FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. – For the second day in a row, one angler unlocked the bite better than the rest during his first day on Smith Mountain Lake. Like Michael Neal in Group A, Justin Lucas amassed a big lead by mid-morning of Group B’s first day of qualifying on Sunday at Heavy Hitters, and he never looked back. Lucas stacked up 65 pounds, 15 ounces on 22 scorable bass, which has him 34-11 ahead of Cole Floyd, who made a late charge to move into second place.
Underscoring the diversity of Smith Mountain Lake, while Neal did all his damage pitching a spinnerbait to steep banks up the Roanoke River, Lucas fished flat points with spinning tackle on the lower end of the lake. Not only did he more than double the weight of any other angler on the water on Day 2, Lucas cashed in on the big bass bonus offered every day during Heavy Hitters. He and Britt Myers each caught a 5-4 largemouth to split the $10,000 prize, earning $5,000 apiece.
Behind Lucas, the standings are tight, with third through 10th place separated by less than 4 pounds. And, of course, with weights set to zero before the Knockout and Championship Rounds, everyone is still in contention.
All 30 anglers who qualify for Heavy Hitters circle the event on the calendar, but this one is particularly personal for Lucas. In Heavy Hitters 2022 on Lake Palestine, Lucas lost to Ott DeFoe by 12 ounces – and he hooked and lost a big one late on the final day. Since then, Lucas – the top qualifier for this year’s event – has coveted the title belt awarded to the Heavy Hitters champion.
“This is a special tournament,” he said. “Everybody that’s here always has a great time. It’s just kind of the most fun bonus tournament of the year. Not a lot of pressure at all. And I had the fish on to win at Palestine, so I would love to be able to actually win this event, not finish second again.”
He’s off to a good start. Lucas said he found a few schools of bass ambushing spawning blueback herring around points during the two-day practice period, but he didn’t have any idea how productive they would be until Sunday morning.
“With two days of practice, you don’t really learn how good spots are,” he said. “You just learn if there’s a few fish there, and in the tournament is when you really start to learn – when you set the hook on them and you’re sitting there milking it for all it’s worth. So, I learned a lot today.”
After picking a few bass off the first couple spots he hit, Lucas caught fire toward the end of Period 1. Between 9:33 and 9:57 a.m., he hauled in seven scorable bass totaling 22-13 to move to the top of ScoreTracker. He added a 4-pound smallmouth in the final minutes of the frame, then opened Period 2 with the aforementioned 5-4 largemouth.
“It was awesome,” Lucas said. “(Largemouth and smallmouth) were running in packs together, schooled up together.”
Following a hot morning bite, the action slowed dramatically for much of the field. But Lucas, who primarily threw a jighead minnow, was able to trigger a few more flurries throughout the day. He probably could have stacked on even more weight but opted to try and preserve some fish for the rest of the six-day event.
“I just think I had a few really good spots,” he said. “Probably a couple spots might be the best spots on the whole lake right now, honestly.”
Lucas said he found a few new spots Sunday, and there’s still some other areas he located in practice that he hasn’t revisited. With a buffer of more than 40 pounds over the elimination line, he’s looking forward to using Group B’s second day of competition to further expand his pattern.
Given the field’s collective lack of experience on Smith Mountain, he called that opportunity “a huge advantage.” Plus, while he will likely refrain from catching multiple fish off any one spot Tuesday, that will give him another chance to add to his big bass earnings tab.
Between the success of his initial pattern – which he thinks could continue to get better as more fish leave their spawning areas and head offshore – and the opportunity to build on it, Lucas is optimistic he’s found a program that can carry him into Thursday’s Championship Round, and possibly to the Heavy Hitters belt he nearly won three years ago.
“I really hope so,” he said. “I know other guys are going to figure it out. But I think with the warm weather we’ve had, so many of these fish are done spawning. They’re really starting to feed up on the herring, and to be honest, even some fish could be prespawn eating those herring still. So, I think you get a lot of postspawn, and maybe even a little mixture of prespawn in there.”
