Alabama pro earns third MLF Bass Pro Tour win
on fishery and earns $100,000 top prize, Kevin VanDam catches 7-12
largemouth to win $100,000 Big Bass award
The first time Abu Garcia pro Jordan Lee of Cullman, Alabama,
ever tasted tournament victory, competing on Lake Guntersville at
age 17, he earned the win throwing a topwater frog. Ever since,
he’s continued to hone his skills with his favorite technique,
waiting for a chance to show them off on the national stage.
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Pro Jordan Lee of Cullman, Alabama, won
the General Tire Heavy Hitters Presented by Bass Pro Shops at the
Kissimmee Chain of Lakes, Thursday - his third career victory on
the fishery - and earned the $100,000 top prize. (Photo: Business
Wire)
When he finally got the chance at General Tire Heavy Hitters
Presented by Bass Pro Shops on the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes, Lee
made sure to take advantage.
Lee caught each of his seven scorable bass during Thursday’s
Championship Round and nearly all his weight throughout the event
walking a Berkley Swamp Lord over matted hydrilla on Lake Toho. His
27-pound, 14-ounce final-day total proved just enough to clinch a
second Heavy Hitters championship belt.
Link to Hi-Res Photo of Championship Round Winner Jordan
Lee Link to Photo Gallery of Championship Round
Highlights Link to Video of Fish-Catch Highlights from
Championship Round of Heavy Hitters on the Kissimmee Chain
Lee entered this week as the clear favorite thanks to his two
prior wins on the Kissimmee Chain in Bass Pro Tour competition,
including the inaugural Heavy Hitters event in June 2020. And for
much of the event, he made it look easy. He led Group B through
both days of qualifying, stacking more than 60 pounds on
SCORETRACKER® during a Day 1 he called “insane,” then won the
Knockout Round.
Come Championship Thursday, though, his fish proved far less
cooperative. Whether due to five days of fishing pressure, the
variable minimum weight increasing to 3 pounds or the calm,
blue-sky conditions that greeted the Top 10, the entire field had
to grind for bites, Lee included. It took him two hours to book his
first scorable bass.
But, leaning on the hundreds of hours he’s spent frogging mats
on Guntersville through the years, the Alabama native eventually
figured out which tricks to try to generate just enough bites. He
crawled his frog painfully slowly, especially when he knew he was
around active fish. He also doctored one frog, removing the
silicone strand legs and replacing them with super-glued jig
rattles, saying the added noise helps attract bass through the
thicker slop.
Most important was knowing where to look amid a sea of hydrilla.
Lee learned during practice that he could get more bites through
bigger mats than small, matted clumps. From there, he covered water
to identify which areas were better than others, using the extra
practice time he earned during the Qualifying Round to expand his
list of waypoints. That proved vital, as Lee said certain mats
stopped producing during the course of the event due to fishing
pressure and boat traffic.
“They had to be hollow underneath, … and where you had that kind
of cheese,” Lee explained. “They weren’t way out on the outside
where there was isolated clumps. I was looking for the bigger mats
in areas where they just looked fresh almost, and I was looking for
blowholes, where fish come up, blowing through the mat.
“It’s Guntersville 101. I do this every fall since I was 16, the
exact fishing that I did this week. It was no different. The grass
was the same, and it was just awesome because of how identical it
fishes to there.”
Lee used beefed-up tackle to throw his Swamp Lords, which he
believes was key. He primarily wielded a Jordan Lee signature
series 7-6 heavy rod from Abu Garcia — designed to be a flipping
stick — instead of his usual, 7-3 frog rod. He also turned to a 7-9
punching rod in the thickest mats, spooling both with 50-pound
Berkley X5 braid. The heavier rods gave him more power to winch
bass out of the thick grass.
“I didn’t want to mess up the mats,” Lee said. “That’s kind of
what I’ve learned about going in and getting them, you ruin a
place, and then you’ve got to drag them out. You can catch a fish
right there in the same hole that you’ve caught one before, and
that happened a ton this week where you’d find them just packed in
out of the same spot.”
Lee bounced from spot to spot Thursday morning before landing on
a mat that produced a three-fish flurry in the final half four of
Period 1, giving him the lead. He extended his advantage with two
more scorable bass around noon.
Then, his bite went dormant. Lee went more than two hours
without adding to his total. During that time, several anglers
crept within one scorable bass of his lead, and Poche eventually
passed him with a little more than 90 minutes left in the
competition day.
Lee didn’t panic, though. He returned to one of the mats he’d
fished early in the morning. While he didn’t get any bites there
initially, he’d noticed that it didn’t show signs of fishing
pressure. The decision proved to be worth $100,000.
