ROGERS, Ark. — At the outset of Day 2 on Beaver Lake, Marshall Hughes had no aspirations of winning the Qualifying Round and claiming the automatic trip to the Championship Round at Yuengling Light Lager Stage 5 Presented by YETI. Sitting in 17th place after Day 1, he was more worried about staying above the Lucas Oil Cut Line.
But it only took Hughes about 35 minutes to climb all the way to the top of SCORETRACKER®. The second-year Bass Pro Tour angler started Friday with a furious flurry that produced 31 pounds, 12 ounces on 17 scorable bass in the first 1 hour and 20 minutes. Hughes then survived a long lull to out-duel Matt Becker for the Qualifying Round win.
Hughes’ up-and-down day embodied the first two days of action for the whole field in Beaver Lake’s return to the national scene. The top two anglers after Day 1, Jeff Sprague and Adrian Avena, both slipped down SCORETRACKER® Friday, while four anglers who started the day outside the Top 10 topped 40 pounds on Day 2. Ultimately, Hughes’ second-day weight of 53-10 on 28 scorable bass – the best day for any angler so far in the event – pushed his total to 85-11 and topped Becker by 2-6, cementing his first Top 10 on the Bass Pro Tour.
Full results can be found here.
Hughes knew there would be bass around his starting spot; he just wasn’t sure they would be scorable. Targeting a morning shad spawn, he’d fished in the same area on Day 1 and said he had to catch about 10 bass to land one over the 1-8 minimum weight.
On Day 2, they showed up in both numbers and size. In fact, he said SCORETRACKER® didn’t do his opening hour justice.
“For the first hour, almost every single cast – I’m not even exaggerating – I caught a fish, whether it was scorable or not,” he said. “It was unreal.”
Hughes caught all those fish from the same cove on the upper end of the lake. He said the cove is “nothing special” other than the fact that it was brimming with spawning shad.
“It’s just a random shad spawn area,” he said. “It’s just a cove that’s full of shad and hard bottom. It’s really nothing special, to be honest.”
Then, as quickly as he’d been reeling them in, his bite vanished. Hughes went nearly four hours without catching another scorable bass. But when he started getting bit again, he once again did so in style.
After his shad spawn bite died, Hughes set off in search of new water. Trailing both Becker and Sprague for much of the second period, he still didn’t think he had a great chance at winning the Qualifying Round. But both experienced a similar midday slog, so when Hughes found a fresh school, he didn’t hold back. In fact, at one point, he caught an astounding four bass in two casts. That’s right – two casts with a bass on each treble hook of his crankbait.
While only one of the four was scorable (a 2-7), Hughes said that was a first for him. It kicked off a final period in which he weighed 13-8, which was just enough to edge out Becker.
“I’ve caught two at a time before, but not (on back-to-back casts) like that,” he said. “That was crazy.”
The fact that he found another spot to add to his rotation has Hughes optimistic for his first ever Championship Round. He’s confident those areas will reload by Sunday. His only concerns are whether enough of the bass are scorable and if a competitor puts more pressure on them during the Knockout Round.
“I’m excited,” he said. “I feel like the area where I’m catching them in the morning is full of fish. I don’t know if there will be a chance for me to potentially win, but I ought to catch a couple bass. And to be honest, I like the stuff that I found this afternoon, too. That stuff was really cool.”
As impressive as Hughes’ start was Friday, he didn’t account for the best period of the day. That honor went to Becker, who stacked up 20 scorable bass for 40-12 in Period 1 alone.
Becker, who has opted to use his period with forward-facing sonar at the outset of each of the first two days, felt like he had the potential for a better Period 1 than Thursday, when he had 22-15 with his full suite of electronics at his disposal. However, like Hughes, he wasn’t really thinking about winning the Qualifying Round until about an hour into the day, when he suddenly found himself near the top of the standings.
“The first two places that I went to, I knew there was a lot of fish,” Becker said. “Then, I got in a weird position where I was like, ‘OK, it’s probably time to back off. Let me just look for some new stuff.’ Then I started running some new stuff, and I found a couple more places that were just like it, that had just as many. Caught a few, and then the next thing you know, I’m right there almost in the lead. So, I was like, ‘Well, maybe we should go for it.’ I went back to some good places and caught a few more and got a little lead there before the end of the period.”
Becker led Hughes by 6 pounds at the end of Period 1. After locking up his forward-facing transducers, he started Period 2 strong, quickly catching a 3-3 smallmouth to extend his lead.
Then, he went more than three hours without boating a scorable bass, and he only caught two more on the day.
“It’s pretty difficult when you’re not working your bait just right,” Becker said. “So, when you can’t see them and know what you’re doing with your bait, it has really made it tricky. The only time I can really catch them is when they come up schooling and kind of get angry, and that didn’t happen a whole lot for me today. I’m kind of stumped on the non-‘Scope bite.”
Through two days, 32 of Becker’s 41 scorable bass have come during his forward-facing sonar periods. Sticking in the clear waters of the lower lake, he attributed that to the bluebird weather conditions.
“I think it’s just the clean water,” he said. “If we had optimal conditions, I think they would bite a little better non-‘Scope, but today was mostly sunny and slick. It’s really not ideal conditions to be fishing without ‘Scope.”
Becker is hopeful he can get off to another strong start in the Knockout Round, although he’s concerned about how long the schools he’s been leaning on can continue to produce. After he turns off his forward-facing sonar, he plans to “just keep trying new things and see if we can figure something out.”
“They’re definitely getting smart,” he said. “So, that worries me. That’s kind of why I was trying to lay off and not fish a few places today and try to save some stuff, but once I got so close, I had to go for it. The fish are there, for sure, but they’re definitely getting more pressured and trickier to catch. So, I don’t know if a period like that is possible again, but the fish are there to do it. It’s just a matter of if they’ll bite for us or not.”
Aside from Huges, the rest of the Top 25 finishers will have their weight totals reset overnight then return to Beaver for the Knockout Round. The top nine finishers will then join Hughes in Sunday’s Championship Round with $125,000 on the line.
Continue to watch all the action on the MLFNOW! livestream. Tune in from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. CT at MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MLF and MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) apps and the Major League Fishing channel on Rumble.
The next two days will not only decide who wins the Stage 5 trophy but might also loom large in the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year race. Each of the top four anglers in the points standings entering the event made the Knockout Round thanks to Justin Lucas edging Alton Jones Jr. by 2 ounces for the final spot inside the cut. Jacob Wheeler led Zack Birge by 3 points entering the event, with Drew Gill 14 points behind and Lucas 2 points back of him.
Wesley Strader, who entered this event having fished more MLF tournaments on Beaver than anyone else in the field, put his knowledge to the fishery to use with a furious finish to Day 2. After spending much of the day hovering around the cut line, Strader caught five scorable bass for 14-6 in the final 20 minutes to jump all the way to eighth place. That included a 5-4 largemouth, which easily earned Berkley Big Bass honors for the day.
Like Table Rock Lake, its neighbor on the White River, Beaver Lake offers the opportunity to catch all three of largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass. And like REDCREST at Table Rock, while all three have shown up, largemouth have dominated the catch count through two days at Beaver. Largemouth have accounted for about 59.5% of the total weight so far, with smallmouth at 27.2% and spotted bass at 13.2%.
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