oN tour
OSAGE BEACH, MO. – OCT. 6-8
Hosted by Tri-County Lodging Association
LAKE OF THE OZARKS
A subtle bait change helped Jenkel overcome
tough conditions for the win at the season finale.
PRESENTED
BY
WINNING aNGLer
duKe JeNKeL
PINcKNeYvILLe, ILL.
Stat Line: In 117 tournaments with FLW, Jenkel has finished in the top 10 22 times. This was his second win, and
his first above the BFL level.
by Jody White
tactics and target areas
116
Sometimes pros run all over a lake and burn tank after
tank of gas to win a tournament. That wasn’t the case for
Derek “Duke” Jenkel in his win at Lake of the Ozarks.
Seeking to hide from a passing thunderstorm on the first
day of the tournament, Jenkel ducked into a creek and
started in a marina in a pocket near Hurricane Deck Bridge.
“We took off, and that storm had me a bit spooked. I don’t
like the weather,” says Jenkel. “So I started in a marina, know-
ing I had a place to hide if the lightning got bad. And it was
on like Donkey Kong. They were biting in there like crazy.”
The marina where he stopped was in the same creek he’d
mined for a few fish last fall in an FLW Bass Fishing League
event. It also happened to be a major release location for the
Big Bass Bash, a big-fish derby with more than 3,000 entries
that had taken place the weekend before.
It turned out to be the place to be. Though Jenkel made
a few culls near takeoff on the first two days, he relied on
the marina for the entirety of his catch on the last day.
Outside of the marina, he targeted shallower docks in the
middle of pockets. In the marina, he flipped everything he
could find. In particular, he concentrated on a break with
some brush that ran under the docks and some scattered
brush around the poles on the perimeter of the docks.
Keys to victory
Jenkel’s first fish of the tournament actually came on a
frog, but he quickly switched to a tube for the rest of his
fLWfISHING.com I december 2016