BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — One of his competitors looked across the media room at the throng of reporters surrounding Hank Cherry after the Day 1 weigh-in and said, “I wouldn’t want to be Hank Cherry. You do not want to be leading this thing. Not on Day 1.”
Hank Cherry is leading – and by a bunch – after Day 1 of the 2020 Academy Sports + Outdoors Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk. With his five-bass total of 29 pounds, 3 ounces, the 46-year-old angler from Lincolnton, N.C., begins Day 2 with a 7-pound, 11-ounce lead over his nearest competitors.
Cherry understands the thought about not leading on Day 1 of the Classic, under certain conditions. “Here’s my theory about leading tournaments,” he said. “I never want to be leading by one pound. I either want to be blowing it away, or I want to be two pounds back. If you’re going to give me this lead on the first day of the Classic, and I’ve got no competitors fishing within miles of me, I’ll take those odds.”
On what was otherwise a tough, cold, windy day on Lake Guntersville, Cherry made headlines with the third-heaviest five-bass limit in Bassmaster Classic history, matching the 29-3 Edwin Evers caught on Day 3 when he won at Oklahoma’s Grand Lake in 2016. (Topping that list is the 32-3 weighed by Paul Mueller at where else but Lake Guntersville in 2014.) Cherry’s bag included a pair of 7-pound, 2-ounce largemouths. He relied mostly on a vibrating jig, but also caught fish on a lipless crankbait and added a late cull on a jerkbait, he said.
Cherry emphasized after practice this week that his focus was finding clues about where bass were moving as they’re leaving winter hangouts and moving toward spawning areas. “You’ve got to practice where they’re going this time of year,” he said Tuesday. And he found that Friday.
“What clued me in to the fact that they’re coming is they’re all nice, fat, white fish,” said Cherry, mentioning an increase of three degrees in the water temperature that seemingly spurred the bass migration. “The area where those fish came from, if you just drained Guntersville, the bottom there does not look like the rest of the lake.”
Cherry is confident more fish are on the way, saying, “I’m 100 percent sure. There are stopping points leading back to where I caught ‘em. And every time I stopped on one, just checking, I caught a couple. It’s just unique to everything that’s around the lake right now.”
That’s as confident as you’ll ever hear a Day 1 leader of the Bassmaster Classic.
“That’s the biggest bag I’ve ever weighed in my life,” Cherry said. “There’s no better way to do it than at the 50th anniversary of the Bassmaster Classic.”