Classic in his home state.

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern Bassfan 2/24/15 (Todd Ceisner)

Randy Howell made a prediction following day 1 of the Bassmaster Classic that turned out to be dead wrong, and he couldn't be happier about that right now. After opening the event with a sack that weighed 20-03, Howell surmised that there was no way he could come in with less than that on day 2 and still retain a shot at victory. Well, his Saturday stringer was a full 2 pounds lighter, but he ended up winning, anyway. The monster bag he caught on the final day - 29-02 - carried him from 11th place to the top of the chart in the 44th edition of the sport's premier event. He'll no longer be known as the journeyman pro with the military-style haircut and ever-ready smile; from here on out he'll be either a reigning or former Bassmaster Classic champion. "I feel great; just on top of the world," he said a day later. "This is something I've always imagined and wondered what it would feel like and I still can't really put it into words. It doesn't even feel real that I won the Bassmaster Classic. "It's a lifelong dream and something that you believe and hope can come true, but you don't know if you'll ever actually do it. Right now, it's the greatest feeling in the world." His 67-08 total was precisely 1 pound more than the aggregate number compiled by Connecticut B.A.S.S. Nation entrant Paul Mueller, who weighed a record-setting bag on day 2 and another stout stringer on the final day. It also made him the second champion to prevail in his home state, following fellow Alabamian Boyd Duckett at Lay Lake in 2007.

As was the case for many competitors, Howell's 4-day official practice period during the week leading up to the Classic was rendered largely irrelevant by the powerful storm that swept through the region the night before day 1 of competition. His initial objective was to locate a few of the offshore schools of fish that have given up giant stringers (primarily to umbrella-rig devotees) over the past several winters, and then figure out how to catch them with some other technique that was legal for the Classic. That quest was entirely unfruitful. "The weekend practice was very cold and we had 40- to 42-degree water," he said. "I struggled - I didn't catch a fish the first day and I only got two the second day. Finally (on Monday) I quit all my main-river grass hunting. "Another big factor was that the cold spell in January killed off a lot of the shad. I eventually just wrote that whole thing off." He'd ventured into the back of Spring Creek on the afternoon of the second day and found some warmer water. That's where he caught his two fish - a 5 1/2-pounder and a 3. He also graphed a lot of quality fish on the riprap adjacent to the causeway in Spring Creek and four other creeks - Mill, Brown's, Town and Mink. He couldn't get many to bite, but he knew that both the bass and the shad they feed on were there, and he knew they'd begin to interact if the water temperature continued to increase.

Competition:

Howell spent most of day 1 just running around and junk-fishing. He targeted grass, wood and rocks at various points of the day and caught fish on a crankbait, a spinnerbait and a bladed jig. He popped a 6-07 late in the day to eclipse the 20-pound barrier and his sack put him at the very bottom of the initial Top 12. It was then that he made his faulty prediction. "Twenty pounds isn't a great day for Guntersville and it's going to have to be my worst day, by far, if I'm going to have a chance," he said. Although his second-day bag was down by 10 percent, he was able to dial in on the riprap cranking program. He caught far more keepers than he had the previous day and even though most were on the smallish side, he was convinced that the bigger specimens were about ready to move up onto the rocks where the shad buffet was laid out for them. Also, the day-1 pace-setters (Randall Tharp, Edwin Evers, David Walker, et al) had also come in lighter, and Howell was only 9 pounds back going into the final day. The consensus was that anybody within 10 still had a shot at the crown. His original plan for day 3 was to return to Mill Creek, where he'd caught all of his weight the previous day. However, after pulling away from the launch, he made an instinctive decision to head for Spring Creek instead. He felt that the fish populations in both places were roughly equal in terms of quantity and quality, but Spring Creek receives much more angling pressure on a day-in, day-out basis. Still, he opted for Spring because those fish had yet to be worked over during the tournament, simply because they hadn't started biting. "I'd fished all of those causeways in the different creeks every day and I was shocked when I'd catch no fish or maybe just one. When I pulled up that morning, the water temperature was up to the middle 50s. The time was right." Boy, was it ever!

For the first 15 minutes, he caught a quality fish on almost ever cast with a Rapala DT6. The fourth one he put in the box was a 7-03, and that one fully validated that Spring Creek had been the correct call. Before the first hour was over, he'd exceeded his day-1 weight. When the DT6 action cooled off, he switched to a prototype Livingston Lures Pro Series medium-diving plug that he'd only had since Thursday and had never thrown. It was in a bag of baits given to him by fellow Livingston pro-staffer Byron Velvick at Media Day. "I threw it in the water and started reeling it back and I could feel that it vibrated really hard - it rattled the rod tip. I said, "This is the bait that's going to catch them right here." He doesn't know how many fish he caught during the remainder of the day - he estimated maybe 40. He eventually culled out all of his 4-pounders in favor of specimens that were 5 or better. Late in the day he made a quick trip to the back of the creek and used a bladed jig to pull one that was over 6 from a grassy area. That fish supplanted a 5 on his stringer and likely provided his winning margin.

