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JANUARY 2017 I FLWFISHING.COM
By TJ Maglio
PHOTO BY JESSE SCHULTZ
hen FLW pro Greg Bohannan slid his
boat into Beaver Lake’s clear waters on
a random weekday last January, he had
little idea that he was about to experience one of
his most epic days on the water.
“There was a little snow in the forecast, and I
was only planning to fish a little bit before the
storm,” he says. “For the first couple hours, it was
normal wintertime stuff – a fish here, a fish there
– then the snow started to come down, and it was
like someone flipped a s witch.”
From that point on, the pro from Rogers, Ark.,
enjoyed what was undoubtedly the best after-
noon he’s ever had in 20 years of fishing Beaver
Lake – easily catching a stringer well north of 20
pounds. It included several fish in the 5- to 6-
pound range, which are extremely rare on Beaver.
“It was crazy,” Bohannan recalls. “I’m 100 per-
cent certain that something about falling snow
just flat out turns bass on, and if you experience a
day like that just once, you’ll never look at winter
fishing the same way.”
Affable east Tennessee pro Wesley Strader
agrees. If circumstances allow, when the snow
starts flying, he starts fishing. In fact, he and a
friend won a derby on Watts Bar last March with
an Okeechobee-esque 26-pounds-plus stringer –
caught during a snowfall.
“Days like that are locked in your memory for-
ever,” Strader notes. “I’ve fished and hunted thou-
sands of days in my life, and any time the weather
conditions are changing it can be good, but for
some reason snow seems to take the cake.”
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