Falls Lake has a well-deserved reputation for producing numbers of quality largemouths, including 8-pound and larger bass, so expectations are high for anglers in the Walmart BFL Piedmont Division tournament there Saturday.

So high that even FLW Outdoors, which conducts the BFL series, is predicting it will take a five-fish limit at about 23 pounds to win it.

Veteran tournament angler Wally Szuba, who is second in the Piedmont Division standings going into the tournament, agrees, but said it might even take more.

“Falls has some tremendous fish in it. I heard of a guy catching one over 9 pounds while practicing for a team tournament on the lake Saturday. It took 28 pounds to win that tournament with a five-fish limit, but it dropped off pretty quick after that, down to 22 pounds and then into the teens. But the last place they paid was for 15 1/2 pounds, a good 3-pound average.”

Szuba said he believes in an individual angler tournament like Saturday’s BFL it could possibly take 25 pounds to win, with the last angler to get a check having to weigh in around 13 or 14 pounds.

“But the non-boaters will have just as much an advantage fishing that deep. You could see a non- boater come in with 20 pounds easily,” he said.

Some of the larger bass likely will be caught in the area around the Ledge Rock launch site off the traditional producing ledges there, Szuba said, but he believes the better limits will come off the ledges downriver.

“There will be some good fish caught out on the ledges out of Ledge Rock – 5 to 7, maybe 8 pounds –

but I don’t think you can fill out of a limit of fish over 4 pounds each because they get beat up so bad out on those ledges. They’ve seen every kind of big crankbait come by, all the big worms and jigs. You might fish a Shakey head with a 4-inch trick worm, not a 5- or 6-inch worm because they are just not going to chase the bigger baits.”

Some anglers might also try their luck up the lake beyond the I-85 bridge, but those will probably be local guys who have intimate knowledge of the waters up there, Szuba said.

“With this water level if you don’t know the channel you don’t need to be running it,” he said. “And I don’t think they are going to be able to get more than 13 to 15 pounds up there. You might catch a couple of decent fish there, but the rest will be 2-pounders.”

That leaves the river channel down the lake, he said.

“All the bigger fish will be caught on the ledges down the river, fishing rock and boulders,” he said.

Although he lives in Cary, N.C., just a short 45-minute drive from Falls, Szuba has not fished the lake competitively in four or five years because most of the tournaments there are team tournaments and he is concentrating on individual angler tournaments like the BFLs.

“I have a friend who has shown me a couple of hotspots downriver,” he said. “I am not that optimistic, but I could get lucky and catch a 6- or 7-pounder. I might have to stay in a 100-yard strip for two to three hours to get a good bite over five pounds. You have to keep beating that one stump to make a fish so aggravated it will take a swipe at your bait. If I’m lucky, I might get five quality bites Saturday.”

The top 40 boaters and co-anglers from each division qualify for a regional tournament and are competing to finish in the top six, which then qualifies them for one of the longest-running championships in all of competitive bass fishing – the Walmart BFL All-American. Top winners in the BFL can move up to the Rayovac FLW Series or even the Walmart FLW Tour.

 

Walmart BFL Piedmont Division

Sat, Jul 19, 2014

Falls Lake

Ledge Rock

www.flwoutdoors.com