This week we start the 2017 Elite Series on Cherokee Lake in my home state of Tennessee. This lake is roughly 4 hours from my house so I don’t have any prior experience here, but this lake does have some similarities to the lakes I grew up fishing. From everything I have heard and read smallmouth pretty much dominate local tournaments here so I’m sure we’ll see a bunch of them weighed in this week. One thing that did surprise me about this lake is how deep the bass will live this time of year. On my home lake I almost never catch bass over 20 feet deep at any time of the year but there are fish here caught out of 50 feet regularly. Knowing that is half the battle but finding them can be time consuming. I’ve spent a good bit of time the past couple days behind my Raymarine units just idling and looking for fish, bait, and a combination of the two.
Looking ahead at the weather for this tournament it looks like Mother Nature is going to throw us a curveball on Thursday, the first day of competition. The high is 38 degrees that day which is bearable but mix that with a 15-20 mph wind and it turns downright brutal. I’ll spend my last practice day tomorrow trying to find a few places where I think I can catch some and be shielded from the wind, at least enough that I can fish effectively. One thing about it though, weather conditions are not something we can control. I’m going to go do my job to the best of my ability and if it’s tough for me, it’ll be tough for my competitors as well.
Like I mentioned, I do expect smallmouth to win this tournament. With that being said don’t be surprised to see a couple guys in the Top 12 fishing for largemouth. I went largemouth fishing today and couldn’t get it figured out but there is a lot of good-looking habitat in the upper part of the lake and somebody will figure out where to catch them. As for me, I plan to spend the majority of my time chasing smallies, but probably will fish for largemouth a little bit too. One bait that I know I’ll have rigged and ready on tournament day is a small swimbait. I throw one called the Mini Swammer from X-Zone lures rigged on a 3/16 to 1/4 ounce Mustad jighead. The great part about this bait is you can fish it from 2 feet to 50 feet and everywhere in between. My rod for this setup is an MHX-EPS-81MLXF. This rod is 6’9″ which gives me plenty of length for long casts but is still accurate when I need to make precise casts. For line I use 10lb. Vicious Braid on my mainline with 6 to 8 lb. Vicious Fluorocarbon for my leader. This setup really shines in clear, cold water when fish are feeding on baitfish.