JEFFERSON COUNTY, Tenn. (May 9, 2026) – There are two major tournaments happening on Douglas Lake at the moment, and Keith Poche and Dylan Nutt are leading them. Stop 4 Presented by Phoenix Boats of the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit Presented by MillerTech has shown off the extremes of Douglas – on the one hand, lot of bass are being caught in the actual lake, in offshore schools with summertime tactics (Nutt’s game). On the other hand, a lot of bass are being caught at the far upper reaches, where the Nolichucky and the French Broad feed into the lake, with some pros (like Poche) able to go farther than others.

In the official lead via tiebreaker, Poche tallied 17 pounds, 3 ounces on Day 2 for a 30-10 two-day total. Also with 30-10, Nutt has been a little steadier overall with 14 and change on Day 1, which he followed up with 16-4 on Day 2. Behind the leaders, Bobby Lane has 29-11, Carter Nutt has 29-8 and Aaron Yavorsky fell from the lead to fifth with 29-1.

Rule 19 reads that “Ties for first place on Day 3 will be broken by a one-hour fish-off.” It’s hard to bet on a tie after three days of fishing, but this week, there’s more potential for after-hours MLFNOW! than we’ve seen in a while.

Poche is off the grid as usual
Naturally, Poche is going as far as he can go, and, in his tricked-out GatorTrax, he’s able to get farther up the French Broad than anyone else. The one-of-a-kind pro is going more than a mile over the first line of visible, breaking shoals – truly impassable for a normal bass boat. He nabbed a 6-pounder up there for Berkley Big Bass on Day 2 and had a legitimately great day of fishing even before that big bite. To hear him tell it, though, he might have to fish the same lake as everyone else tomorrow.

“It’s good – it’s real good – but too bad it’s over with,” he said. “I’m not going to be able to get there tomorrow. The water is dropping. I had to make hay today. I stroked them. I didn’t leave any stone unturned. I caught bunch of fish to catch as much as I could.”

Per Poche, the rain from practice gave him just enough water to work with.

“The rain we had last week picked that river up,” he said. “The first day of the tournament, I was really able to run up there. Even today was a bit of a chore. I had to troll; it takes a while to navigate because it’s so shallow and treacherous. Coming back down, it was bad.

“You’ve got the shoals, and I’ll jump them, I’ll hit them and coast over,” he said. “But once you get over a couple, there’s no water, so I can’t get up on pad to get over the next one. For something like that, 6 inches of water is a lot, and it is not there.”

Fishing a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Stank Bug and a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General on a shaky head, Poche has been targeting current breaks and jog jams. Catching mostly largemouth, he ought to be able to translate his success down the river a little, to where the crowd is. He’d sure like to be fishing alone, though, where he’s the only one educating the bass.

“I may have to decide in the morning,” said the veteran pro. “It’s almost a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. It’s not looking good. I don’t have to go up there. I can get it done. I just need to get the right bites.”

Nutt in pursuit of another Tennessee win
Last year, in addition to several local wins, Dylan Nutt also won two Toyota Series events on various TVA reservoirs. This winter, the phenom won another event, the Bassmaster Classic, on Fort Loudon, and he’s now extremely in the hunt to win this week in East Tennessee. His college career at the University of North Alabama loaded him up with ledge fishing skills, and today, he looked like a next-gen Randy Haynes or Kevin VanDam – making all the right moves and putting miles on a crankbait.

Day 1 was frustrating for Dylan – he blitzed out to the early unofficial lead and then stalled. That was not the case today.

“It went better than I planned, 100 percent,” he said. “I didn’t know where I was going to catch any fish, because yesterday I pretty much caught them all off the place I started and I kind of burned it down. I turned my LiveScope on this morning and I had a small limit for about 9 pounds. I turned it off and went and scanned some places where I saw a couple fish and there were a bunch of them.”

A little seat time, a crankbait and a jig moved Dylan up leaderboard rapidly.

“I pulled up on one place, my first cast in there was a double on a crankbait,” he said. “Then, I caught one every cast, and then every now and then it would be every other cast, for an hour. I left there with 15 pounds.

“I scanned out deep the rest of the day. I ended up finding another school that was really good. I caught them almost every cast there as well – but I didn’t find that until today.”

Then, to top it off, he finished off with some more bass-catching action.

“There was a big school in one area in practice and they were all gone,’ he said. “I went and scanned for about 30 minutes in that area. When I finally found them, I started smashing them off it – there were like 100 fish down there.”

Tomorrow, the shallow crew figures to do well, but Dylan isn’t boxing himself in either way.

“There’s no telling,” he said. “I didn’t think I had this in me, so we’ll see.”

