provided by John Phillips
Twenty-nine-year-old Jordan Lee, from Cullman, Alabama, has been fishing professionally for only 6 years and has had quite a remarkable career so far. In addition to his career earnings of roughly $1.5 million, during this first tournament since COVID-19, Jordan Lee won over $200,000 on the Kissimmee chain of lakes from Major League Fishing, the week of June 10th, 2020. Jordan Lee also won two Bassmaster Classics, back to back (2017-2018), the MLF Tour in 2019 and is ranked No. 2 world-wide on BassFan.com.
My number-one bait in this June bass tournament was a plum-colored 10-inch Berkley Power Worm. I was using Berkley’s 20-pound test, 100-percent fluorocarbon line with a 3/8-ounce sinker in front of the worm. I was casting the worm on a 7-foot, 6-inch Premier Abu Garcia Fantasista heavy-action rod, and my reel was an Abu Garcia AL-F Revo. I was using a No. 5/0 offset hook. During the tournament, I kept my boat 50 - 60 feet from the brush piles and cast my worm to them. I was also fishing a 2.5 square bill crankbait. I’d cast the worm into the brush, let it fall down in the brush and then crawl it out of the brush. I caught 10 bass on the first day, and my biggest bass weighed 6 pounds, 15 ounces. At the end of the first day, I was in third place.
Then on the second day, I caught 18.5 pounds of bass – actually in the first 45 minutes of that day. I had some boat trouble, especially with my battery, so I had to return to the boat ramp, take my boat out of the water, and have the technicians spend about an hour and a half trying to figure out the problem. Before this incident, I was in first place on the second day, but at the end of the day, I’d dropped back down to third place.
When my boat was finally put back in the water, I stayed away from my eight good brush tops and fished the ones I hadn’t fished much, along with other locations I’d marked but hadn’t fished. I was hoping that the brush tops that I had been fishing would hold up for two more days. So, at the end of the second day, I knew I was going to advance, and that there was no point in trying to catch every fish that was on those eight brush piles that were producing.
