By John Johnson | March 2021
Jeff Gustafson was more than 1,300 miles from his residence last week while he was competing in the Tennessee River Bassmaster Elite Series. The way the smallmouth bass cooperated with him, though, the affable Canadian might as well have been right at home.
Gustafson notched his first tour-level victory in his 9th season of fishing professionally as he led from start to finish. He did what many experts had long thought was next to impossible – win a multi-day tournament on a Southern body of water while weighing nothing but bronzebacks, particularly one with an 18-inch minimum-length requirement for brown fish.
He took the lead with a 17-14 haul on day 1, then backed it up with bags that weighed 15-10, 15-05 and 14-03 for a 63-00 total. He prevailed by a 7-01 margin over runner-up Steve Kennedy.
"It feels pretty good, but I was glad when it was over," he said Monday afternoon while making the long journey home to Keewatin, Ontario. "It was fun, but I wanted to get 'er done.
"I've fished a lot of tournaments and I've been close (to winning) a few times. Going into the first day I was just hoping to catch a smallmouth or two – I didn't know what was there or what the potential was. I had a great first day, then I headed out on the second day to find out whether I just got lucky or what. After I caught them again that day, I really dialed in and I realized that I had a shot to win."
Stayed Between the Big Bodies
The place where Gustafson compiled his bags was the canal that separates Tellico Lake from Fort Loudoun Reservoir. There's a large boat ramp nearby that he and many other competitors utilized on practice days.
The canal had a fair amount of current running through it and he used his Humminbird Side Imaging to identify some good-looking rocks in the 18- to 20-foot depth range, along with schools of baitfish.
"It had some of the right ingredients that gave it a lot of potential," he said. "I really got lucky that I found it and no one else did.
The manner in which he caught his fish was one that he's extremely familiar with. It consists of drifting along with the current while fishing vertically with a shad-imitating soft-plastic on a weighty jighead.
He said he learned the technique from pioneer northern anglers Ron and Jim Lindner. At Rainy Lake near his home, it's a staple for catching bass and walleye from mid-summer through the fall.
"The key is you want to have a heavy jig and it's critical that you watch your bait on 2D sonar under the trolling motor," he said. "The bass are laying behind the rocks, out of the current. You keep your bait a foot or two off the bottom and let it go over the high spots and drop down into the holes. Some of the fish will just come up and smoke it and some are a little hesitant, so you shake it or lift it and sort of play keep-away to get them to bite. I was catching 20 or 30 fish every day and there were maybe one or two a day that I didn't see on the screen before they bit.
"I feel so lucky and blessed to have stumbled into that program. I've caught thousands of bass and walleyes doing that so it's something I'm comfortable with and I had a lot of confidence."
By the weekend, he'd narrowed his approach to focusing on a specific type of rock cluster. It was a challenge to make the proper drift on windy day 4.
"Sometimes it took me two or three times to figure out how to line up at the start," he said. "If I missed it by a few feet, I wouldn't catch anything."
He said released the equivalent of a 13-pound bag each day of fish that were just shy of the minimum length.
"Some of the fish I threw back were heavier than some I actually weighed in. A lot of those 18-inchers were skinny."
Winning Gear Notes
> 7'3" medium-action G. Loomis NRX 872 rod, size 3000 Shimano Exsence spinning reel, 10-pound PowerPro braided line (yellow), unnamed 8-pound fluorocarbon leader (8') 3/8-ounce Smeltinator jighead with 2/0 Gamakatsu hook, 4" Z-Man Scented Jerk ShadZ (bad shad).
> The jigheads are made by a friend of his in Ontario. He'd have preferred a half-ounce version, but didn't have any with a small enough hook.
John Johnson. "Gustafson Was In His Element Among The rocks: Tennessee River Winning Pattern" 3 March 2021, bassfan.com/news_article/10155/gustafson-was-in-his-element-among-the-rocks#. Accessed 3 March 2021.
Veteran Steve Kennedy's runner-up finish was his first Top-5 showing since his victory at Lake Dardanelle in 2017. A lackluster second day pretty much eliminated his chances of overtaking eventual wire-to-wire winner Jeff Gustafson.
"My main deal was flipping a jig the first two days and throwing a (bladed jig) the last two days after the air and the water started warming up," he said.
He fished the lower portion of the lake and concentrated on stained water in the mouths of creeks. That water was 51 or 52 degrees compared to 46 or 47 on the main river channel.
"There weren't a lot of fish there and it was difficult to get a bite," he said. "I got six bites the first day and four the second day, when I landed two and lost two. I caught most everything on wood and when the sun was out it worked pretty good.
"It was mostly laydown stuff that had washed down the river; the bigger, the better, but I couldn't be picky."
He made the switch from flipping to the bladed jig late on day 2 and weighed the biggest sack of the tournament – the only one to surpass 20 pounds – in the third round.
> Bladed jig gear: 7'3" medium-action Dobyns 735 CB glass rod, old-school Shimano Curado "Greenie" casting reel, unnamed 20-pound fluorocarbon line, 3/8-ounce Z-Man Evergreen ChatterBait JackHammer (chartreuse/white), Yamamoto Zako trailer (white/silver).
> Flipping gear: 7'6" heavy or extra-heavy rod, unnamed casting reel, unnamed 65-pound braided line (main line), unnamed 25- or 30-pound fluorocarbon (leader), 5/8- or 3/4-ounce D&L Tackle Advantage jig (green-pumpkin), Zoom Super Chunk or Super Chunk Jr. trailer (green-pumpkin/blue).
