Big Crappie Bash Recap: Winners pinpoint ‘right fish’
By Greg McCain
One of the beauties of fishing in the spring, crappie can be found at various stages of the spawn until late in the season.
That idea was an important consideration for competitors in the 5th annual ACC Crappie Stix/Crappie Cove Big Crappie Bash. They uncovered that exact scenario Saturday (April 26) on Watts Bar Lake in east Tennessee. The winners of the Frogg Toggs Big Fish prize, Joel Nash and Skeeter Hayes, managed to pinpoint the right pre-spawn crappie and topped the largest-ever field of 84 boats.
Anglers representing 12 states – from as far away as Wisconsin – fished the tournament. The winning white crappie weighed 2.27 lbs.
Joel and Skeeter, both from Sparta, TN, pocketed $6,800 for their efforts. The overall big fish paid $5,000 with the remaining $1,800 coming from winning one of the bonus hours. ATX Lures sponsored an extra $300 in the 3rd and 7th hours on top of the regular $1,500 hourly payout.
The winners managed to hold off last year’s overall top team, Jason Grimes and LaRue Isom, who weighed the second-biggest crappie and claimed hourly prizes in both the 1st and 8th hours.
The tournament was held for the 4th straight year out of Terrace View Marina on the Tennessee Valley Authority reservoir. In addition to ACC Crappie Stix, Crappie Cove, Frogg Toggs, and ATX Lures, other sponsors were Thump Gel, Bayou Classic Fryers, and 303 Marine Products.
Almost all of the field reported that the bigger fish on the late April date were found from mid-lake down to the Watts Bar Dam. Upstream from Terrance View, most of the crappie had already finished the spawning process. Joel and Skeeter took advantage of that knowledge and made about a 10-minute run toward the dam after first stopping on a spot near the takeoff area. The early bite was highlighted by a 1.87 crappie that fell just shy of winning the 2nd-hour prize.
“All the crappie that I caught (pre-fishing) Friday, up the lake and in the middle of the lake, were all spawned out,” Joel said. “You could still catch some good fish, but the chance to catch a bigger one depended on finding those pre-spawn fish. That’s what you have to have in this tournament, just one.”
Skeeter, forced to endure jury duty on Friday, said they eventually got to an area with some roaming fish around scattered brush.
“There were a lot of smaller fish around the brush with 3 or 4 bigger ones just roaming around,” he said.
Joel cast a Crappie Reaper Ripper plastic (made by Chad and Ashley Drake of Kentucky) on a Rougarou 1/8-oz. head and first caught a 1.95 crappie and then coaxed the big fish to bite. Joel also credited another sponsor, Snider Marine, for making a quality transducer pole that helped target the big fish.
“It acted like those fish on Friday,” Joel said. “They were aggressive and would come from 5 or 6 feet away to get the bait. It was all I could do to reel fast enough to get it away from them. The big fish (Saturday) hit exactly the same way. It bit the way it was supposed to.”
With 2 good fish in the livewell by noon, Joel and Skeeter spent some time deciding when to weigh in. Part of the decision-making in a big-fish event is determining the most strategic time to take a fish to the scales.
“We kinda argued about it for about 30 minutes,” Skeeter said. “We were running into a situation where I was afraid we were going to have more fish to weigh than hours.”
They made the decision to weigh the 1.95 at the end of the 6th hour and the big fish in the bonus 7th hour. The 1.95 fish was beaten out by a 2.09 crappie weighed by Rusty Proffitt and Jamie Mitchell. The 2.27 topped the 7th-hour leaderboard and held on for the overall prize.
Skeeter labeled the process “stressful but fun.”
“It actually wasn’t all that much fun there for a couple of hours figuring out what to do,” he said.
The team, who had won an hourly prize in 2022, fished for the 5th straight year in the event. They said the Big Crappie Bash is one of the highlights of their year. They fish regularly with the East Tennessee Crappie Club.
