FLORENCE, Ala. – It’s almost impossible to look at the results of last week’s Toyota Series Central Division tournament on Pickwick Lake and not jump right into sports analogies. Was it a heavyweight fight? A battle royale? A slugfest? A marathon?
It was all of the above, actually.
With 30 five-fish bags over 25 pounds and an average of 21 1/2 ounds required to squeeze into the Top 25, the event produced one of the most impressive three-day weight totals in Toyota Series history. And with a 30-pound bag on the final day and a three-day total of 84-4 – which broke the weight record for a three-day Series tournament on Pickwick – University of North Alabama standout and college national champion Dylan Nutt is the new heavyweight champion of Pickwick Lake.
Nutt, who has collected four Top 10s and two wins in MLF competition on the Tennessee River in less than a year, surged past six-time Tennessee River winner Jake Lawrence (79-14), 2024 Toyota Series Championship winner Hayden Marbut (76-4) and 2024 Toyota Series winner Banks Shaw (76-0) to earn a $39,000 paycheck in his first Toyota Series event.
“It seemed like I couldn’t do anything wrong this week,” Nutt admitted shortly after hoisting the trophy in front of a crowd of family, friends and UNA Lions. “They say ‘when it’s your time, it’s your time’. That sure feels true right now, it’s humbling.”
Entering tournament week, the buzz around Pickwick was that the three-day Central Division event would probably be a rowdy one. Pickwick’s angler lineup looked like an all-star roster that included multiple local hammers and a handful of pros from the Bass Pro Tour and Elite Series, most of them gunning for bags in the 25-plus-pound range.
Turns out that Mother Nature felt like playing along.
A winter cold snap had dropped the water temperature into the low 40s at the start of practice and sent fish into deep-winter patterns. But according to Nutt, warmer days and rising water temperatures at the start of the tournament primed Pickwick for a banner three days.
“It’s been really cold in Florence, but as the week went on and we had some warmer days, that water rose to about 50 degrees,” Nutt said. “I found some areas where fish were in transition between winter patterns and prespawn, and settled down in those areas where I knew I could find some big ones. But I thought it might take 80 pounds to win.”
Nutt started strong and improved throughout the week.
Throwing a Picasso Lures Bait Ball Extreme with 1/8- and 1/4-ounce VMC Boxer Jig Heads and Keitech swimbaits, and a 3/8-ounce Scottsboro Tackle Tungsten jighead with a True Bass FF Minnow, his 26-13 on Day 1 was good enough for fourth place, just over 4 pounds shy of leader Ken Thompson, who dropped the biggest bag of the tournament that day with 31-3. Nutt chipped away at Thompson’s lead on Day 2, weighing in 27-7 to climb within 2-10.
At the end of that day, Nutt worked his way to some water he hadn’t even looked at in practice and connected with two of his bigger fish. He went right back there on the final day and pounded away with ActiveTarget and the minnow.
“I had a couple of areas I knew there were some big ones, I went back there and grinded it out,” Nutt said. “I had a couple of groups of fish that would leave, and then I had one school show back up (on the final day), I ended up catching a bunch of my fish out of that school. The bites I got there were big ones.”
Nutt, who grew up in Nashville and fished Chickamauga and Guntersville multiple times before moving to Florence for college, used his familiarity with Tennessee River currents to his advantage, especially for the bigger bites he coaxed off of deeper bars, where fish were pegged tight to the bottom.
"(Tennessee Valley Authority) bumped up the current a lot, it's been pumping pretty steady for awhile now," he said. "That made fish start sitting down near the bottom. They were harder to see sitting tight on the bottom, you had to throw your bait in first before you could see them."
Nutt’s 84-4 is the heaviest ever weighed in a three-day Series tournament on Pickwick, eclipsing Randy Haynes’ 79-11 in 2013. It’s also the fourth-highest total in three-day Series history, trailing only two Falcon Lake tournaments in 2009 and 2010, and a 2013 event on Lake Guntersville.
Here are the final totals for the Top 10:
1st: Dylan Nutt of Nashville, Tenn., 15 bass, 84-4, $39,659
2nd: Jake Lawrence, Paris, Tenn., 15 bass, 79-14, $15,368
3rd: Hayden Marbut, Birmingham, Ala., 15 bass, 76-5, $12,898
4th: Banks Shaw, Harrison, Tenn., 15 bass, 76-0, $9,915
5th: Presley Lannom, Lebanon, Tenn., 15 bass, 74-12, $8,923
6th: Broderick Luckey, Lynchburg, Va., 15 bass, 74-6, $7,932
7th: Dillon Falardeau, Hixson, Tenn., 15 bass, 73-5, $6,940
8th: Logan Parks, Auburn, Ala., 15 bass, 72-7, $5,949
9th: Caz Anderson, Haysville, N.C., 15 bass, 72-7, $5,207
10th: Drew Gill, Mount Carmel, Ill., 15 bass, 72-4, $3,966
Complete results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Ken Thompson of Roaring Springs, Pennsylvania, earned Wednesday’s $500 Berkley Big Bass Award with a bass weighing 8-13. Two pros split the Berkley Big Bass Award on Thursday – both Gavin Clevenger of Knoxville, Tennessee, and Caz Anderson of Haysville, North Carolina, brought a bass weighing 7-11 to the scale.