Winning Gear:

Shallow-cranking gear: 7-foot medium-light Daiwa Tatula rod, Daiwa Tatula casting reel (6.3:1 ratio), 12-pound Gamma fluorocarbon line, Rapala DT6 (demon). Demon is part of Rapala's Ike's Custom Colors series. Howell said he picked up several of those baits while serving as an instructor along with Mike Iaconelli at a recent session of The Bass University, then obtained three more from Rapala pro-staffer Brandon Palaniuk prior to day 3.

Deeper cranking gear: 7'2" medium-heavy Daiwa Steez rod, Daiwa Steez casting reel (7.1:1 ratio), 14-pound Gamma fluorocarbon line, prototype Livingston Lures Pro Series medium-diver (red craw). His bladed jig was a Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits creation called the Fizzle. He threw it on a 7'2" medium-heavy Tatula rod with a 6.3:1 ratio Tatula reel and 16-pound Gamma fluorocarbon.

Main factor: "Having a little bit of local knowledge about Spring Creek and the other creeks and knowing the history of how those places turn on when the conditions get right."

Performance edge: "That Livingston bait. Before I threw it I didn't even know how it worked, but it had the perfect mixture of vibration and sound. I'd caught all I could catch with the DT6 and the other baits and I ended up culling everything except that one 7-pounder."

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern Bassfan 2/25/14 (John Johnson)

When Cliff Pace broke into the pro fishing ranks, he knew he'd have to expand his horizons in terms of the types of lakes he fished and times of year he fished them. He hails from Petal, Miss., in the southern half of the state where he says, "deep is about 5 feet." "When I first came out here, all of the tournaments were early in the year between January and March," he said. "We'd work our way from the South to the North so just about every tournament was a pre-spawn tournament. I'd never been faced with that and I did so bad. I'd go down the bank with a spinnerbait thinking I'd catch them like I do at home." After his first season, he dedicated himself to learning how to fish cold-water conditions when fish tend to inhabit deeper water. He spent the next two offseasons fishing deeper lakes and gained a better understanding of how fish behave during the winter months. "I'd go over to Lake Lanier and fish until I got comfortable fishing deep and fishing cold water," he added. "All of that over the years played into what happened this week." While he didn't necessarily win the Bassmaster Classic out of deep water last week, there was no doubt his ability to accurately read how the cold water at Grand Lake affected the fish was one of the key elements to his triumph. Catching nearly identical 21-plus pound stringers on days 1 and 2 put him in the driver's seat entering the final day and he capped off the victory with a four-fish, 11-08 effort to fend off Brandon Palaniuk for the sport's top prize. "What it means to me, I can't put into words personally," Pace said of the win Sunday evening. "What it'll do for me, I really can't tell you that either. Everybody says it'll change your life and I'm sure it'll affect me. Something like this is an unbelievable experience."

Pace spent 3 days at Grand Lake in late November last year and came away with the impression that it was one of the best pattern-fishing lakes he'd been on. Like many, his concern leading up to the Classic was the weather, but when the lake opened for unofficial practice the weekend before the Classic, he discovered a way to entice the lake's better fish to bite. While many of his competitors talked about the amply supply of keeper-quality fish swimming in Grand Lake, he began to concern himself more with the larger, difference-making specimens he was catching in the afternoons. "In practice, I wasn't catching them really great," he said. "I'm sure other people found them better than I did. I was able to get on a little pattern in the afternoon and every now and then I'd catch a big one. I caught them every day like that expect for day 3. I think the change in wind direction affected those fish on Sunday." He said the transition from big rock to gravel was critical to finding the bigger fish around the first channel swing inside a creek, "where it would start to flatten out on the end," he said. "The fish would slide up out of deep water and get on the ends of the channel swing banks." "I didn't really have any schools, but I could run enough of them that I could get a big bite off of every third or fourth one," he added.

