By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor

If bass knew what was good for them, they'd avoid their routine hangouts whenever Jacob Wheeler's Academy Sports + Outdoors-wrapped boat comes around. A bunch residing in Lake Champlain apparently tried that evasive tactic during the recent MLF Bass Pro Tour event, but Wheeler nonetheless found them, tricked them into biting and added them to his near-ridiculous daily weight tallies.

Wheeler chalked up his third victory in six BPT events this year, and this one wasn't even close. He won the 35-angler Knockout Round by more than 27 pounds over runner-up Brent Ehrler, then outdistanced the Top-10 field by more than 30 pounds in the Championship Round – the biggest final-day blowout in the tour's three-year history.

The triumph was his fifth on the BPT and he's finished either 1st or 2nd in four of the last five derbies. If it's not the greatest run of sustained excellence in the history of the sport, it's on a very short list of such feats.

"I don't even know what's going on anymore; I don't have words to describe it," said Wheeler, who's sat atop the BassFan World Rankings for more than two calendar years. "I think it's hard to appreciate something like this in the moment. It looks easy on paper, but there's a lot of time and effort that goes into each event.

"You spend countless hours on Google Earth and then go out and practice for multiple days trying to find something that'll clue you in, and then you hope you make good decisions. If you just look at the end result you might say, 'Oh, that was easy,' but it's never that way. There's a lot more involved and when everything comes together, it just flows. You're making good decisions on the fly and you're never second-guessing yourself."

Close, But a Little Bit Off

Wheeler's biggest clue at Champlain came in his group's second day of the Qualifying Round. He realized that a lot of the fish weren't sitting on the primary cover features (boulders, rock piles or grass patches), but were scattered around within a 50-yard circumference.

"That was completely (due to Lowrance ActiveTarget Live Sonar) – I found it when I was trolling from pile to pile instead of idling," he said. "Sometimes all the pressure will push the fish away from the piles. Depending on the size of the (main) school, there might be three or four fish together, or if there was a 50-fish school on a rock pile you'd might find these 10-fish schools around. They could be on a little drop or a corner, but they wouldn't be on the main deal."

Most of his fish were in the 12- to 18-foot depth range when the event began, but they'd dropped to 18 to 28 feet by the Championship Round.

"I think it was the hot weather," he said. "The water temperature when we got there was 68 degrees and when we left it was 75. It was a warm week, but they'd had some cool weather earlier."

He caught the majority of his 91 scorable fish for the event on a dropshot setup, with a Ned rig playing a secondary role.

Gear Notes

> Dropshot gear: 7'2" medium-heavy Duckett Fishing Jacob Wheeler Signature Series rod, Ducket Fishing Paradigm 2500 spinning reel, 8-pound Sufix NanoBraid (main line), 6-, 8-, 10- or 12-pound Sufix Advance fluorocarbon (leader), 1/4-, 1/2- or 3/4-ounce VMC Tungsten Teardrop weight, size 2 VMC Finesse Neko hook, Googan Baits Rattlin' Ned (various baitfish-imitating colors).

> Ned rig gear: Same rod (7' medium-action), reel and main line, 8-pound Sufix Advance fluorocarbon leader, 1/4 or 3/8-ounce unnamed jighead, Googan Baits Rattlin' Craw (dirty rice).

> On both applications, he removed the rattle from the bait, which created an air pocket that gave it buoyancy.