Cookeville Angler Wins by Five Ounces to Take Home $62,761

BYRDSTOWN, Tenn. (Nov. 1, 2020) – Toyota Series angler Adam Wagner of Cookeville, Tennessee, brought a five-bass limit to the scale Saturday weighing 16 pounds, 1 ounce to win the three-day Toyota Series at Dale Hollow Lake tournament in Byrdstown, Tennessee. Wagner’s three-day total of 12 bass weighing 34-6 earned him the win by 5 ounces over second-place angler Blake Smith of Byrdstown, and earned Wagner the top payout of $62,761, including the lucrative $35,000 FLW PHOENIX BONUS contingency award in the third and final regular-season tournament of the 2020 Toyota Series Central Division.

“I’m just blown away,” said Wagner, the 2009 Phoenix Bass Fishing League All-American Champion who earned his 15th career victory in FLW competition. “I got lucky. I just absolutely pulled up dead on top of that school of fish. If that’s not meant to be, I don’t know what to say – It just blows my mind.”

The school of fish Wagner referenced was the “motherlode” he found in the afternoon of day two. He said he didn’t have enough time to pluck a big bag from the school, but he knew he found something special to go back to on Saturday.

“I was pulling up to fish a grass spot [Friday] and I just went across this ditch and [my graph] just lit up,” he explained. “It’s two long, flat points going into a gut of a pocket. There was a school of shad in 49 foot of water, and apparently every largemouth that lives on those points was in that gut.”

Wagner said he’s not a “deep water guy,” but has the confidence to do something he knows isn’t his forte. He also credits local knowledge and having the right baits on the deck at the right times – namely, a 5/8-ounce Silver Buddy blade bait.

After finding his winning school on Friday, Wagner said he used the Silver Buddy to pluck a few largemouth from deep water to make the top-10 cut. He then went back to his school Saturday morning and caught a couple keepers before hitting a few other spots to give the school time to set up.

Wagner said when he returned, it was game on.

“The shad had ganged up a little better, like the bass had bunched them up a little more,” he explained. “As the day went on it got better. Saturday was fun.”

As much fun as Wagner had both catching the biggest bag of the tournament and holding up the resulting trophy and $62,761 check, he continued to go back to the providence of it all.

“I just can’t believe it,” he said. “That I found that school of fish – at noon Friday I didn’t have a fish. If I had gone over 10 or 15 yards, I would have never seen them.”

The top 10 pros on Dale Hollow Lake finished:

1st: Adam Wagner of Cookeville, Tenn., 12 bass, 34-6, $62,761

2nd: Blake Smith of Byrdstown, Tenn., 15 bass, 34-1, $10,176

3rd: Dakota Ebare of Denham Springs, La., 12 bass, 29-1, $8,078

4th: Jonathan Bowling of Harriman, Tenn., 11 bass, 26-13, $6,565

5th: Chris Malone of Ironton, Ohio, 12 bass, 24-12, $5,909

6th: Nick Ratliff of Vine Grove, Ky., 10 bass, 21-8, $5,252

7th: Scott Stults of Jamestown, Tenn., seven bass, 19-8, $4,671

8th: Drew Boggs of Lebanon, Tenn., 12 bass, 18-7, $3,939

9th: Marshall Deakins of Dunlap, Tenn., eight bass, 18-0, $3,283

10th: Billy Hall of Florence, Ky., five bass, 15-5, $2,626

A complete list of results can be found at FLWFishing.com.

Wagner took home an extra $35,000 as the highest finishing FLW PHOENIX BONUS member. Boaters are eligible to win up to an extra $35,000 per event in each Toyota Series tournament if all requirements are met. More information on the FLW PHOENIX BONUS contingency program can be found at PhoenixBassBoats.com.

Robert Russell of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, won the Co-angler Division Saturday with a three-day total of 11 bass weighing 22 pounds, 2 ounces. Russell took home the top prize package of a new Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower outboard motor.

The top 10 co-anglers on Dale Hollow Lake finished:

1st: Robert Russell of Murfreesboro, Tenn., 11 bass, 22-2, $33,550 Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat w/115-hp outboard

2nd: Josh Lockard of Somerset, Ky., seven bass, 15-1, $3,396

3rd: Phil Williams, Jr. of Jamestown, Ky., five bass, 13-15, $2,716

4th: Brent Clark of Bowling Green, Ky., five bass, 12-10, $2,377

5th: Nathan Woodruff of Iuka, Miss., four bass, 11-12, $2,037

6th: Gary Slaughter of Waddy, Ky., five bass, 10-0, $1,698

7th: Luke Glasgow of Guin, Ala., five bass, 10-0, $1,358

8th: Travis Parrott of Byrdstown, Tenn., three bass, 8-0, $1,188

9th: Michael Weimann of Murfreesboro, Tenn., three bass, 6-13, $1,019

10th: Randy Forbes of Pleasant Plain, Ohio, three bass, 6-4, $849

The Toyota Series at Dale Hollow Lake was hosted by the Byrdstown-Pickett County Chamber of Commerce. It was the third and final tournament in 2020 for Central Division anglers. The next two events for Toyota Series anglers will both take place on Nov. 5-7, with the Toyota Series at Lake Seminole in Bainbridge, Georgia and the Toyota Series at Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri. For a complete schedule, visit FLWFishing.com.