KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Veteran Elite Series pros and 2023 Bassmaster Classic qualifiers Brandon Lester and David Mullins are both rabid fans of the University of Tennessee’s orange-clad teams. “There’s nothing like Rocky Top,” Mullins said. Yet despite both being fond of all that Knoxville has to offer, each of them disclaimed any local advantage when it comes to fishing here.
“Absolutely not,” said the 34-year-old Lester, who lives a little bit under fours away. “I’ve been here for the Classic in 2019, for an Elite Series tournament, and maybe two other times.”
Mullins, who lives just a 90-minute drive from the takeoff site, also said he’s fished it a total of four times. While he’s a huge fan of the Tennessee River system as a whole, he believes that this section is “just a different animal” than fabled impoundments like Guntersville and Pickwick. “It’s not very wide, more of a river system, and it doesn’t have the same amount or types of habitat. There’s not nearly as much structure and cover.” That makes it a “junk fisherman’s paradise.” It also makes it difficult to stay consistent over the course of a multi-day tournament, particularly in the springtime when conditions are changing rapidly.
“It’s going to be a grinder,” Lester agreed. “On a lake like Guntersville, you might catch 20 keepers on a decent day. Here, even when it’s at its best, seven or eight bites is a good day. Look back at when Ott (DeFoe) won here in 2019. He had a lot of local knowledge. He’d been fishing here since he was a teenager and knew all of the little sweet spots, and he still only caught about seven keepers a day.”
For some anglers, that would be music to their ears. Not only will this Classic likely require a veteran’s savvy to adjust to the changes, but neither pro expects that it’ll be won off of a single deep spot, as occurred when Canadian Jeff Gustafson ran away with an Elite Series tournament here in 2021. “Gussy found them deep and blew it away,” Mullins recalled. “The backwaters have a limited amount of fish. If you can find them deep, that’s more likely to hold up, but everything’s changing so fast I don’t know if that’s possible.”
Lester, for one, believes that the warming temperatures and the time of year will conspire to push most of the bass shallow, and to make them most prone to traditional power fishing techniques. He ran “as far as you can go in one direction” during the practice period to get the oddball possibilities out of his mind, but now seems content to hunker down in what he already knew. Furthermore, on the verge of his eighth Classic, he believes that he’s learned how to slow things down as appropriate and let the tournament come to him.
“When you’re trying so hard to make it happen, you’re standing in the way of letting it happen,” he said.
While he’s used that phrase to guide his actions for several years, he didn’t fully buy into the concept or the process until last year, when he broke through with a Bassmaster Open win in Florida, and shortly thereafter earned his first Elite Series win on Pickwick – which, as all serious fishing fans know, is part of the Tennessee River system. The location notwithstanding, what mattered to him most was by that point in the year, the decisions seemed to come to him intuitively. “When you’re going right, you make the right choices, the right casts,” he said. “I felt that way all year last year. At Pickwick it came down to my last catch, a 6-pounder that put the nail in the coffin. I knew I needed to catch one like that, pulled up to my spot and caught it. When you’re fishing right, you pick up on it, just like that.”
Indeed, just as much as catching a limit each day, big fish will be at a premium, and therefore will be difference-makers this week. “Five pounders are a big deal here,” Lester said. “And I’ve fished enough Classics to know that you’d better leave something up your sleeve every day.”
While Lester broke through with two wins last year, Mullins, a veteran of 90 B.A.S.S. events, is still looking for that first major trophy, and it would not hurt his feelings one bit to make it the most important one of all, and in front of a home-state crowd. “I’ve had the opportunity to win three of these now,” he stated. “And I’ve had the fish come off every time.” This will be his fourth straight Classic, and despite finishing a personal-best 10th last year at Lake Hartwell, he’s well aware that there’s only one spot that counts.
“There’s a lot of history here,” Mullins concluded, noting Knoxville’s reputation as a superior sports town. Despite the fact that neither he nor Lester considers himself a local favorite, or any sort of favorite at all, both would dearly like to take the next step in their careers and become a part of that historical tableau.