Competition:

Many of the 53 competitors in the Classic field reported a steady, if not strong bite during their 3 days of practice the week before competition got underway. But that was under cloudy, rainy conditions with water temperatures in the mid and upper 40s. A winter storm system pushed through the Tulsa area 2 days prior to the event, dumping snow and sleet and driving temperatures down into the 20s. The full effect wasn't seen or felt until Friday when the tournament began. Air temperatures were in the teens at takeoff and the clouds had moved out, clearing the way for frigid, post-front conditions to settle in. More importantly, at least in the minds of the anglers, the water temps in most portions of the lake had dropped 5 or more degrees, a significant dip for wintering bass. There were still plenty of fish available to catch and Pace spent day 1 concentrating on dragging a jig across rock transitions in the morning and throwing a Jackall Squad Minnow jerkbait to windblown channel breaks in the afternoon. The formula resulted in just seven bites, but the five best weighed 21-08, which put him in a dead heat for the lead with Mike Iaconelli. Afterward, he talked about the commitment it required to fish the way he was. While others admitted they gave up on patterns too soon, he stayed with it, thinking it gave him the best chance to win. "All through this event, I was fishing for key bites - big, quality bites because I knew a guy could go catch 10 or 11 pounds easy, but I wasn't going to accomplish what I was here to accomplish," he said. "Had this been any other tournament, I wouldn't have fished the way I did. The first 2 days, it worked out and I got a couple of those bites, but during the course of the day, I was only getting six or seven bites and I had to fish very, very slowly to get those six or seven bites." Those who monitored the new BASSTrakk feature that allowed fans to view real-time locations of the anglers saw the field was pretty spread out across Grand with the numerous creeks, pockets, rocky points and bluff walls garnering the most attention. To catch his fish, Pace moved around mid-lake and south toward the Pensacola Dam.

"I bounced around a lot," he said. "I don't know the names of a lot of them. I know I was in Drowning and Horse (creeks) and some of the smaller creeks and coves between Drowning and the dam and some between Horse and Shangri-La - some of the little, no-name coves. I bounced around a great deal. I was fishing a pattern more than a specific spot." The pattern held true again on day 2 as he put the hammer down with a 21-12 stringer that gave him more than 43 pounds and put immense pressure on the other contenders. Two brutes anchored his bag - a 6-12 and a 7-02, the latter of which took him a bit by surprise. "I'm definitely going to remember that 7-pounder I caught on the jerkbait on day 2," he said. "I never felt it take the bait. I thought I was hung up and when I lifted up, I felt some weight. Then it started shaking its head and I knew it was a good one. That's the fish I'll never forget catching." The final day of the tournament was the third straight day of high skies and while the air temperatures climbed into the 50s, the fish were still getting used to the much cooler water and therefore were reluctant feeders. Pace managed four bites all day, two in the morning and two in the afternoon on his jig. He had a 7-pound lead to open the day, but on the way back to the ramp and for much of the 90-minute ride back to Tulsa, he was fairly sure he'd lost the Classic. "I knew it was going to be a lot closer than what I wanted it to be," he said. "I didn't know if I'd won or not. I wasn't sure. I knew the potential and the chance was still there, but I had left the door open."

Winning Pattern:

Some came to Grand thinking the fish would be further along in the seasonal pattern and more toward their pre-spawn mode. If the water had remained where it was during practice and continued upward, that may have been the case. However, the drastic swing in weather scattered the fish and made them a bit harder to target. That's why Pace seemed to focus on certain areas where he thought he could catch a single fish. "I was fishing the very first thing that I thought would be a staging area inside of any pocket that in a major creek or off the main lake itself," he said. "I was fishing the inside sections of it where the fish are migrating off the main lake coming in there and staging. "Those fish don't like to be out there in that current. The main lake was actually a little colder than what the pockets were this week water temperature-wise. They've migrated inside the edges of that stuff just to get away, but they don't really want to be way back yet where they're going to spawn so I was fishing what you would call the in-between part."

Winning Gear:

Jig gear: 7'2" medium-heavy Shimano Crucial jig and worm rod, Shimano Chronarch casting reel (6.4:1 ratio), 12-pound Hi-Seas 100% fluorocarbon line, 1/2-oz. V&M football jig (green-pumpkin), 4" V&M Twin Tail trailer (green-pumpkin). Pace trimmed the weed guard on the jig to improve his hook-up ratio. "When the fish are biting like they were, I didn't want many strands of fiber there," he said. "I cut a few out of the front of the weed guard and I cut it so if you lay your scissors over the top of the hook, I'd go up about a 1/16th of a inch and cut it on that angle. When these fish are deep, especially when they bite the jig and you set the hook, you really don't need much weed guard there or you won't hook them." He also dyed the tails of the trailer orange and says it got him more bites. "I don't what it is about this lake and orange, but they seemed to like it," he said. "If the water color had been clearer, I probably would've left it alone, but I think in the stained water, the orange on that tail really did get a few more bites over 3 days' time."

Jerkbait gear: 7' medium-action Shimano Crucial crankbait rod, Shimano Chronarch casting reel (5.5:1 ratio), 8-pound Hi-Seas 100% fluorocarbon line, Jackall Squad Minnow 115SP (SG threadfin shad). The only modification he made to his jerkbait was putting a heavier split ring on the line tie to help it dive a little better.