“It’s a great tournament, a fun tournament,” Joel said. “We had buddies who came from Kentucky to fish it for the first time, and they are going back and talk their friends into fishing next year. It just keeps getting bigger and better.”
Added Skeeter, “I love the format. I like it because anybody can win. Guys who just show up to fish this tournament have just as much chance to win as anybody else.”
Mark your calendar for the 6th annual Big Crappie Bash. It has been booked for the same weekend (April 25, 2026).
“The tournament continues to grow as we are reaching more people in state and more anglers farther out of state,” said tournament director Matt Xenos. “The format of the event, increased pots, and additional sponsors have helped entice anglers to consider coming.”
Added Rusty, who won the first tournament in 2021, “This is the way crappie fishing is supposed to be. At the dinner Friday night, everybody was sitting around talking and enjoying each other’s company. It’s a special tournament.”
Other hourly winners:
Hour 1: Jason Grimes, LaRue Isom, 2.19
Jason and LaRue, from the Knoxville, TN, area, almost pulled off a repeat. Their 2.19 crappie won the 1st hour and held the top spot for most of the day. “We caught it in the first 30 minutes down toward the dam,” Jason said. He caught the fish on a Slab Happy 2.8 swimbait (monkey milk) on a 3/16th head fooled the fish.
Hour 2: Mason Swarens, Noah Swarens, 1.89
Mason said, “We caught our fish by casting Crappie Magnet baits paired with 1/16-oz. Double Cross heads. We fished creeks on the south end of the lake. Overall, the fishing was great on Saturday, and the fish bit very well all day.” The Swarens fished their first tournament, coming from Depauw, IN.
Hour 3: Jeff & Graham Webber, Cody Graves, 1.97
“First of all, we had a great time and really appreciate all the work that goes in to putting together this tournament,” said Jeff, who is from Oak Ridge, TN. He said they caught fish up to 3 lbs. while pre-fishing. “The game plan fell apart on tournament day when the fish we were targeting had moved out of the area,” he said. “We decided that a change of course was necessary and switched to what I like to call “open-water warfare” using Keitech swimbaits. We caught fish consistently throughout the day and came home with plenty of fish for the freezer, a few new ACC rods, and a pocket full of money.”
Hour 4: Allen Kelly, Larry Jones, 1.97
The veteran Watts Bar team – Allen owns a home on the lake not far from Terrance View and lives in Oak Ridge, TN – used their local knowledge to claim an hourly prize. “We fished the mid-lake for the most part,” Allen said. They cast Bobby Garland plastics to secure their best catches. “We fished down toward the dam some,” Allen said, who added that he had fished Watts Bar since the 70s.
Hour 5: Josh Rewis and Kagan Kovar, 1.97
The team from Villa Rica, GA, fished their first Big Crappie Bash, having heard about the tournament from friends. Kagan caught their hourly winner on a custom hair jig (white head, yellow and black body). “We stumbled across a couple of big fish Friday evening,” Josh said. “Kagan pitched a jig, and the fish did what a big crappie was supposed to do. We knew we had a decent fish and got back with 3 or 4 minutes left for that weigh-in. We love the tournament format. We fish several tournaments a year (on South Carolina and Georgia trails), and this gives more than one person the opportunity to win.”
Hour 6: Rusty Proffitt, Jamie Mitchell, 2.09
“Most of the fish had spawned out, so we moved down the lake,” said Rusty, who is from Morristown, TN. “We started catching fewer fish than we were up the river but better ones. We caught the bigger crappie on deep brush, 25 to 40 feet, on swimbaits. It wasn’t on fire down the lake, but we were casting to them to them and catching some 1.8s and 1.9s. We just couldn’t find many of those bigger 2s.”
Hour 8: Jason Grimes, LaRue Isom, 2.08
The team bookended their early hourly winner by capturing the final hour. LaRue did the honors with a Slab Happy swimbait (cajun cricket). Jason said most of their fish were free roaming in open water. They pitched or cast to them with 7-foot ACC rods.