Jacob Wheeler is 23 points out of first place for Toyota Bassmaster Angler of the Year. That makes the AOY race even tighter, considering his offshore smallmouth angling skills. He is proving the point with a current third place ranking in BASSTrakk. Jason Christie is 17th and Brandon Palaniuk 27th in the tournament standings.
Wheeler is doing what he does best. That is totally dialing into smallmouth (and sometimes largemouth) on the offshore bite. He won doing that at Cherokee Lake and nearly won at Lake Champlain.
So don’t count him out of this AOY race. If nothing else he is going to bring on the heat. That happened already this morning.
“It went down this morning,” he noted.
Indeed it did. Wheeler caught a limit within minutes of arriving at his first spot of the day. BASSTrakk shows him with a weight of 22 pounds, 5 ounces. Most of it came during that early morning flurry that was seen on Bassmaster LIVE.
Wheeler explained during nighttime that smallmouth rise to the shallows and stage on top of shallow flats and bars to feed. They stay there until daybreak, when another early morning flurry happens under the low light conditions.
“That’s when the magic happens,” added Wheeler.
Being on spot in such areas at the right time is critical. Look for that to happen again with Wheeler on Sunday morning.
“Smallmouth are sight feeders, so they favor staging near open areas of vast grass beds,” he continued.
Sweetening the areas are funnel spots. Those provide the smallmouth with a quick route back to deeper water. The combination of a funnel area bordered by grass makes the spots even better.
Wheeler “left them biting” this morning. Those are dangerous words from a skilled angler who always fishes for the win. This time, it might be two of them in the same tournament.