After Ott DeFoe weighed-in the big bag of 31-3 on Day 1, he was asked how long it would take him to catch five bass weighing 30 pounds at Cherokee Lake, near DeFoe’s Knoxville home.
“A lifetime,” laughed DeFoe. Basically, he was saying it would take a long time to catch five 6-pound smallmouth bass at a lake that DeFoe has fished for years. We’re not talking about five 6-pounders in one day, mind you. In a lifetime you might catch a total of five 6-pound smallmouth bass at Cherokee Lake. It’s just the nature of the beast.
Both the question and the answer were said mostly in jest. But it did get me to thinking, which is not always a good thing: What would the first two days at Cherokee Lake, where DeFoe finished 10th in the Elite Series season opener two weeks ago, and the first two days at Lake Okeechobee look like in comparison?
There were some surprising similarities, as you can see below. The biggest surprise would be Cherokee topping – barely, but still topping – Okeechobee for the average bass weighed-in over the first two days of these Elite Series tournaments, 2.82 to 2.78 pounds. Second on the list of the unexpected would be the small differences in the two-day standings at 25th, 50th and 75th place.
As for the least astonishing, that would be both big bass and big bag. In a smallmouth lake vs. largemouth lake comparison, it’s almost always the case. (Notable exception: see, Mille Lacs Lake, Minn.) Randall Tharp took big bass honors at Cherokee with a 5-5 on Day 2, and it was a largemouth. Tharp ended up being the only angler to top 20 pounds at Cherokee, with that 5-5 largemouth being part of his 20-11 bag on Day 2. But the final day’s top contenders were concentrating on smallmouth bass, as was expected from the start.
What’s the significance of these numbers now, on Day 3 at a big largemouth bass factory like Okeechobee? In a word, hope. You’ve always got a chance to jump way up the standings in a lake where 7- to 10-pounders are abundant. That’s how Jesse Tacorante could leap from 78th to 7th Friday. And that’s how Micah Frazier could make a 7-pound, 11-ounce cull by catching a 9-3 in the final hours Friday.
“This is an exciting place because there are those kind of fish out there,” Frazier said. “If you get behind on Day 1, you can make up some ground. Other places, if you get behind, you’re out.”
The following are the totals from Day 1 and Day 2 during the Elite Series tournaments at Cherokee Lake and Lake Okeechobee. Both had 110 anglers:
| Cherokee | Okeechobee | |
| Bass weighed-in | 888 | 1,068 |
| Total weight | 2,506-13 | 2,973-2 |
| Ave. bass weighed-in | 2.82 lbs. | 2.78 lbs. |
| 5-bass limits | 138 | 208 |
| Pct. catching limit | 62.7% | 94.5% |
| Big bag | 20-11 | 31-3 |
| Big bass | 5-5 | 9-5 |
| 12th place | 31-8 | 35-12 |
| 25th place | 29-7 | 31-15 |
| 50th place | 25-4 | 28-0 |
| 75th place | 20-0 | 23-7 |