Wheeler Gets Another Shot; KVD Seeks Grand Finale

By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor

Jacob Wheeler has put himself in position to win each of the last three REDCREST Championships, but came up a little short of getting the job done each time. Now the sport's top-ranked angler for going on five years now will take another shot at a title that's thus far eluded him.

"It's so hard because each tournament is so difficult to win – everything has to come together," he said on the eve of the 2024 edition of the event. "It's definitely one that I want, though.

"It's a historic fishery and it's my first time here. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out."

The tournament gets under way today at Alabama's Lay Lake and runs through Sunday. The field consists of 50 anglers – the Top 40 from last year's MLF Bass Pro Tour points list and 10 competitors who qualified via lower-level circuits.

Wheeler, who won the second event of the BPT's new season last month at Santee Cooper Lakes, said his three-day practice session at Lay was just fair to middling. That doesn't concern him much, however.

"I'd give my practice a 5 out of 10," he said. "A lot of times practice is hard for me to gauge because I don't like to dial things in. I'm big on getting a vibe of the lake and then running with the clues I've gotten. If I don't want to lock into one thing – I like to have several things going on.

"I've had horrible practices for tournaments that I've won and I've had great practices and finished at the bottom."

He figures he'll need to average more than 20 pounds per day to advance past the two cuts (the first after the two-day Qualifying Round and the second after the single-day Knockout Round) to advance to the final day, when the angler who compiles the biggest one-day weight will be crowned champion. The tournament will feature MLF's catch-all-you-can format, with all largemouths and spotted bass exceeding two pounds counting toward the daily tally.

"It seems like it's going to be a quality-over-quantity deal and I don't think you're going to see 100-pound days. My goal will be to catch three scorables each (2 1/2-hour) period and if they're three-pounders, I'll be where I need to be. It'll be interested to see what happens on the ScoreTracker (early on Day 1) – if things are happening faster than I thought they would, I'll make an adjustment.

"Overall, I think it's going to be a good tournament. We've got a warming trend with rain coming and you can't ask for a better scenario to push fish shallow."

VanDam will Feel Emotions

The event will be the final championship tournament in Kevin VanDam's stellar career that's spanned more than three decades and the sentimentality won't be lost on him.

"It's going to be emotional for me, for sure," he said. "The finality of it all is setting in."

He described his practice as "pretty up and down" but said that it was nonetheless productive. Weighing the format and the conditions, he's formulated a strategy that he's confident it.

"I learned what I needed to learn based on the timing and now I just have to execute," he said. "With it being mid-March, the fishing ought to be pretty good."

The seven-time Bassmaster Angler of the Year and four-time Classic winner has yet to be a major factor in three REDCREST outings – he was 12th in 2021, 32nd in 2022 and 31st last year. He won the 2010 Classic at Lay, which took place in February and played out under more winter-like conditions.

"I just want to keep putting together the best game plan I can to give myself a chance to go out on top," he said.