Bassmaster Elite Series pros David Walker and David Mullins spent a day on Cherokee Lake last fall when the fishing had been good.
“We never caught a fish,” Walker said.
If they’d come back the next day, they might have loaded the boat. That’s the reputation of this 28,780-acre reservoir on the Holston River. And that’s why you can expect to see a wildly fluctuating leaderboard over the four days of the Bassmaster Elite at Cherokee Lake, which begins with a 7:15 a.m. takeoff Thursday.
“This place is called the show-stopper, the humbler, where dreams come to die,” Mullins said.
“The soul-crusher,” Walker added.
The 51-year-old Walker lives about 30 miles from the Cherokee Lake Dam in Sevierville, Tenn. The 35-year-old Mullins, who lives in Mt. Carmel, calls Cherokee his home lake. They’ve spent many days here and are familiar with the ups-and-downs that are typical.
“If you know it well, coming here scares you to death,” Mullins said. “It’s hard to be consistent. Douglas Lake is like that too, but it’s not near as bad as Cherokee. Here you might catch 20 pounds one day, then go back the next and not catch a limit.”
Nearby Douglas Lake is a familiar stop for B.A.S.S. anglers, especially on the Bassmaster Opens circuit. Not so Cherokee. There has been only one B.A.S.S. event here and that was over 35 years ago. Since then, Cherokee has evolved into one of the top smallmouth bass fishing lakes in Tennessee.
“Last year this was the best smallmouth fishing in the state,” Mullins said. “It wasn’t even close. From October to March, it took 20 to 24 pounds every weekend to win a (one-day) tournament. This year the heaviest weight I’ve seen is 18 pounds. There’s something going on, but I’m not sure what.”
Both Mullins and Walker think the winning four-day weight will be in the low to mid 60-pound range — a daily average of just over 16 pounds. Largemouth bass will be a factor as well. There’s a 15-inch minimum length limit on both largemouth and smallmouth bass.
“I think you could randomly catch a four-pound largemouth here easily,” Walker said. “But I think the guy who wins is going to be trying to catch smallmouth. They’re just consistently bigger here.”
Elite Series rookie Skylar Hamilton from Dandridge, Tenn., is another angler with a lot of experience on Cherokee Lake. Although he’s only 22 years old, Hamilton won a juniors tournament here when he was 12, and he’s been fishing the lake ever since.
Hamilton thinks largemouth bass might play a bigger role than Mullins and Walker expect.
“People don’t give this place credit at all for the largemouth it has in it,” Hamilton said. “There are some good ones. I think a guy could win with about half smallmouth and half largemouth. There will be a lot of mixed bags.”
Adding to the unpredictability of Cherokee Lake is the weather. Walker said he expected water temperatures in the high 30s when the 2017 Elite Series schedule was announced last fall. But an unusually warm winter has put the water temps in the upper 40s this week. However, a cold front will be in place for the first two days of the event, followed by another warming trend over the weekend.
In other words, everything points to a wildly uncertain outcome in the Elite Series season opener at Cherokee Lake.