The color of Hank Cherry’s winning jerkbait was…

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — When Hank Cherry was asked Sunday night exactly which jerkbait he had used to win the Academy Sports + Outdoors Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk, he couldn’t say.

Because he honestly wasn’t sure himself. 

Now we can say for the record it was a Megabass 110+1, and the much-talked-about color was GP stain reaction OB (orange belly). 

It was the color that stumped him in the immediate aftermath of his win.

“I knew the color ended with something like OG,” Cherry said in one of the interview rooms outside of Legacy Arena. “They have so many colors that I don’t know all of them. It was just kind of an opaque white with an orange belly.”

He replaced the factory hooks on the jerkbait with Berkley Fusion EWG No. 5s.

“I changed the hooks out to make it sink just the right way (nearly vertical, with the back of the lure falling first),” Cherry said. “About 90 percent of the fish I caught would be when it was directly falling. I had it heavy enough that I could see it falling, and if I saw one following it, I could watch them kill it.”

Cherry also used a Z-Man Jack Hammer ChatterBait on Day 1 when he caught a tournament best catch of 29-3. He said he started that day with a lipless crankbait, but the ChatterBait was a better choice for battling the high winds on Lake Guntersville.

He caught 16-10 and 19-8 on Days 2 and 3, using the jerkbait and his own Hank Cherry Signature Series Jig from Picasso in green pumpkin with a matching Berkley MaxScent Chunk trailer.

His three-day winning total was 65-5.