ON TOUR
COSTA FLW SERIES
COSTA FLW SERIES | LAKE BARKLEY
CADIZ, KY.
By Gary Garth
WINNING ANGLER
Jake lawrence
paris, tenn.
Winning Weight:
72-04 (15 fish)
details:
June 7-9, 2018
presented by t-h Marine
The Tennessee Valley
Authority was pulling water
through the dam midnight to
midnight. Current was
strong. He found a pile of
bass holding near a shoreline
creek mouth south of the
Highway 79 (Paris Landing)
bridge on Kentucky Lake –
and about 90 miles from the
launch site at Lake Barkley
State Resort Park. Technically,
the spot was a ledge, though
not in the conventional off-
shore sense. It was 8 to 12
feet deep, fairly nondescript
and about the size of a two-
bedroom house.
“I spent four [practice]
days scanning, but did very
little fishing,” he says. “The
shallower I could find them
the easier they would be to
catch. And I saw few people
scanning those areas or fish-
ing those areas. They’re hard
to find. But when you can
find them, you can catch
them.”
On day one, he pounded
a 28-15 limit and was done
by 11 a.m. Lawrence led by
nearly 6 pounds. The only
question: Would the condi-
tions that had pushed the
fish into the relatively shal-
low spot keep them there?
“I didn’t know,” Lawrence
says. “Conditions were
changing.”
He didn’t just hit the one
spot. Lawrence targeted sev-
eral areas, including some
offshore ledge structure that
produced a couple of fish.
But he knew without the pri-
mary school he would be
wrestling with deeper bass
he knew he could find, but
not necessarily catch.
It turns out Lawrence’s
worries were unfounded. He
backed up day one with catch-
es of 23-10 and 19-11 – win-
ning by more than 7 pounds.
Lawrence fished a V&M J-
Mag Worm on a Neko rig or
swing-head jig. Occasionally
he fished a Castaic Jerky J,
hair jig or spoon.
His strategy was simple.
“I just looked in less obvi-
ous places,” he recalls. “That
was the whole key. I didn’t
know how long the bite
would last. I’m glad it lasted
through the tournament.
Without that one particular
school there is no way I
would have won.”
WINNING CO-ANGLER
84
Central divison
W
hile preparing for
the Costa FLW
Series tournament
on Lake Barkley, Jake
Lawrence knew what every-
one else knew: Most of the
bass in Lake Barkley and
neighboring Kentucky Lake
would be hanging tight to
ledges. The sprawling, twin
lowland reservoirs are fed by
numerous creeks and har-
bor miles of underwater
ledges, typically 15 to 30 feet
deep.
The bass would be there,
but they’d be finicky.
“What you have to
remember,” says Lawrence,
who is from nearby Paris,
Tenn., “is that these fish are
extremely pressured. It
[Kentucky Lake] may be 160
miles long, but in June it fish-
es teeny tiny.”
He decided to seek out
fish he could catch, which
meant bass holding to shal-
lower areas than those that
had retreated to the more
traditional deep ledges.
Unusual conditions were
also working in Lawrence’s
favor. The region had been
swamped with spring rains.
hosted by Cadiz-trigg
County tourism
hunter fillmore
Waynesville, ohio
Winning Weight:
37-08 (11 fish)
Winning program:
After catching only
two fish for 4 pounds, 4
ounces on day one,
Fillmore rallied with 19-
7 on day two and 13-13
on day three. He earned
his win by fishing a
drop-shot rig on the
ledges.
flWfIshIng.com I august-september 2018