CALVERT CITY, Ky. – At each of the past two Bass Pro Tour regular-season events, Jacob Wheeler has finished in second place, one bite short of the win. He fell 2-3 shy of Drew Gill on Lake Murray, then lost a heartbreaker to Jake Lawrence on Chickamauga and Nickajack, when Lawrence caught a 5-9 in the final seconds before lines out.

At Lowrance Stage 5 Presented by Mercury on Kentucky Lake, Wheeler made sure no one else even got a chance to steal the trophy.

Wheeler rallied after a slow morning and stacked up 110 pounds, 13 ounces on 46 scorable bass during Sunday’s Championship Round. He turned what looked like it would be another slugfest with Lawrence, the home-lake favorite, into a rout, topping Lawrence by 32-7.

The win is Wheeler’s first of 2025 and ninth overall on the Bass Pro Tour, adding to his tour-best trophy count.

This one carried special significance, not just because he was able to flip the script and get revenge on Lawrence, but because he grew up traveling to Kentucky Lake to compete in tournaments alongside his father, Curtis, who passed away from cancer in April.

“I just felt like he was with me all week,” Wheeler said through tears shortly after the victory became official. “It’s the first tournament that I’ve fished on a lake that we fished together, and this one had a lot of meaning to it. Obviously, he was a big part of my life, and I wouldn’t be here without him. I just wanted to win it for him.”

Link to Hi-Res Photo of Lowrance Stage 5 Presented by Mercury Winner Jacob Wheeler
Link to Photo Gallery: Kentucky Lake Delivers During Stage 5 Championship Round
Link to Photo Gallery: Championship Round Underway on Kentucky Lake

On paper, Stage 5 will go down looking like vintage Wheeler domination. He blasted more than 95 pounds during the first half of the first day of qualifying, then spent the rest of the day idling and scouting for new schools. He only fished for about a third of Day 2 but caught enough to win the Qualifying Round, earning himself a direct berth to the Championship Round. Sunday, while a north wind slowed the bite for everyone else, he cruised past the 100-pound mark.

But the Championship Round didn’t start as planned for Wheeler. Anticipating a barnburner with Lawrence and several other ledge luminaries among the final-day field, he started in the area where he’d caught his weight on Day 1. An hour in, he had just 12-1 – despite using his lone period with forward-facing sonar during the opening frame. Meanwhile, Lawrence steadily stacked bass on SCORETACKER®, putting up 41-15 in the first two hours.

Even though he knew his deficit would continue to grow and the clock was ticking on his forward-facing sonar period, Wheeler decided to make about a 30-minute run south.

“I hadn’t been out during the weekend, and I realized very quickly there was a lot of local pressure and a lot of other anglers on the water today,” Wheeler said. “I didn’t know for sure how the fish would react to the pressure.

So, I started there, thinking maybe I could really catch them, and come to find out it was definitely not the deal.”

Wheeler thinks there were more fish schooled up on Kentucky Lake’s famous river-channel ledges on the northern end of the lake, and he couldn’t bring himself to run past the area Sunday morning then potentially double back later in the day. However, he believes the schools he found toward the southern end of the competition boundaries weren’t getting as much pressure, which made the bass more willing to bite.

“There wasn’t as many schools in that area, but they were places that I felt like not very many local anglers and a lot of our tournament anglers were fishing, so it was something I could manage,” Wheeler explained.

That he had a backup plan at his disposal was a testament to Wheeler’s early-tournament strategy. While he initially wavered over whether to win the Qualifying Round and the automatic trip to the Championship Round that came with it or use the Knockout Round to do some additional idling, he ended up achieving both objectives because he was able to catch fish so quickly during the first two days. He hit a total of 13 schools Sunday, a few of which he found during the Qualifying Round.

“I found two of my best places in the third period of the final qualifying day,” he said. “After I had already won and basically no one was trying to run me down, I found two more places that were instrumental in winning this tournament.”

By the time he made the trek south and found a cooperative school, ending a 1-hour, 6-minute drought, Wheeler trailed Lawrence by more than 26 pounds. A flurry of seven scorable bass totaling 18 pounds in 22 minutes cut his deficit to a more manageable 14-5 at the first period break.

At that point, Wheeler at least knew where he would spend the rest of the day. And while Lawrence, who also utilized forward-facing sonar during the first period, struggled to maintain his pace once he turned his transducer off, Wheeler steadily chipped away.

He caught a 3-3 in the first minute of the second period, then added four more scorables. Perhaps his most important flurry came an hour into the second stanza, when he boated four straight largemouth over 3 pounds to take the lead.

