Editor’s Note: Very few of us know what we want to be when we finish high school, and some people don’t have a clue of what they want to become even after getting their college educations. And, these two statements are typical about the 2020 Bassmaster Classic (https://www.bassmaster.com/) winner Hank Cherry of Lincolnton, North Carolina, on the shores of Lake Norman. But in his heart of hearts, he knew he wanted to earn a living bass fishing. However, life takes twists and turns, and few men or women reach greatness without traveling through discouragement and failure. Actually in most people’s lives, failure is a prerequisite to success, and such is the backstory of Hank Cherry.

In 2020, Hank Cherry competed in the 50th Bassmaster Classic on Lake Guntersville in Guntersville, Alabama, and won $300,000  for finishing first – not only securing his place in the sport of tournament bass-fishing history, but also providing the stepping stone to a lifelong dream of becoming a national tournament angler and doing that for the rest of his working days. How did this dream catcher finally catch his dream? How did he find the bass at Lake Guntersville, and what did he do to catch them? One of the big surprises of the 2020 Bassmaster Classic was that Cherry, like Randy Howell, the 2014 Classic champion, fished a community hole that all the contestants and all the regulars at Lake Guntersville always fished in March each year. However, most of the other competitors completely disregarded fishing this spot in the 2020 Classic.

* Winning $300,000 – the Most Money Cherry Ever Had Won in a Bass Tournament:

“After the last official practice day of the Bassmaster Classic, I knew bad weather would be arriving with high winds and big waves,” Cherry recalls. “I’d have to fight to reach the places I’d planned to fish on the first day of the Classic. Also, I noticed none of the other contestants had given any attention to fishing the causeway going into Browns Creek. That morning after take-off, I had a problem with my trolling motor and had to have my boat pulled out of the water and my trolling motor repaired. Since the causeway was only about 500 yards from the take-off site, I decided to fish a little ways down it to make sure I could depend on my trolling motor the rest of the day.

“When I pulled into the end of the causeway, I’d only fished about 50 yards when I caught a bass that weighed between 5-6 pounds. In my mind, that sealed the deal of where I’d spend most of my time fishing the Classic. Due to the causeway being an obvious place where most anglers who fished Guntersville would fish in March, the other competitors completely disregarded it in their game plans. I’d fished the causeway before in other tournaments held on Guntersville. I’d researched tournament results for fishing Guntersville during the first weekend of March too, and I’d learned that the causeway had produced tournament-winning limits of bass for other anglers, both earlier and later than the first week of March. I also had a few other locations close to the causeway where I’d caught bass in the past. So, I believed even if the big bass didn’t bite all day long, I could fish my other places when the bass weren’t biting at the causeway, return to the causeway and fish again.

“Everyone knew that the most-productive portion of the causeway were the four points on either side of the bridge where the causeway started. Most tournament anglers and locals bass fished on those four points at the end of the causeway on each side of the bridge. Very few fishermen fished the middle portion of the causeway. So, I ignored the four points and concentrated my fishing in the middle part of the causeway. I had fished this area in another Bassmaster Elite Series tournament held later in the year than the March time of the 2020 Classic. I had caught bass all the way up and down the middle portion of the causeway. I also had watched a TV show and saw that Mark Rose, another professional angler, had caught bass in certain places in the middle section of the causeway. I also knew that most anglers who fished the causeway fished parallel to the causeway with jigs and large swim baits. But I’d never seen or heard of anyone fishing a jerkbait for suspended bass along the riprap.”

To learn more about bass fishing, check out John E. Phillip’s book, “Catch the Biggest and the Most Bass in Any Lake,” at http://amzn.to/Xd7qez, available in Kindle and print versions and

Click here for the Audible link.

Tomorrow: Hank Cherry’s Equipment for Catching Lake Guntersville Bass in the 2020 Classic