March 17, 2025
FLORENCE, Ala. — Dylan Nutt has only been fishing Pickwick Lake consistently for three years, but there may not be anyone who is more dialed into what is happening on that Tennessee River reservoir than him right now.
The University of North Alabama junior secured the victory at the B.A.S.S. Nation Qualifier with a three-day total weighing 77 pounds, 6 ounces, one of the largest winning weights ever in B.A.S.S. Nation competition. Nutt caught mostly largemouth to outlast fellow college angler Nick Dumke by 1-10.
“It is unbelievable,” Nutt said. “I don’t even know what to say. I was beyond blessed this week to say the least.”
This is Nutt’s third trophy on Pickwick in the span of a month. He earned a Toyota Series win in February and then won the Bill Dance Giant Bass Open on Saturday, the first day of practice for the Nation event.
“I just feel like I know the bass,” he explained. “At least right now, I really understand what’s going on out there and it has worked for me the last couple of weeks.”
Nutt opened the tournament in second with a limit weighing 25-15 before taking the lead on Day 2 with 27-15, the tournament’s biggest bag. He rounded out his tournament with a 23-8 sack, which proved to be the most difficult limit of the week to complete.
“When I was running down the lake this morning, God told me he was going to test me. And he did.” Nutt said. “I caught two (little) smallmouth and then lost like two or three in a row. I ran around some more and I lost two pretty big ones. My non-boater landed a 4, a 5 and another 5 and stopped fishing. It was tough all day. But something kept me calm.”
Between noon and 3 p.m., Nutt caught the majority of his limit and in the last 15 minutes of fishing, he landed a 5 1/2-pound largemouth to seal the victory.
During the week, Nutt followed the bass from their wintering holes to their prespawn staging areas. Each day, the bass got shallower and on the final day, the majority of his limit came in less than 6 feet of water.
“It seemed like some of the smallmouth started spawning and the largemouth aren’t far from it,” he said. “At the start of practice, I was catching bass in their winter patterns and today they aren’t even close to that anymore. Today I saw 61-degree water temperatures.”
While he rotated through about five or six baits throughout the week, a 1/4-ounce Damiki rig with a minnow-style bait and a jerkbait were his most productive. As temperatures warmed, he switched from a deeper-diving jerkbait to a shallow-diving jerkbait. Translucent shad patterns were key.
“The water wasn’t too dirty,” he said. “The fish out here eat shad, so I was trying to match the hatch.”
Dumke, meanwhile, was arguably the most consistent angler of the week, landing limits weighing 25-3, 25-7 and 25-2 for a total of 75-12. The University of Montevallo senior knew he needed things to go perfectly to unseat Nutt, and they nearly did.
“I was so close, yet so far,” he said. “It is a really special lake. It is absurd what this place is doing right now. It was such a fun week. One of the most fun tournaments I’ve ever had. There are so many big ones in this lake. I almost gave Dylan a run and I’m super fortunate for how everything turned out.”
One half of the 2023 College Series Team of the Year, Dumke targeted prespawn staging spots between 8 to 14 feet of water. Those spots were close to some of the winter holes he fished during the Toyota Series event in February. Wind was a key piece of the equation, and he needed that wind to be blowing in on his spots.
“With water temperatures being in the 50s and climbing, the bass had spawning on the brain. They were trying to make their way up there. So, my entire deal was targeting stopping points for bass trying to go to their spawning areas. Steep banks and brush and stumps along those steep areas.”
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In areas where largemouth were more prevalent, he threw a 6- or 8-inch Deps Sakamata Shad on a jighead. A 5-inch CrushCity Freeloader was more productive where he found more smallmouth. When the wind really kicked up, he tossed an assortment of jerkbaits including a Rapala Mavrik and a Megabass Vision 110.
Indiana’s Eli Lubbehusen finished third with a three-day total of 70-10. Lubbehusen held down third place the entire tournament with bags weighing 25-4, 20-11 and 24-11. Using mostly a CrushCity Freeloader, Lubbehusen targeted the backsides of current breaks in 8 to 10 feet of water.
“There could be rocks or brush, just as long as I was on the backside and out of the current, it was good,” he said. “I had one big smallmouth every day, but most of my bites were largemouth.”
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Having a lighter jighead seemed to trigger the better bites, Lubbehusen noticed.
“I had to go super light. It seemed like the bass wanted it to fall slower,” he said.
Illinois boater Corey Bohlmann landed the Big Bass of the Tournament, an 8-3 largemouth that earned him the $500 bonus.