John Johnson. "Cranking, Flipping Hard Cover Was Effective: Tennessee River 2-5 Patterns" 4 March 2021, bassfan.com/news_article/10156/cranking-flipping-hard-cover-was-effective#. Accessed 4 March 2021.
John Cox got only six bites in three days of practice and hadn't gotten any by 11 o'clock on the first competition day.
"I was pretty much out of ideas so I decided to go back and try the creek where Glenn Browne won the FLW tournament in 2010," he said. "I'd spent two or three hours in there in practice and never had a bite, but it looked nice and there was some color to the water.
"I got a keeper right away and I caught the 9 pounds I weighed in a couple hours. I was thrilled."
His next three bags were all in the 14-pound class. All 20 fish that he weighed were enticed by a Berkley Frittside crankbait.
"The first couple days I was cranking the back of a flat that had a little bit of wood and some drains," he said. "By the final day it really started warming up and the water had been dropping the whole time and I caught every one on the same cast on the corner of a bridge.
"A lot of the fish were slapping at it; they really didn't want to eat anything. I'd say out of the 20 fish I weighed, more than half were hooked outside the mouth. The one I caught that was almost 6 (pounds) really ate it and so did one of the 4-pounders."
> Cranking gear: 7'5" medium-heavy Abu Garcia Veritas Winch rod, Abu Garcia Revo EXD casting reel (5.4:1 ratio), 12- or 15-pound Berkley Trilene 100% fluorocarbon line, Berkley Frittside 5 (Kentucky blue, Lone Ranger or ghost morning dawn).
> He sometimes threw the bait on a 6.2:1-ratio reel if he wanted a faster presentation, but discovered that it got hung up more often.
Brandon Card spent the first two days fishing away from the bank about halfway back in a creek channel – where the channel ran into a large flat. He caught most of his fish on a finesse jig and a few key specimens on a jerkbait.
That action fizzled on day 3 as heavy rain the previous day had muddied up the water. He managed to catch two on a jig and one on a shaky-head for a bag that weighed less than 6 pounds.
"I think a lot of them went to the bank," he said. "I tried to fish the bank in that creek but I couldn't relocate them and it didn't work out."
"On day 4 I knew it was muddy halfway back, so I started at the mouth and in the first couple minutes I caught a 4-pounder on a flat-sided crankbait. I did that for several hours but I never got another bite, then I ran to another creek farther down and threw a vibrating jig on docks. I caught four keepers in the last 40 minutes and my final fish was a 3-something.
"That was a long run (to the launch) from all the way down there late in the day, but I trusted that my Suzuki would get me back," he concluded.
> Finesse jig gear: 7'1" medium-heavy iRod Genesis III rod, size 30 Abu Garcia Revo MGX spinning reel, 15-pound Yo-Zuri Super Braid (main line), 12-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon (leader), 5/16-ounce Advantage Baits Wild Card Finesse Jig (brown/orange or brown/green/orange), 4" Yamamoto Twin Tail Grub trailer (green-pumpkin).
> He dipped the tails of the trailer in JJ's Magic dye (methiolate).
> He used a Luna Sea Elite Pro II Cush-It on the butt of the rod. "It helps with balance and keeping the tip up and it makes the rod more sensitive," he said.
> Jerkbait gear: 6'10" medium-action iRod Genesis III rod, Abu Garcia Revo MGX casting reel (8:1 ratio), 20-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon, Yo-Zuri 3DB 110 (ghost sexy shad).
> Vibrating jig gear: 7'2" medium-heavy iRod Genesis III rod, Abu Garcia Revo STX casting reel (7.3:1 ratio), 20-pound Yo-Zuri T7 fluorocarbon, 1/2-ounce unnamed vibrating jig (shad), Yamamoto Zako trailer (sight flash).
Jason Christie had moderate success throwing the new Norman Speed N in a custom color called diamond craw over the first two days.
"I started with it on the third day and they weren't eating it good, and I believe that was because the water was falling," he said. "I'd been catching a few on a spinnerbait, too, and after that I pretty much rode the spinnerbait for the rest of the event."
He employed the blade on a variety of cover types.
"I threw it at docks, rocks, logs – anything in the water," he said. "When the water fell so hard they got on a lot of shallow targets wherever they could."
He stayed in the mid-lake area of Fort Loudoun Reservoir where he'd fished in the 2019 Classic. He caught both of his 4-pound-plus bites on day 4, when he weighed his biggest bag of the event, but lost a couple the previous day.
"One thing that saved the event for me was in practice I was going around a dock and I made a bad cast, and as I was reeling in I caught a fish. I was in five or six feet of water and I used the Garmin LiveScope to look out there and I could see a high spot that ended up being a rock pile. That place gave me three or four fish in the first 15 minutes every day and feed me up to run around and fish the rest of the time."
> Cranking gear: 7' medium action Falcon Cara All Around rod, Lew's HyperMag casting reel (6.8:1 ratio), 14-pound Sunline Super FC Sniper fluorocarbon line, Norman Speed N (diamond craw).
> Spinnerbait gear: 6'11" medium-heavy Falcon Cara Jason Christie Eye Crosser rod, same reel (5.6:1 ratio), 20-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon line3/4-ounce Booyah Covert spinnerbait (chartreuse, white and blue with a single Colorado blade), YUM Swimming Dinger trailer (pearl white).