Michael Neal Banks $100,000 at Old Hickory With Slow, Shallow Tactics

Michael Neal finished fifth at World Bass Enterprises’ The Champions on Old Hickory Lake and earned $100,000, according to Major League Fishing. The Tennessean did it on a lake that fished tough, by locating overlooked spots in advance and making repeated casts to the best cover.

The event paid $1.25 million to the winner. Neal said he felt nerves on the first two days that he had not felt in years, and they nearly kept him out of the final day.

How nerves nearly ended his event

Neal weighed a five-bass limit of 13 pounds, 9 ounces on Day 1, good for third place and well inside the Top 15 cut line for Day 3. On Day 2 his line snapped on his first cast and he lost his ChatterBait. He said the pressure of the opportunity affected his casting and his decisions.

He caught only three bass that day, weighing 8 pounds, 1 ounce, but that was enough to make the cut in 14th place. Weights reset for Day 3. Neal said he stayed calmer knowing he could only move up, and he totaled 10 pounds, 10 ounces to finish fifth.

Four days of scouting before the lake closed

Neal normally does little early scouting. He competes on the Bass Pro Tour, runs the Real Deal tackle shop on Lake Chickamauga, and became a father this year. Because the prize was large and nobody in the field had fished Old Hickory in decades, he spent four days on the water before it went off-limits.

He said he logged 30-something hours on his Mercury outboard and did not really fish. He used the time to find spots that were hard to reach or held slightly more water than the areas around them. Eleven of the 13 fish he weighed in came from places he said he would not have fished without that trip.

Old Hickory has a limited bass population and sees heavy pressure because it sits close to Nashville, according to the report. Neal found his better bites by keeping the boat in 3 to 6 feet of water and casting to the bank, on wood or rock. The 2-pound-plus fish he wanted all came that way.

His best spot was a vein of underwater rock, possibly an old roadbed, where he caught 10 pounds on the first day with his Power-Poles down and never moved the boat.

Why slowing down paid off

Most anglers tried to cover as much water as possible, Neal said. He covered plenty too, but he stopped at good-looking habitat and cast to it from several angles. In practice he learned that many fish did not bite on the first cast.

His reasoning was that on tough lakes that still get fished often, a fish that is known to be somewhere probably is still there. “Not many bass plus highly pressured equals repeated casts,” he said.

By the end of the event he had settled on one type of laydown: a big log that stuck far out from the bank and stayed perpendicular to the surface rather than angling downward. Most of his Day 3 weight came from those, he said.

What it means for the season’s end

This was the third time in the past six seasons that Neal closed the year with a six-figure payday. He also won the Bass Pro Tour regular-season finale in 2021 on Lake St. Clair and in 2024 on the St. Lawrence River.

Neal said finishing well helps him stay focused through the offseason as he looks ahead to the 2027 season.

Source: Major League Fishing