CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 2025--
Thirty hours of competition across four days at the Major League Fishing (MLF) O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 4 Presented by OPTIMA Batteries boiled down to the final 20 seconds. Separated on SCORETRACKER® by just 6 ounces, Jake Lawrence and Jacob Wheeler both set the hook.
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Wheeler and Lawrence had long since distanced themselves from the rest of the field during Sunday’s Championship Round on Nickajack Lake. The latter half of the day morphed into a one-on-one prize fight: Wheeler, the winningest Bass Pro Tour angler of all time, who caught all smallmouth in the current beneath Chickamauga Dam, versus Lawrence, a rookie who caught all largemouth roughly 40 miles down the lake. Lawrence had led most of the day, but with 6 minutes left, Wheeler finally passed him. Still, both anglers felt like if they could just muster one more scorable bass, they’d secure the trophy and $150,000 top prize that comes with it.
With 45 seconds left before lines out, Lawrence made a bomb cast with his Buckeye Buzzerk buzzbait. About halfway back to the boat – 21 seconds left to be exact – a massive mouth engulfed it. Nine seconds later, Lawrence swung the bass over the gunnel and hung it on the BUBBA scale: a 5-pound, 9-ounce buzzer-beater, easily enough to put him back in the lead. At virtually that exact moment, Wheeler hooked up with another smallmouth, but he couldn’t get it in the boat before time expired. It might not have been enough to overcome Lawrence’s late lunker anyway.
With a total of 83-2 on 27 scorable bass, Lawrence had won his first Bass Pro Tour title in one of, if not the most dramatic finish in the seven-year history of the tour. More than an hour later, he still couldn’t come up with a way to describe the ending other than divine intervention.
“The only thing I can say is, man, He wanted me to do it,” Lawrence said. “Wheeler jumped me there by a couple ounces, and I said out loud, ‘Lord, if you want me to do this, you’re going to make it happen.’ I had 45 seconds left, and I had just gotten my buzzer back to the boat, and I said, alright, you can throw right, which is where I had been catching them, or you can throw somewhere totally new. And I chose to throw somewhere totally new, and it was the deal. Unbelievable.”
Link to Hi-Res Photo of O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 4 Presented by OPTIMA Batteries Winner Jake Lawrence
Link to Photo Gallery: Fast track to Nickajack finale for Stage 4 Championship Round
Link to Photo Gallery: Lawrence scores his first Bass Pro Tour win
Link to HD Video of Highlights from Day 4 Championship Round Competition
On his first cast that way, the bass struck so violently, Lawrence initially thought it had missed his bait. He set the hook, flipped it into the boat, grabbed its lower lip and unleashed a guttural scream of celebration.
“She hit it with such force coming at me that it threw a bunch of slack in my line, and I honestly though she missed it,” he said. “I started to go wind it in fast to make another cast, and when I started winding it down, she was there. I was like, ‘oh my goodness. There is no way this is happening.’”
Every angler likes to end an outing with a fish. Growing up fishing alongside my dad and brother, we’d always ask for some “last cast magic” as everyone threw one final time.
Of course, the last cast usually doesn’t turn out to be the last cast – until you catch one. But with the Bass Pro Tour’s live scoreboard, Lawrence almost certainly didn’t have time to make another cast and fight a fish before lines out.
That 5-9 – the second biggest bass of the day not only for Lawrence but the entire Championship Round field – delivered the ultimate last-cast magic.
“That’s God’s work right there,” Lawrence said in the seconds after his win became official. “That’s the way to end one.”
The top 10 pros at the O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 4 Presented by OPTIMA Batteries on Nickajack Lake finished:
1st: Jake Lawrence, Paris, Tenn., 27 bass, 83-2, $150,000
2nd: Jacob Wheeler, Harrison, Tenn., 27 bass, 77-15, $45,000
3rd: Cole Floyd, Leesburg, Ohio, 17 bass, 48-14, $35,000
4th: Ron Nelson, Berrien Springs, Mich., 15 bass, 42-7, $30,000
5th: Wesley Strader, Spring City, Tenn., 15 bass, 37-14, $25,000
6th: Michael Neal, Dayton, Tenn., 12 bass, 37-4, $23,000
7th: Matt Becker, Ten Mile, Tenn., 12 bass, 29-9, $22,000
8th: Drew Gill, Mount Carmel, Ill., 11 bass, 25-9, $21,000
9th: Justin Cooper, Zwolle, La., seven bass, 21-12, $20,500
10th: Justin Lucas, Guntersville, Ala., six bass, 15-8, $20,000
A complete list of results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Lawrence won the Berkley Big Bass Award on Sunday with his giant 8-pound, 3-ounce largemouth that he caught in the first period. Berkley awards $1,000 to the angler who weighs the heaviest bass each day.
The O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 4 Presented by OPTIMA Batteries was hosted by Visit Chattanooga and Fish Tennessee and showcased 66 of the top professional anglers in the world, competing for a purse of $650,000, including a top payout of $150,000 and valuable Angler of the Year (AOY) points in hopes of qualifying for the General Tire Heavy Hitters all-star event and REDCREST 2026, the Bass Pro Tour championship.
Television coverage of the O’Reilly Auto Parts Stage 4 at Lake Chickamauga and Nickajack Lake Presented by OPTIMA Batteries will premiere as a two-hour episode starting at 7 a.m. ET, on Saturday, Oct. 11 on Discovery, with the Championship Round premiering on Saturday, Oct. 18. New MLF episodes premiere each Saturday morning on Discovery, with re-airings on Outdoor Channel.
Proud sponsors of the 2025 MLF Bass Pro Tour include: 7Brew Coffee, Abu Garcia, Athletic Brewing, Bass Force, B&W Trailer Hitches, Bass Pro Shops, Berkley, BUBBA, E3 Sport Apparel, Fishing Clash, Grizzly, Lowrance, Mercury, MillerTech, Mossy Oak Fishing, NITRO, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Power-Pole, Ranger Boats, Rapala, Star brite, Suzuki Marine and Toyota.
For complete details and updated information on Major League Fishing and the Bass Pro Tour, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF’s social media outlets at Facebook, X, 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 Channel, Outdoor Channel, CBS Sports Network, World Fishing Network 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.
Tennessee rookie Jake Lawrence caught 27 bass weighing 83 pounds, 2 ounces, to win the Bass Pro Tour O'Reilly Auto Parts Stage 4 Presented by OPTIMA Batteries at Nickajack Lake and earn the top prize of $150,000.