Second perhaps only to his decision to target schooling bass around points in the first place, Lucas’ most clutch call of the day came after he boated his biggest fish. The lunker largemouth, which he caught early in Period 2, initially weighed in at 5-3. Knowing the benchmark for big bass had already been set at 5-4, Lucas put the bass back on the BUBBA scale, and he got the extra ounce he needed.
“That was a $5,000 decision,” he said. “I figured at the worst it could go to 5-2, and I lose an ounce. At the most, it reweighs at 5-4 and I gain 5 grand. So, that was clutch.”
Myers caught his 5-4 on a fluke within the first 40 minutes of competition. While just the third time ever one of the big bass prizes at Heavy Hitters has been split between two anglers, it’s the second day in a row with a tie, as Dave Lefebre and Fred Roumbanis both landed a 6-7 on Saturday.
The big bass award will remain at $10,000 for each of the remaining two Qualifying Round days before jumping to $30,000 for the Knockout Round and a whopping $100,000 during the Championship Round.
The 15 anglers in Group B will now have the day off Monday, while the 15 in Group A will conclude their two-day Qualifying Round. Group B will compete again on Tuesday.
Here are the Group B standings:
1st: Justin Lucas, Guntersville, Ala., 22 bass, 65-15
2nd: Cole Floyd, Leesburg, Ohio, 11 bass, 31-4
3rd: Dustin Connell, Clanton, Ala., 10 bass, 28-4
4th: Martin Villa, Charlottesville, Va., 10 bass, 27-9
5th: Zack Birge, Blanchard, Okla., 10 bass, 27-2
6th: Brent Ehrler, Redlands, Calif., nine bass, 26-13
7th: Jonathon VanDam, Kalamazoo, Mich., 11 bass, 25-15
8th: Britt Myers, Lake Wylie, S.C., nine bass, 25-12
9th: Marshall Robinson, Landrum, S.C., eight bass, 24-11
10th: Bobby Lane, Lakeland, Fla., eight bass, 24-5
11th: Shin Fukae, Osaka, Japan, six bass, 16-9
12th: Keith Poche, Pike Road, Ala., five bass, 15-6
13th: Nick LeBrun, Bossier City, La., five bass, 14-14
14th: Luke Clausen, Spokane, Wash., four bass, 10-8
15th: Matt Stefan, Junction City, Wis., two bass, 5-1
Full results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
A bass must meet the 2-pound minimum weight requirement to be deemed scorable in the Qualifying and Knockout Rounds, but for the final-day Championship Round a bass must weigh at least 3 pounds to be deemed scorable.
After each two-day qualifying round is complete, the Top 8 anglers from each group advance to Wednesday’s Knockout Round. Weights will zeroed, and the remaining 16 anglers compete to finish in the Top 10 to advance to the Championship Round.
Weights are zeroed again for the Championship Round and the highest one-day total wins the top prize of $100,000.
In addition to overall tournament awards, Berkley Big Bass bonuses are awarded in each round of competition with payouts of $10,000 for the single biggest bass on each day of Group A and B Qualifying, $30,000 for the biggest bass in the Knockout Round and $100,000 for the biggest bass in the Championship Round.
The Bass Pro Tour trailering policy has been enacted for this event, so anglers will depart Trinity Ecumenical Parish each morning at 6:15 a.m. to one of five launch ramps located around the fishery. Anglers will return to Trinity Ecumenical Parish each evening following the end of competition at 3:45 p.m.
To qualify for Heavy Hitters, the weight of an angler’s single-largest bass from each of the seven 2024 Bass Pro Tour events was recorded. The 30 anglers with the heaviest total from those seven bass qualified to compete in this event.
The MLFNOW! broadcast team of Chad McKee and J.T. Kenney break down the extended action live on each day of competition from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET. MLFNOW! is livestreamed on MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app, and Rumble.
