Hays, Becker, Jones Jr. Finish Atop Group A

By MLF Communications Staff

CLARENDON COUNTY, S.C. –Dylan Hays caught seven scorable bass Thursday weighing 30 pounds, 8 ounces to earn the Group A Qualifying Round win at the MLF Bass Pro Tour event at Santee Cooper Lakes.

The Hot Springs, Arkansas resident's two-day Qualifying Round catch of 17 bass totaling 71-13 earned him the win by a 2-11 margin over Day-1 leader and Angler of the Year (AOY) Matt Becker of Ten Mile, Tennessee, who caught a two-day total of 19 bass weighing 69-2. Alton Jones Jr. of Waco, Texas, caught a two-day total of 18 bass weighing 66-9 to finish the round in third, while Gerald Spohrer of Gonzales, Louisiana, ended the round in fourth place with a two-day total of 23 bass for 64-15. Rounding out the Top 5 2 was Dustin Connell of Clanton, Alabama, the winner of the season opener at Toledo Bend Reservoir, who caught 17 bass for 63-14 to advance in fifth place.

The Top 10 anglers advancing from Group A will now have an off day from competition Friday, while the 40 anglers competing in Group B will complete their two-day Qualifying Round. The Top 10 anglers from each group advance to Saturday’s Knockout Round.

In the Knockout Round, weights are zeroed, and the remaining 20 anglers compete to finish in the top 10 to advance to the Championship Round, where weights are again zeroed and the highest one-day total wins the top prize of $100,000.

All week, anglers have stressed the importance of triggering bites from the bigger-than-average bass that roam Santee Cooper. At least in Group A, no one has done so better than Hays, who anchored his Day-2 bag with a 7-3 kicker. He also caught a 6-7 and a 5-4. During each of his first two days on the water, he’s landed three bass over 5 pounds, and his biggest five fish weighed more than 26 pounds both days.

Hays believes he’s figured out a key to enticing those bigger bass. Fishing in Lake Marion, he’s not shying away from the dirty water in much of the lake. He also thinks his bait selection has played a part. All his fish Thursday ate a 1/2-ounce bladed jig with either a Zoom Z Craw Jr. or Shimmer Shad as the trailer.

“Key No. 1 was dirty water,” Hays said. “Key No. 2 was throwing a ChatterBait instead of flipping, and then just making a lot of casts, working really hard.”

Hays admitted that he’s “kind of making it up as [he goes],” especially as he explored new terrain, but he’s optimistic his key areas are reloading with new staging fish each day. Early in the morning, he watched another angler catch a 5-pounder off the same tree that produced a 6-pounder for him on Day 1.

Still, even if his cypress bite sputters, Hays now has a backup plan in place. The thing that had him most excited about his second day on the water was the fact that he caught several fish not around Santee Cooper’s ubiquitous wood, but grass.

“The first day I caught the majority of them off trees – specific trees, but off trees – but in practice I caught a couple good ones off of some grass,” Hays said. “I couldn’t ever really make it work very long. Today, I actually caught the 7 and 5 off the same kind of stuff, and a couple males, so that kind of got me excited. That might start developing as well.”

Hays’ Group A win marked the first time in his three Bass Pro Tour seasons that he’s won a round. He’ll hope it leads to his first tournament win as a pro on Sunday.

The fact that he’s put himself in that position power-fishing around shallow cover – the way he grew up fishing – has made his first two days on Santee Cooper even more fun.

“Dude, if they’re biting a Hula Popper, I’ll throw a Hula Popper,” Hays said. “If I gotta throw a dropshot in 40 foot, I’ll do that. I do not care, and that’s God’s honest truth. It does not matter; I like it all. But it is fun. I mean, it’s been a while since we were able to do this, and I grew up fishing a place very similar to this, a lot of cypress trees, and I’m very comfortable.”

Other Group A anglers moving on to the Knockout Round are James Watson, Jesse Wiggins, Dave Lefebre, Cole Floyd and Ron Nelson.

David Walker earned Thursday’s $1,000 Berkley Big Bass Award with an 8-8 largemouth that he caught on a bladed swimjig during Period 3. Berkley awards $1,000 to the angler who weighs the heaviest bass each day and a $3,000 bonus to the angler who weighs the heaviest bass of the tournament.

Anglers launch at 7:30 a.m. ET each day from the John C. Land III Landing, located at 4404 Greenall Road in Summerton. Each day’s takeout is held at the park, beginning at 4 p.m.

The MLFNOW! broadcast team of Chad McKee and J.T. Kenney breaks down the extended action live on the final four days of competition from 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET. MLFNOW! is livestreamed on MajorLeagueFishing.com and the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app.

The tournament features the MLF catch, weigh, immediate-release format, in which anglers catch as much weight as they can each day, while also feeling the pressure and intensity of the ScoreTracker leaderboard. Anglers are competing with a 1 1/2-pound minimum weight requirement for a bass to be deemed scorable. The MLF Fisheries Management Division determines minimum weights for each body of water that the BPT visits, based on the productivity, bass population and anticipated average size of fish in each fishery.

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