Main factor: "Patience and commitment."

Performance edge: "My HydroWave helped me a bunch. I think those fish were in a negative mood and lethargic and I think it got me a few extra bites."

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern BassFan 2/26/16 (Todd Ceisner)

Chris Lane's victory at the 2012 Bassmaster Classic is proof positive that he's come a long, long way in his development as a professional angler over the past 5 years. In April 2007, he took a 5-pound lead into the last day of the Clarks Hill Bassmaster Elite Series, only to fritter it away and watch Mike McClelland grab the trophy. He really never got over that until last month, when he caught a giant final-day sack to win the Harris Chain Southern Open in his native Florida, defeating a strong field by more than 14 1/2 pounds. "That $100,000 would've changed my life back then, but I wasn't ready to win $100,000 at that time," he said in reference to that long-ago Clarks Hill derby. "But at the Harris Chain, I went out with a sheer passion to smash this thing - to blow it out of the water. And catching that 28 pounds gave me the sense of confidence to go forward in (the Classic). "I proved to myself that I can get things done. I can finish the deal." He did just that on Sunday as he followed up his tournament-best 19-04 sack on day-2 with a 15-14 stringer that gave him a 3-day total of 51-06. He won the 42nd edition of the sport's showcase event by nearly 3 1/2 pounds over runner-up Greg Vinson.

The 36-year-old Lane, who had an excellent Elite Series campaign in 2011 (12th in the Angler of the Year race), came to Shreveport, La. fairly brimming with confidence. During the 4 days of official practice, he found two backwaters (one in Pool 5 and the other in Pool 4) that he felt would be ideal transition locales for fat fish that were either spawning already, or just about to begin the reproduction ritual. "I didn't believe I was on the fish to win this, but I believed 100 percent that I was on the pattern and gameplan to win," he said. "Then after I saw what happened the first day (of competition), I knew it was going to fall into place. I knew it was going to work out and I had a shot at winning."

Competition:

Lane drew boat No. 9 for day 1 and his original plan was to lock through to Pool 4 first thing in the morning. But partially on the advice of his brother-in-law, he opted to open the event in his Pool-5 locale and caught a strong bag that put him in a tie for 6th place with older brother Bobby. As boat No. 40 on day 2 (after the order was flip-flopped), he knew his Pool-5 spot would be crowded before he arrived, so he locked down to Pool 4 and came back with the heaviest sack of the tournament. The fish there were deeper than the ones he'd caught on day 1 and he was forced to approach them more methodically. His big haul gave him a 1-pound lead over Vinson, and by the time the day was over he'd already formulated a plan to utilize both areas on the final day. He figured the Pool-4 spot might be good for a big fish or 2, but he felt it was unlikely he could catch enough to win there. "I decided to run south first thing in the morning, and my plan was to catch 15 pounds," he said. "At 11:00 I don't think I had a fish and I was just about to leave and come back up to my other water, and then I caught one about 2 pounds. "I decided to make one more pass through there, and that's when I caught that 6-10. I knew right then it was on because when they bite, they don't bite for long. At 11:30 I had a limit that was about 13 pounds." He headed north, slipped through the lock and got to his Pool-5 area with about an hour to fish. "I had a 1-pound fish I wanted to get rid of, and I got that one out with a 2-pounder. Then a little bit later I caught a 2 1/4, and my day was over. "To have my plan come together like it did was a true blessing."

Winning Pattern:

Lane's area in Pool 4 featured a couple of deep hyacinth mats that held fish in the early-morning hours. Later in the day, once the sun was high in the sky, he made long casts with a tube on a sandy-bottom stretch of milfoil. His Pool-5 place was the same one used by Alton Jones and was located less than half a mile from the launch. Its primary features were stumps and shallow pad stems.

Winning Gear:

Pitching gear: 7'4" medium-heavy All Star AS Micro rod, Abu Garcia Revo MGX casting reel (7.9:1 ratio), 15-pound Stren Brute Strength monofilament or 50-pound Stren Sonic Braid line, 1/8- or 3/16-ounce Gambler tungsten weight, 4/0 Mustad hook, Luck "E" Strike G4 tube or Gambler Ugly Otter (green-pumpkin).

Main factor: "I'd say that it was a willingness to win. When I caught that 6-10 I was pumped up and I knew right then it was time to catch them and finish this thing. That mindset was a big factor."

Performance edge: "The Red River has a tendency to tear a lot of things up, and the service crews worked tirelessly for us. All of my equipment was instrumental."

Bassmaster Classic Winning Pattern BassFan 2/28/16 (John Johnson)