Strader Notches First Elite Series Victory On Kentucky Lake

B.A.S.S. photo by Seigo Saito

The final day of the Berkley Bassmaster Elite at Kentucky Lake threw Wesley Strader the right pitch, and he knocked it out of the park.

Strader, a first-year Elite Series pro from Spring City, Tenn., caught a final-day limit of five bass that weighed 20 pounds, 11 ounces and earned his first Elite Series victory with a four-day total of 80-4.

After sitting in 16th place on Day 1 with 19-6, Strader added 17-13 Saturday and improved to 11th, before taking over the Day 3 lead with 22-6 — the biggest catch of Sunday’s semifinal round.

His final-day catch cemented a $100,000 payday.

“Yesterday, I figured out that the fish were positioning under the walkways on the docks,” he said. “Today, that went away; they got out under the floats. It seemed like, as the sun got higher, the shade got tighter to the docks and you could pretty much pinpoint where they’d bite.

“I didn’t think the shad spawn was that big of a deal for me today. But I pulled up on a stretch of docks that I had not fished early in the morning and just about every cast, when I’d reel my bait out from underneath the floats, there would be two or three threadfin shad following my spinnerbait.”

Unlike the previous days, Strader was unable to leverage the early-morning shad spawn. But he put several keepers in the boat by alternating between a 5/8-ounce Stan Sloan Bango Blade spinnerbait with a white swimbait trailer, a buzzbait, a popping frog and a white Zoom Z-Craw that he swam through shallow bushes.

He still found some early productivity. But it was a magical, one-hour midday flurry that vaulted Strader into the unofficial BASSTrakk lead.

Flipping shallow bushes in a small pocket off Big Sandy Creek, Strader added three solid keepers—all 4-plus pounds—to his livewell. That left him releasing fish he normally would not cull.

“That’s a good problem to have — catching 3-pounders and they can’t help you,” said Strader.

Strader caught his flipping fish on a Texas-rigged Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver with a 5/16-ounce Reins Tungsten sinker and a 5/0 Trokar hook fished on 20-pound Gamma Edge fluorocarbon. The Tramp Stamp color, he said, has proven productive in all his previous Kentucky Lake events. Trusting that pattern Monday proved to be a winning decision.

“For some reason, in this tea-colored water, they like that color,” he said.

Strader said his fish were probably postspawners. Targeting likely staging areas with vertical falls was key.

“I think I was just on a hot pocket where they were either coming out or guarding fry; I don’t think they were spawning,” he said. “They were just in those bushes chilling, and it was all on the initial fall of the bait.”