All of those fish ate a 3/4-ounce football jig with a Rapala CrushCity Cleanup Craw as the trailer. Wheeler, who had 18 rods on his front deck to start the day, caught bass on the full gamut of offshore staples during the event. But prior to the Championship Round, he hadn’t spent much time throwing a football jig. It wound up accounting for 30 of his 46 bass, and he caught more weight during each of his two periods without forward-facing sonar than he did in Period 1.

“There’s just something about a heavier football jig with a Cleanup Craw,” Wheeler said. “The Cleanup Craw having a really high-frequency kick, it’s not drawn out, it looks real natural. I caught fish dragging it, and I caught fish snapping it. You always have it on the deck. It’s a classic. Baits like that just don’t go away. Bass still like them.”

Wheeler credited his two recent close losses for keeping him focused on catching one fish at a time rather than the final result. While Lawrence blitzed from spot to spot throughout the afternoon, looking for a magic school that never materialized, Wheeler stayed steady. He turned a lead of a little more than 10 pounds at the start of the third period into a winning margin of more than 30. Finally, with about 10 minutes left, he let himself start to soak in the moment.

“Obviously Jake beat me close to my house – it wasn’t my home lake, by any means, at Nickajack, but I was like, man, it would be nice to get him back a little bit,” Wheeler said. “It was fun to be able to compete with him and battle it out on Kentucky.”

Not only did Wheeler take home the trophy and $150,000 top prize at Stage 5, he put himself in an excellent position to win another title (and $100,000 paycheck).

Wheeler now has a 38-point lead in the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year race over Lawrence, who moved up from fourth to second. As long as Wheeler makes the Knockout Round at each of the final two events of the regular season, he’s virtually assured of his fourth AOY crown in the past five years.

At this point, the better question might not be whether Wheeler will win Angler of the Year but whether he can break his own Bass Pro Tour record. Through five events, he’s averaging a finish of 3.2. That’s well ahead of the mark he set when he won his second points title in 2022 (5.4) for the best average finish in the seven-year history of the Bass Pro Tour.

Given all he’s achieved over the past seven years, it’s natural to wonder whether the wins still mean as much. Wheeler’s reaction after lines out erased any doubt that this victory is special.

For one thing, he completed the unofficial Tennessee River Grand Slam – he’s now won on Chickamauga, Guntersville, Pickwick and Kentucky. And Kentucky Lake has a particularly special place in Wheeler’s heart. Growing up in Indianapolis, it was the closest venue that regularly hosted national-level events, and Wheeler’s father drove him to the fishery to compete throughout his teenage years.

As focused as he was on earning the win, every time he came across a familiar landmark, Wheeler couldn’t help but think back to those times in the boat with his dad.

“I stopped at a point that my dad caught a 6 1/2-pounder on in March in a club tournament in practice just to reminisce,” he said. “Stuff like that, as you’re running down the lake, it just brings back insane memories at such a young age. That’s what made it even so much sweeter.”

The top 10 pros at the Lowrance Stage 5 Presented by Mercury on Kentucky Lake finished:

1st: Jacob Wheeler, Harrison, Tenn. 46 bass, 110-13, $150,000
2nd: Jake Lawrence, Paris, Tenn., 30 bass, 78-6, $45,000
3rd: Brent Ehrler, Redlands, Calif., 32 bass, 69-8, $35,000
4th: Jacob Wall, New Hope, Ala., 27 bass, 62-13, $30,000
5th: John Hunter, Shelbyville, Ky., 26 bass, 62-10, $25,000
6th: Adrian Avena, Vineland, N.J., 22 bass, 53-11, $23,000
7th: Cole Floyd, Leesburg, Ohio, 18 bass, 51-11, $22,000
8th: Spencer Shuffield, Hot Springs, Ark., 16 bass, 44-11, $21,000
9th: Andy Montgomery, Blacksburg, S.C., 16 bass, 35-15, $20,500
10th: Michael Neal, Dayton, Tenn., 12 bass, 29-10, $20,000

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

Cole Floyd won the Berkley Big Bass Award Sunday with a 5-pound, 12-ounce largemouth that he caught on a crankbait early in the first period. Berkley awards $1,000 to the angler who weighs the heaviest bass each day.

The four-day tournament, hosted by the Kentucky Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Calloway County Tourism Commission, 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 Lowrance Stage 5 at Kentucky Lake Presented by Mercury will premiere as a two-hour episode starting at 7 a.m. ET, on Saturday, Oct. 25 on Discovery, with the Championship Round premiering on Saturday, Nov. 1. New MLF episodes premiere each Saturday morning on Discovery, with re-airings on Outdoor Channel.

The 2025 Bass Pro Tour features a field of 66 of the top professional anglers in the world, competing across seven regular-season tournaments around the country, for millions of dollars and valuable points to qualify for the annual Heavy Hitters all-star event and the REDCREST 2026 championship.

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.