By MLF Communications Staff

ERIE, Pa. – The third group of two-man teams took to the water Tuesday on Erie’s Presque Isle Bay in the first event in the 2024 MLF Team Series. Similar to the two days prior at the Challenge Cup, most of the teams started out Tuesday morning along the Erie waterfront, fishing the riprap banks and targeting seawalls with grass blown up around them.

However, after two days of competition, the fish in those areas had been depleted, making for a tough bite and forcing anglers to move around to try to find fish.

The match was the tightest of the event so far, with several teams battling for the top spot throughout the day and nearly every team in close contention to make the cut to the Knockout Round.

It was Team Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff & Pouches, made up of Luke Clausen and John Hunter, who finished atop the leaderboard when the time ran out, catching 36 largemouth bass weighing 62 pounds, 1 ounce, to earn the win in Elimination Round Match 3. That duo will now advance to the Knockout Round, along with second-place Team Star Tron – pros Bobby Lane and Jacob Wall – who caught 35 bass weighing 57-6.

The Top 6 teams from the three Elimination Round matches now advance to the Knockout Rounds on Wednesday and Thursday. Team Star Tron (Lane/Wall) will join Team REDCON1 (Cole Floyd/Andy Morgan) and Team U.S. Air Force (Stephen Browning/Anthony Gagliardi) in competition on Wednesday, while Team Smokey Mountain (Clausen/Hunter) will join Team Coign (Drew Gill/Matthew Stefan) and Team B&W Trailer Hitches (Matt Becker/Spencer Shuffield) in the Knockout Round on Thursday.

After the Knockout Rounds are complete, the Top 4 teams from the two days of competition will advance to Friday’s Championship Round.

The Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff & Pouches team started the morning on the Erie waterfront, pitching bait around some of the seawalls, break walls and riprap shorelines. They caught a few fish early on, but really keyed in on the bite after Hunter threw a vibrating jig in the offshore grass beds. They dialed that in the rest of the day, catching most of their fish on vibrating jigs and a few on stick worms.

“That was fun, especially there at the end,” said Clausen. “It started off rocky, though. We figured some stuff out through the day that just made the whole day line out right. If we’d missed a key bite here or there, it could have gone downhill quick.

“We fished there this morning and caught a couple, but left because the other teams were catching quite a few and we thought we could find something better,” Clausen continued. “We scrambled around thinking we were going to find glory and ironically we just ran away from a really good place, we just didn’t know it this morning.”

The duo rose to the top of the leaderboard at the end of the second period and held onto the top spot for most of the afternoon.

“I’m pretty proud of how we figured them out today, just settling in on these clumps of milfoil grass with little openings in them,” said Clausen. “We were able to identify that there were multiple fish – pretty much every time we caught one we could pick up a piece of plastic and throw it and catch another one.”

Hunter said the main focus was trying to manage the little sweet spots that they found.

“Every time we circled back to one of those spots, we’d get another bite or two, but you don’t want to go back to them too quick,” said Hunter. “So, we basically just went through the spots, then worked the outside edge of them, trying to find a new spot or two, then came back through once they’ve had some time to rest.”

Clausen said the Z-Man Tungsten ChatterBait Elite Evo accounted for a lot of their fish.

“I scored 23 bass and probably 20 of them were caught on that bait,” said Clausen. “It falls quick, coming out of this grass, and it reacts quicker, so you get a lot more movement out of your bait.”

Clausen said he threw the ChatterBait on a Phenix M1 7-foot, 4-inch medium-heavy rod with a 7.3:1 gear ratio.

“The ChatterBait was definitely the star of the day,” said Clausen. “We probably both could have guessed that before we got out here this morning, but we had a ton of rods on the deck and pretty much tried them all in the first period. That didn’t go very well. The ‘keep it simple strategy’ is pretty dang good for fishing."

“We’d basically stop getting bites every time we’d put the ChatterBait down,” Hunter said, laughing. “We’re excited to move on to the Knockout Round in a couple days. Not sure where we’re going, but I’m hoping for some smallmouth. The largemouth are fun, but I’m ready for some brown fish.”

Team Star Tron's Lane and Wall finished second despite a hard-charge from Team Kubota (Connell/Wheeler) that threatened to knock them out in the last few minutes of the day.

“As a team, we spent the day fishing our high percentage areas,” said Lane. “We fished all over today, and just tried to stay where the fish were biting, and fish slower. When we were around the fish, we just tried to mix it up – flipping, throwing a dropshot rig, spinnerbait, crankbait, bladed jig – you name it, we were doing it today.”

Lane said the duo had found four areas as they moved through the day, and just agreed that they would keep hitting those areas.

“All day long we got bit when we made moves, changed baits, and everything just felt very fluid today,” said Wall. “I felt like we made good, fluid decisions.

Lane said the changing conditions throughout the day dictated a lot of those decisions.

“It started off a little windy and cloudy, but then it got slick calm and hot,” Lane said. “Once that happened, we went back through and dropped a big weight on some of these mats where the shade is on the walls. We weren’t just throwing at the walls, we were throwing out to the little corner of the walls, where the shade was, and that really paid off for us.

“We had such a fun day,” Lane continued. “We’d never been in the boat together, but Jacob and I worked so well together. We can't wait to get back out on the water for the Knockout Round.”

Here are the results from Tuesday's comeptition:

1st: Team Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff & Pouches, 36 bass, 62-1
Luke Clausen, Spokane, Wash., 23 bass, 38-8
John Hunter, Shelbyville, Ky., 13 bass, 23-9

2nd: Team Star Tron, 35 bass, 57-6
Bobby Lane, Lakeland, Fla., 23 bass, 37-9
Jacob Wall, New Hope, Ala., 12 bass, 19-13

Eliminated

3rd: Team Kubota, 28 bass, 51-14
Dustin Connell, Clanton, Ala., 14 bass, 29-5
Jacob Wheeler, Harrison, Tenn., 14 bass, 22-9

4th: Team Knighten, 32 bass, 50-2
Wesley Strader, Spring City, Tenn., 16 bass, 27-10
Scott Suggs, Alexander, Ark., 16 bass, 22-8

Complete results from throughout the week can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Connell caught the Berkley Big Bass of the day – a largemouth weighing 4-15.

The MLFNOW! broadcast team of Chad McKee and J.T. Kenney breaks down the extended action live every day of competition from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET. MLFNOW! is livestreamed on MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app and Rumble.