The top 20 pros after Day 2 on Douglas Lake are:

1st:        Keith Poche, Cecil, Ala., 10 bass, 30-10
2nd:      Dylan Nutt, Nashville, Tenn., 10 bass, 30-10
3rd:       Bobby Lane, Lakeland, Fla., 10 bass, 29-11
4th:       Carter Nutt, Nashville, Tenn., 10 bass, 29-8
5th:       Aaron Yavorsky, Palm Harbor, Fla., 10 bass, 29-1
6th:       Ott DeFoe, Blaine, Tenn., 10 bass, 28-11
7th:       Will Harkins, Blairsville, Ga., 10 bass, 28-10
8th:       Brent Chapman, Lenexa, Kan., 10 bass, 28-9
9th:       Drew Boggs, Lebanon, Tenn., 10 bass, 28-3
10th:     Brody Campbell, Oxford, Ohio, 10 bass, 28-2
11th:     Miles Burghoff, Dayton, Tenn., 10 bass, 28-0
12th:     Banks Shaw, Harrison, Tenn., 10 bass, 26-15
13th:     Kyle Cortiana, Broken Arrow, Okla., 10 bass, 26-13
14th:     Colby Miller, Elmer, La., 10 bass, 26-12
15th:     Drew Gill, Mount Carmel, Ill., 10 bass, 26-10
16th:     Harbor Lovin, New Concord, Ky., 10 bass, 26-6
17th:     Marty Robinson, Landrum, S.C., 10 bass, 26-5
18th:     Tyler Stewart, Dubach, La., 10 bass, 25-11
19th:     Chad Mrazek, Montgomery, Texas, 10 bass, 25-7
20th:     Nick Hatfield, Afton, Tenn., 10 bass, 25-7

Complete results for the entire field can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Overall, there were 669 bass weighing 1,491 pounds even caught by 135 pros Saturday. The catch included 131 five-bass limits.

Keith Poche earned the $500 Day 2 Berkley Big Bass award with a bass that weighed in at 6 pounds even.

In Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit competition, the full field of pros competed in the two-day opening round on Friday and Saturday in a five-fish, weigh-in format. Now only the top 50 pros, based on their two-day cumulative weight, advance to the final round on Championship Sunday. The winner is determined by heaviest cumulative weight from all three days and they will be awarded the grand prize of up to $135,000. Forward-facing and/or 360-degree sonar is limited to only 3 hours of competition each day.

The final 50 pros will launch at 7 a.m. ET Sunday from the Dandridge Boat Dock & Ramp, located at 157 Public Drive in Dandridge, Tennessee. Sunday’s championship weigh-in will also be held at the Dandridge Boat Dock & Ramp and will begin at 3 p.m. Fans are welcome to attend the launch and weigh-in events and are also encouraged to follow the event online throughout the day on the MLFNOW!® live stream and coverage at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

The Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit Presented by MillerTech at Douglas Lake Presented by Phoenix Boats is hosted by Visit Jefferson County, TN.

The 2026 Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit Presented by MillerTech features a field of up to 150 professional anglers competing across six tournaments around the country, for a total purse of $3.8 million and valuable 7 Brew Angler of the Year (AOY) points to qualify for the Pro Circuit Championship, set for Sept. 18-20 on the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes in Kissimmee, Florida, and a coveted spot on the MLF Bass Pro Tour – the sport’s premier circuit.

The MLFNOW! broadcast team of Chad McKee and Rob Newell will break down the extended action live on Championship Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. ET. MLFNOW! is live streamed on MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app and Rumble.

Television coverage of the MLF Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit Presented by MillerTech Stop 4 on Douglas Lake Presented by Phoenix Boats will air as a two-hour episode, premiering at 9 a.m. ET, on Saturday, Sept. 27 on Vice TV.

Proud sponsors of the 2026 MLF Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit Presented by MillerTech include: 7 Brew, Abu Garcia, Athletic Brewing, B&W Trailer Hitches, Berkley, Black Buffalo, Bubba, Cigars International, Epic Baits, Grizzly, Mercury, MillerTech, OFF! Deep Woods, Onyx, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Phoenix Boats, PirahnO2, Power-Pole, Precision Sonar, Suzuki Marine, Tackle Warehouse, T-H Marine, Toyota, VOSKER, YETI and Yuengling.

For complete details and updated information visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow the MLF5 social media outlets at Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

About Major League Fishing
Major League Fishing (MLF) is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, producing more than 250 events annually at some of the most prestigious fisheries in the world, while broadcasting to America’s living rooms on CBS, Discovery, Outdoor Channel, VICE, World Fishing Network, RFD-TV, Game & Fish TV and Rumble, and on demand on MyOutdoorTV (MOTV). Headquartered in Benton, Kentucky, the MLF roster of bass anglers includes the world’s top pros and more than 30,000 competitors in all 50 states and 20 countries. Since its founding in 2011, MLF has advanced the sport of competitive fishing through its premier television broadcasts and livestreams and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for bass through research, education, fisheries enhancement and fish care.