Breaking down Connell’s big-bass bonanza on Lake Waco

Mitchell Forde • Bass Pro Tour

WACO, Texas — Zack Birge ran away with the win at Champion Teamwear Stage 3 Presented by MillerTech by boating scorable bass at a rate no one could match.

Sure, Birge caught some nice ones during the Championship Round on Lake Waco, including a pair of 5-pounders. But the quantity he pulled from his backwater honey hole lapped the field. He landed 27 scorable bass, while no one else had more than 15.

Mercury pro Dustin Connell, on the other hand, figured out the quality better than anyone else. Connell finished the event in third and never really challenged Birge for the top spot on SCORETRACKER®. Still, he put together a special two days on Lake Waco, catching four bass over 8 pounds between the Knockout and Championship Rounds – something the seven-time Bass Pro Tour winner had never done before at a tournament.

“When we went to Lake Fork back in ‘22, I caught two 10s that week,” Connell said. “But it wasn’t like several 8-pounders. Shoot, I lost another 8-pounder later that (final) day. That was the best couple days of big fish that I’ve seen.”

During the Knockout Round, Connell caught an 8-0 and an 8-8. The following day, he landed an 8-5 and a 9-1. Those were the four biggest bass caught by the entire field during the event. As he noted, he also hooked and lost another bass that he thinks would have topped 8 pounds. His five biggest bass during the Championship Round still weighed a combined 31-5.

Afterward, the Mercury pro shed some light on how he managed to dial in the big-bass bite so much better than everyone else.

Practice gamble pays off

Connell now sits atop the standings to qualify for Heavy Hitters in 2027. Photo by Tyler Brinks
One of the unique challenges posed by Stage 3 was the fact that anglers had to choose how to split up their three days of official practice between Lakes Whitney (which hosted the two-day Qualifying Round) and Waco. With so few anglers having history on the fisheries, quite a few elected to spend the entire practice period on Whitney. Connell devoted the third day to Waco, which he said was more time than most of his competitors spent on the lake.

“I told myself, ‘You can get dialed in on Whitney as much as you want; the tournament is going to get won on Waco,’” he said. “So, I was like, I’ve got to go over there.”

During that day of practice, he started to put the puzzle pieces together. He realized that good numbers of bass were on spawning beds, but they weren’t everywhere. He keyed on two specific zones that had high concentrations of spawners.

“I knew they were spawning, and I just kind of knew the depth they were spawning in, and I knew the areas that were going to be the best, and I had two little zones that I liked,” Connell explained.

Connell’s practice gamble almost backfired. After Day 1 on Whitney, he found himself in 33rd place. But he rallied with the second-best Day 2 of anyone in the field to climb to 11th, well above the Lucas Oil Cut Line.

He started slow again during the Knockout Round, boating only one scorable bass in Period 1. He picked up the pace with four scorables during Period 2, including his first 8-pounder, which he caught flipping a Rapala CrushCity Bronco Bug to shallow wood. Then, when he turned on his forward-facing sonar for Period 3, he added five more bass for 22-5, advancing to Championship Sunday and zeroing in on the pattern he’d ride for the rest of the event.

“They were just a little bit deeper spawners,” he said. “I caught some up shallower. I mean, I flipped up an 8-pounder. But for the most part, I was trying to target a little bit off the bank.”

Using his Lowrance ActiveTarget helped Connell spot those deeper bed fish and make precise presentations to them. His 8-8 and 8-5 both came while he was using forward-facing sonar. However, it wasn’t mandatory to generate big bites. Connell figured out that the bigger bass were bedding near isolated pieces of wood. So, when his lock box was on, he simply looked for likely pieces of cover, pitched to them and tried to envision an interaction between a bedding bass and his bait.

“Without (forward-facing sonar), I just went really, really slow and just looked for visual targets to pitch at that they might be spawning on,” he said. “Once I got my bait in there, I just imagined one looking at it.”

‘A dang rodeo’

Despite fishing around lots of wood, Connell landed three of his four bass over 8 pounds on spinning tackle. Photo by Tyler Brinks
Normally, big Texas bass call for stout rods and heavy line. But Connell caught three of his four giants on spinning tackle. A CrushCity Janitor worm – either on a Neko rig, a shaky head or a drop-shot – accounted for most of his bass during the event, including the 9-1.

Connell said fighting those big fish around so much wood cover was the biggest challenge he faced on Waco. That wasn’t just a problem for him; MLFNOW! viewers saw multiple anglers each day lose fish that wrapped up their line or broke them off in wood. While Connell would have loved to land that last 8-pounder of the Championship Round (which would have boosted him to second place), putting four of five in the boat was solid, all things considered.

“When you hooked into one of them, it was a dang rodeo,” he said.

The biggest key was getting the fish away from the cover and into open water as quickly as possible. To do that, Connell used a spinning rod with some backbone and beefed up his leader to either 15- or 17-pound Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon.

“The rod I was using was a 13 Fishing Myth spinning rod, and it was a 7-1 medium, but it’s got some backbone to it,” he said. “I can handle them big fish with that rod. And I was using 18-pound PEX8 Seaguar braid, and I upped my leader line to 17 and 15. I just upped that leader line because I knew I was going to be around some stuff.

“If they get you wrapped around a stump or some brush or something, you’re toast. The key is getting them out of that stuff and keeping them away from it. So, you had to really dog them whenever you got them hooked up.”

Connell’s big bass bite earned him an extra $2,000 in Berkley Big Bass cash. More important, it also put him atop the standings to qualify for Heavy Hitters 2027. Qualification is determined by the biggest bass caught by each angler at every regular-season BPT event.

Connell barely missed out on earning a spot in Heavy Hitters 2026, which will take place on Florida’s Orange Lake May 16-21. He made it a goal to leave Stage 3 with a key Heavy Hitters fish. Catching four of them was icing on the cake of a great event.

“I kind of had some tough luck last year,” he said. “I lost two or three really big fish that would have easily put me in (Heavy Hitters). I left Chickamauga last year with like a 3-10, and I had one over 6 hooked up that got me hung up on a buoy, and there wasn’t nothing I could do. It just broke me off.

“But yeah, I mean, I thought an 8-8 was going to be good. But I ended up catching that 9, so that pushed me over the top really good.”

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