Hank Cherry caught a 17 1/2-pound bag of smallmouths from Michigan's White Lake to claim the title at Toyota All-Star Week.
“This is unbelievable,” said the 2014 Bassmaster Elite Series Rookie of the Year. “I’m sky-high. I lost no fish today; nothing went wrong. It was just a perfect day.”
Cherry easily topped home-state runner-up Kevin VanDam, who scaled 14-14. Cliff Pace was 3rd with 11-06 and Edwin Evers 4th with 10-15.
The week began with 14 Bassmaster Elite Series pros. Each competed for 2 days on Muskegon Lake. Only the four pros with the highest Muskegon Lake weights made the cut to move to White Lake’s final leg. With Muskegon weights dropped, the four went head-to-head, starting from scratch.
At White, Cherry stuck to a pattern of throwing a swimbait off long points – the same pattern that produced for him at Muskegon.
“I was around a lot of bait and a lot of fish,” said Cherry, adding that he caught about 25 bass throughout the day. Most of them took his Damiki swimbait (various shad colors) rigged on a 1/4-ounce jighead with a 4/0 hook.
His key spot was special because of an underwater sandbar that created a “huge current break,” he said, which set up as a perfect spot for smallmoutha chasing baitfish.
“The shad were there in bunches around that breakline. That’s all it was,” he said.
One flurry of catches on his magic spot that lasted about 45 minutes sealed the deal for him.
“I caught a 4 (pounder), a 4, a 3, a 2/12, a 2/12. I don’t know what happened to turn them on."
An early-day decision to give up on his quest for largemouth, for which White Lake has a reputation, paid off.
“I just stopped and said, ‘I’m going smallmouth fishing,’” he said.
