Wheeler's Long Hours Of Graphing Paid Off

By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor

The way Jacob Wheeler looks at it, experience isn't on his side during his initial season on the Bassmaster Elite Series. But youthful energy is, and he plans to use that to full advantage.

"I don't have as much knowledge as Kevin VanDam, Edwin Evers or Greg Hackney," he said. "I know a lot for age 26, but I still have a lot to learn.

"The one thing I do have is youth, and I'll try to use that to outweigh my lack of experience. That just means working harder and putting more time in. I don't want to be outworked."

He labored extremely hard in preparation for the season opener at Tennessee's Cherokee Lake, and it resulted in his third career tour-level victory – an impressive number for an angler of any age, but especially for one who entered life in the 1990s. Try this one on: Wheeler was still about a month from being born when fellow Elite competitor Rick Clunn collected his fourth Bassmaster Classic crown.

He was phenomenally consistent at Cherokee, compiling four sacks that varied by only 1 1/4 pounds from the lightest to the heaviest. He caught the best of those – 18-03 – on the final day to claim the trophy, edging out rookies Jamie Hartman and Jesse Wiggins by less than a pound with a 69-13 total.

Here are the pertinent details of the former Forrest Wood Cup and BASSFest champion's latest triumph.

Practice

Wheeler made two pre-practice visits to Cherokee before it went off-limits – one in mid December and the other in early January. He stayed for a week each time.

"The reason for that is it was pretty much the only place on the schedule where the fish were going to stay in the same pattern from pre-practice through the tournament," he said. "Very seldom does pre-practice make that much of a difference, but those fish went into their winter pattern when it really cooled down in December and they won't come out of it until about March.

"They might not be in the exact same places, but their overall pattern isn't going to change."

On both visits he spent the vast majority of his time graphing the lower portion of the lake. By the time he was finished, he'd amassed about 1,600 waypoints.

"I marked every place that looked really good – some obvious and some not. If you're just running down the lake and not studying that (Navionics) map, you're not going to see a lot of the subtle changes that could be really important.

"I marked rocky places, foundations, road beds that came through a ditch, you name it. I had a different (icons) for rocks that had fish on them and rocks that didn't. For places that were really good, I used a stop sign for like, 'you have to fish here.'''

He figures that he investigated about a thousand of his waypoints when he returned for official practice, focusing on the first 11 miles from the dam upstream. Unlike much of the field, he got a bunch of quality bites in practice.

"When I told (fellow competitors Adrian Avena and Mark Daniels Jr.) that I got 20 bites on the last day, they were like, 'Dang, you're kidding! You're going to win this thing.' I was like, 'No, I've got a few places, but we'll see.'''

Competition

> Day 1: 5, 17-10
> Day 2: 5, 16-15
> Day 3: 5, 17-01
> Day 4: 5, 18-10
> Total = 20, 69-13

The tournament was pretty much an extension of practice for Wheeler as he bounced around among about 15 places each day to catch 17-pound-plus stringers of smallmouths from 25 to 35 feet of water. He caught most of them on a VMC Neon Moon Eye jig with a small fluke-style trailer, picked up a few on the new Storm 360GT swimbait and added a few more on a Rapala Jigging Rap ice jig.

On each day he caught at least two of his weigh-in fish near the dam between 2 o'clock and 3:30.

"I don't know if it was current doing it or what, but that's when those fish turned on," he said. "I tried mixing it up a little and on 2 of the days I started the day down toward the dam, but I never could really catch them.

"But they always pulled up down there in the afternoon, and when they did they were coming to feed."

The only glitch in his program occurred on day 3, when one of his batteries went dead and left him without a trolling motor. Being familiar with the rule allowing anglers to fish from a competitor's boat, he called Daniels, Avena, Andy Montgomery and rookie Dustin Connell to see if he could hitch a ride for the rest of the day. When none answered immediately, he ran a few miles down the lake and found Connell.

Wheeler and the B.A.S.S. cameraman accompanying him hopped aboard Connell's boat and Connell's marshal drove Wheeler's boat back to the launch for repairs. The anglers returned to Wheeler's fish – a school that Wheeler described as "a mega-wad," and he upgraded twice prior to the end of the day.

The final day got off to a bit of a slow start for him, but a planned move at mid-day resulted in a 12-minute flurry that saw him boat a pair of 4-pounders and three other fish that exceeded 3. He made his last cull for about half a pound when he caught another 4 from near the dam in the closing minutes of the day.

Pattern Notes

Wheeler said it was critical for him to keep the Moon Eye jig about 2 feet above the heads of the fish (which he could see on his depthfinder).

"Smallmouth like to come up to eat, so I'd put it over their head and shake it," he said. "If you dropped it below them, they wouldn't even think about touching it. If it was above them and they were acting funny but not biting, I'd bring it up another foot and sometimes they'd come up and get it.

"I'd say it was about 50/50 getting them to bite. Some would come up and slap it or tick it and it was so frustrating that you'd just want to kick your graph."

He threw the swimbait at times when the fish seemed averse to a vertical presentation. He had to reel it extremely slow and just off the bottom to entice a bite.

He employed the Jigging Rap in a quest to "fire up" schools and ended up weighing one of the handful of fish he caught on it.

Winning Gear Notes

> Jig gear: 7' medium-light Okuma Helios spinning rod, Okuma Helios SX spinning reel, 8-pound Sufix Nanobraid line (main line), 6-pound Sufix Castable Invisiline (8- to 10-foot leader), 3/8-ounce VMC Moon Eye jighead (fathead), unnamed 3-inch soft-plastic trailer (transluscent pearl white).

> Swimbait gear: 7' medium-action Okuma Helios casting rod, Okuma Helios PCS casting reel (6.6:1 ratio), 10-pound Sufix fluorocarbon line, 3 1/2-inch Storm 360GT (herring).

> He used the Jigging Rap in two sizes (5/8- and 7/8-ounce) in the Helsinki shad color.

The Bottom Line

> Main factor in his success – "The time I put in on the water, 100 percent. I put 50 hours on my motor during pre-practice. One day I was out there in the middle of a snowstorm, idling and graphing, and I found one of my main places that day."

> Performance edge – "The Sufix Nanobraid is limp and it comes off the spool faster than any other line, and it's great for vertical fishing. It's all about getting down there quicker to stay on top of that fish."

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