The bite on Fort Loudon and Tellico has been described by our anglers as tough, slow, a grind, and so on throughout practice leading up to the start of the Bassmaster Classic. Though these guys are known to sing the blues regularly during practice and show out come tournament time, their reported poor performances in practice have spilled over into the tournament, as the anglers try with all their might to put something together on a challenging fishery.
Tough fishing actually makes some things easier, however. Namely, the decision-making process. When the fishing is good and anglers have multiple patterns working, there’s the ever-present danger of making one wrong move and getting left in the dust as other anglers wreck them. Timing becomes increasingly important and there’s this constant clamor of voices shouting stay and go simultaneously.
But when the fishing is tough, it’s easier to hunker down. Several anglers this week stated they spent 12-hour practice days running all over these lakes fishing dozens of different baits only to have a half dozen bites. When all that effort reaps so little reward, but three of those bites come on a certain bait or in a certain area, these guys know it’s time to put their nose down, pick a rod up and lay with it.
That’s the decision we’ve seen Brandon Lester make this afternoon. After scrambling around to catch a decent limit throughout the day, Lester picked up a jig and on his third flip caught a good one. He mentioned a few minutes later that he had some places that he wanted to go check and a few other things he wanted to do during his last hour of fishing but, “this jig feels pretty good.” Lester ultimately decided to lay with the jig, making the remark that they weren’t really on it good, but they haven’t really been on anything good the last few days. When the bite is tough, and you’ve got a limit, living and dying with a jig the rest of the day is as good an idea as any.
