Upriver with Herren, Cook and Mosley

After sacking up 20 pounds, 3 ounces on Day 1 of the Guaranteed Rate Bassmaster Elite at Chickamauga Lake, Matt Herren got to work just off the main river.
The Alabama pro decided to start his morning on a vertical bluff bank.
The first fish to enter Herren’s boat is a little smallmouth.
After fishing a short stretch of the bluff bank, he makes a move. This becomes a consistant theme.
Herren kept a short leash with most every spot he fished.
Herren’s next stop is a more shallow stretch of bank.
Shortly after begining on the stetch of docks, Herren hooks up.
Unfortunately, this fish won’t keep.
Herren stuck with a textbook junk fishing pattern. Junk fishing isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just means he’s keeping a rotation of different baits when he’s faced with a different target.
Herren makes another move up the river.
Herren mixed in a variety of different areas.
After hitting a single laydown, Herren commits to running further up the river.
After the run up the river, he settled down in a slough that looked textbook for places we’ve seen Herren catch them in the past.
Herren made a few bait adjustments once he settled in.
The slough is jam packed with targets. Depending on the orientation of the cover, Herren switched up baits. between a moving bait and a flipping bait.
The weather on Day 2 felt more like the kind of weather one would climb into a duck blind rather than a bass boat.
“Boy oh boy oh boy”, said Herren after fishing an entire row of laydowns without a bite.
“This is about like watching paint dry boys,” he said.
Herren gets a bite way up in a laydown, but the fish comes off.
“I’m about to run 25 miles that way,” he said before making the long haul.
We made a short run over to Drew Cook who was having a solid day to this point.
Cook was amazed by how many bites he could get off of an extremely small target.
In an area where the water is incredibly shallow, there’s only so many targets to get on. Although he couldn’t visually see them, he believed that these fish were spawning.
Cook’s travel partner Drew Benton was also in the same area.
Rick Clunn was also fishing the same area.
Cook and Benton compare notes and discuss their plans for the rest of the day.
Benton heads to a new area in hopes of culling up.
A look at the isolated targets that Cook was looking for.
Cook turns around to point out an river otter up on the bank.
After missing a fish on a laydown, Cook pitches back to the same area and hooks up.
Unfortunately this fish doesn’t help Cook.
In hopes of finding a female, Cook pitches back to the same area again.
Elite Series veteran Brock Mosley began the second day of the tournament with a lot riding on his performance. He was sitting in 60th in the Angler of the Year race, so he was under pressure to catch fish to climb up in the rankings.
Mosley already had had a good day by the time we caught up with him, bagging more than 15 pounds and clawing into the Top 5.
“I’m practicing now,” Mosley said.
The Mississippi angler was fishing backwaters off the upper river, and he said it had been a great morning. “They’re really eating today,” Mosely said. “I’ve caught 10 fish.”
He had a deck full of rods on his deck, but he said his bites came off two moving baits.
Mosley said he was practicing for tomorrow, and he was definitely relaxed. But he also said he wouldn’t mind catching another cull fish. “I would like to catch one more good one,” he said.
Mosley wasn’t the only angler fishing the backwaters. Among the anglers he crossed was rookie Jay Przekurat while moving from one cut to another.