PREVIEW: Thrown for a Largemouth Loop

Day four of the MLF Challenge Select suddenly turns "green"

If you thought Major League Fishing threw the Select pros a curveball by sending them to Great Lake Huron in Elimination Rounds 2 and 3 of the MLF Challenge Select in Alpena, wait until you see what’s in store for Qualifying Round 4.

In fact, the pros never even made it out of the hotel parking lot when an expedient meeting was suddenly called to order. Some pros were already loaded up in the trucks ready to go when they were summoned back out of their trucks for an important announcement.

As a drizzly rain drifted through the street lights of the Sanctuary Inn parking lot, the pros were all informed that they would be fishing Lake Winyah, just a few miles down the road. The parking lot at the Winyah ramp was so small that MLF officials decided to go ahead and conduct the pre-competition meeting in the hotel parking lot, which included the handing out of Winyah maps. Also, in an interesting turn of events, pros were allowed to go back into their personal trucks or hotel rooms to get any other extra tackle they thought was necessary after seeing the Lake Winyah map.

This is somewhat of an unprecedented move by MLF: usually when the MLF boats leave the hotel, pros can only use what they have packed in the competition boats from that point on. But today, an exception was made, giving pros an extra few minutes at the hotel to assemble more tackle if they desired to do so.

Select pro Gary Clouse of Tennessee was one of the first to take a guess at the meaning behind the sudden audible being called in the parking lot. After one look at his Winyah map, he headed back to his truck to get more tackle.

“It’s a small, flat lake,” Clouse said while digging for squarebills and vibrating jigs. “My bet is it’s mostly a largemouth lake with grass and timber and they figured most of us were loaded for smallmouth so I’m guessing they’re being fair and giving us a few minutes to reconsidered our tackle selections.”

Clouse’s hunch was apparently not far off the mark as Lake Winyah, at just 1,200 acres, was a veritable bathtub compared to the zone on Huron fished the two days before. The map the pros received of Winyah was void of any contours, making it look like a shallow flooded swamp, potentially full of largemouths.

Former Forrest Wood Cup winner Jacob Wheeler of Indiana just shook his head while looking at his map.

“These jokers,” he said with a laugh. “I knew they were going to do this to us. I just knew it.”

“There is no way they were going to let us watch all those previous shows here at Alpena and then take us right back to the same exact lakes,” he said. “I knew they had something up their sleeve and this is it. They had us watch those shows to get us all jacked up for smallmouth and now I’m betting we’re going to a dang largemouth lake – so now we’re going green.”

Due to his suspicions, Wheeler did not need to revisit his tackle stocks in his truck for largemouth gear; he was already prepared.

“I’ve got 35 rods rigged up in the boat and some of them are ready for largemouths,” Wheeler said. “I wasn’t going to let these guys lull me into thinking this was an all smallmouth deal. I put my guard up last night by taking some extra time to rig largemouth stuff, too.”

Russ Lane, however, was taking the opportunity to largemouth up.

“Oh yeah, it looks like a largemouth lake to me,” Lane said. “I’m sure it’s got some smallmouth in it, but it looks shallow and flat. I’m hoping it’s got some matted grass in it; I went back to the truck and got a couple of flipping sticks with some braided line, a few Spro frogs and some plastics I can punch with. That kind of fishing up here can be really fun if it’s right.”

Former Forrest Wood Cup winner Scott Suggs of Arkansas said his largemouth lures were in the boat, but not tied on just yet.

“Most of these lakes up here are smallmouth dominant,” Suggs said. “I guess there’s a possibility they found one that is all largemouth, but I’d be surprised if that’s the case. I’m rigged for smallmouth so I’m going to start that way. I’ll keep a close ear on that SCORETRACKER though; I know who the largemouth boys are in this group – Jacob Wheeler and Russ Lane. If those two guys go to lighting it up, I’ll know I better go to tying on some largemouth stuff on pretty fast.”