Noah Morgan and Clint Knight used some home-water knowledge to earn a come-from-behind victory in the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Team Championship Friday on Kentucky Lake.
The fishing partners from Russellville, Ky., only trailed Day 1 leaders Tyler and Blake Campbell by an ounce coming into the second and final day of the tournament, so they didn’t have much of a margin to clear. But they earned the win in impressive fashion, catching a tournament-best bag of 25 pounds, 9 ounces on Friday. That gave them a two-day total of 47-5, which clipped the Campbells’ 45-6 total.
Morgan and Knight, repping the National Team Bass Association, will split the $25,000 cash prize that goes to the winner of this season-ending tournament — part of a $125,000 total purse divided among the Top 50 teams in the championship.
Campbell and Campbell of Lake Hartwell’s 5 Alive Sunday Series, who share a last name but aren’t related, will split $17,000. The father-son duo of Fisher and Ryan Anaya, of the Alabama Bass Trail, placed third with 42-13 and will split $12,000.
Those three teams also advanced to the Classic Fish-Off portion of this tournament, which will be held Saturday on Kentucky Lake. The six remaining anglers have had their weights zeroed, and now they’ll fish individually for the final berth in the Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour, scheduled for March 21-23 on Lake Ray Roberts in Fort Worth, Texas.
The duo of Morgan and Knight figured to be a factor in the championship. Knight, despite being only 27, has long been considered one of the top sticks on this massive 160,000-acre reservoir, with several victories here in a number of bass circuits. He and Morgan have fished together for four years, but this was their first time to qualify for the Bassmaster Team Championship.
“This is exciting and an incredible experience,” said Morgan, 23. “I don’t have many words for it. We came in here and it worked out. We fish Kentucky Lake all the time. Knowing this lake helped us, but honestly, we caught them on some new areas this week.”
With another day of competition remaining, however, Knight wasn’t sharing information on which areas they’ve fished or what conditions they’ve sought.
But no doubt, the winners have targeted voracious smallmouth bass that’ve become a fixture on Kentucky Lake in recent years.
“Smallmouth is the dominant species right now,” Knight said, “and I tried to stay with the brown fish because they are more aggressive when the water cools off. They’re a little bit easier to catch.”
That might be an understatement, considering how many bites the duo had Friday.
“I think we threw back 20 pounds three times today,” Knight said, referring to the upgrades he and Morgan made throughout Day 2. “We caught quite a few fish. It’s a certain pattern, and I think you can do it from the dam all the way to New Johnsonville (Tenn.). They’re set up on the river a certain way. Once you figure it out, it kind of clicks what you need to do.”
Still, that was no easy feat in the extreme weather anglers have faced on Kentucky Lake this week. Wednesday’s opening round was cold with temperatures in the mid-40s and winds blowing steadily at about 15 mph. B.A.S.S. officials canceled Thursday’s action with north winds gusting even harder. That moved Day 2 of the Team Championship to Friday and made the Classic Fish-Off a one-day event, rather than the usual two-day affair.
“We had to go to Plan B on Wednesday because there were 3- and 4-foot waves on the lake,” Knight said. “Luckily, we caught the 21 pounds we had. It wasn’t our best stuff, but I knew with the conditions coming (on Friday), we were going to be OK.”
A total of 217 tandems from throughout the U.S., as well as Canada, Mexico and South Africa, qualified for the championship, but the blistering cold and steadily increasing winds on Wednesday thinned the field. Thursday’s postponement saw a few more duos drop out, and by Friday’s take-off (delayed an hour due to ice on the Paris Landing State Park backdown ramps), only 114 duos remained to compete on Friday. The temperature never climbed out of the 20s on Day 2, but the wind wasn’t a factor, which allowed remaining anglers to better target bass.
With their strong showing on Wednesday, Campbell and Campbell knew they were in it for the long haul. To stay busy, they spent Thursday duck hunting nearby. They each bagged a limit of big ducks, too — a sign, perhaps, that everything was falling into place for them this week.
It sure seemed that way on Friday, when they weighed an impressive 23-9 limit. But it wasn’t quite enough to catch Morgan and Knight, who’d weighed the tournament’s big bag only a moment earlier.
Alex Korol and Cameron Alldredge, of New York’s Empire Team Trail, won the Big Bass Award of $500, courtesy of the 7-11 largemouth they caught on Wednesday. They finished eighth overall.
The Classic Fish-Off will begin at 6:30 a.m. CT and end back at Paris Landing State Park with a 2:30 p.m. CT weigh-in. Bassmaster LIVE will have streaming coverage of the tournament on Bassmaster.com.
The City of Paris, Tenn., is hosting the event.