“I thought there was some fish around there,” Lee said. “I had
some bites throughout the week right there. But I just decided that
was really my only other place I thought wasn’t getting a lot of
fishing pressure.”
While Lee lifting a trophy (or, in this case, a belt) has become
a common sight at the highest level of tournament fishing, he’ll
remember this win for how he pulled it off.
“I’m really just blown away how good it was to me this week,
catching them one of my favorite ways, fishing this heavy
hydrilla,” Lee said. “I grew up fishing like this. I was really
comfortable when I found this bite. And it was just a special bite.
It got tougher as the week went on, but I stayed patient, and man,
it was just awesome.”
The top 10 pros at the General Tire Heavy Hitters 2024 Presented
by Bass Pro Shops on the Kissimmee Chain finished:
1st: Jordan Lee, Cullman, Ala., seven bass, 27-14, $110,000 2nd:
Keith Poche, Pike Road, Ala., five bass, 23-10, $25,000 3rd: Matt
Becker, Ten Mile, Tenn., five bass, 19-4, $20,000 4th: Kevin
VanDam, Kalamazoo, Mich., four bass, 18-14, $118,000 5th: Brandon
Coulter, Knoxville, Tenn., three bass, 12-5, $20,000 6th: Bryan
Thrift, Shelby, N.C., two bass, 8-7, $44,500 7th: Todd Faircloth,
Jasper, Texas, two bass, 8-1, $13,500 8th: Brent Ehrler, Redlands,
Calif., one bass, 7-0, $17,500 9th: Dakota Ebare, Brookeland,
Texas, two bass, 6-12, $11,000 10th: Alton Jones, Jr., Waco, Texas,
zero bass, 0-0, $8,000
Full results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Overall, there were 31 scorable bass weighing 132 pounds, 3
ounces caught by the final 10 pros in Thursday’s Championship
Round. A bass had to weigh at least 3 pounds to be deemed scorable
in the Championship Round.
The six-day General Tire Heavy Hitters Presented by Bass Pro
Shops at the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes was hosted by Experience
Kissimmee and showcased the top 30 pros that qualified via the Bass
Pro Tour competing in a no-entry fee tournament for massive daily
Big Bass Bonuses and a payout of $100,000 to the winner.
The 15 Anglers in Group A competed in their two-day qualifying
round on Saturday and Monday – the 15 anglers in Group B on Sunday
and Tuesday. After each two-day qualifying round was complete, the
top eight anglers from both groups advanced to Wednesday’s Knockout
Round. In the Knockout Round weights were zeroed, and the remaining
16 anglers competed to finish in the top 10 to advance to the
Championship Round. In Thursday’s final-day Championship Round,
weights were zeroed, and the highest one-day total won the top
prize of $100,000.
Television coverage of the General Tire Heavy Hitters 2024
Presented by Bass Pro Shops will be showcased across six two-hour
episodes, premiering at 7 a.m. ET, Aug. 10 and running each
Saturday through Sept. 14 on Discovery. New MLF episodes premiere
each Saturday morning on Discovery, with re-airings on the Outdoor
Channel.
Proud sponsors of General Tire Heavy Hitters 2024 Presented by
Bass Pro Shops at the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes include: Abu Garcia,
B&W Trailer Hitches, Barbasol, Bass Pro Shops, Berkley, BUBBA,
Fishing Clash, General Tire, Kubota, Lowrance, Lucas Oil, Mercury,
Mossy Oak Fishing, NITRO, Onyx, Plano, Power-Pole, REDCON1, Star
brite, Toyota, U.S. Air Force and YETI.
For complete details and updated information on Major League
Fishing and the Bass Pro Tour, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For
regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF’s
social media outlets at Facebook, X, Instagram and YouTube.
About Major League Fishing
Major League Fishing (MLF) is the world’s largest
tournament-fishing organization, producing more than 250 events
annually at some of the most prestigious fisheries in the world,
while broadcasting to America’s living rooms on CBS, Discovery
Channel, Outdoor Channel, CBS Sports Network, World Fishing Network
and on demand on MyOutdoorTV (MOTV). Headquartered in Benton,
Kentucky, the MLF roster of bass anglers includes the world’s top
pros and more than 30,000 competitors in all 50 states and 17
countries. Since its founding in 2011, MLF has advanced the sport
of competitive fishing through its premier television broadcasts
and livestreams and is dedicated to improving the quality of life
for bass through research, education, fisheries enhancement and
fish care.
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