MARBURY, Md. (Sept. 16, 2024) – Boater Alex Johnson of Milltown, New Jersey, caught a five-bass limit weighing 18 pounds, 12 ounces, Saturday to win the MLF Bass Fishing League (BFL) tournament on the Potomac River. The tournament was the fourth event of the season for the BFL Northeast Division. Johnson earned $3,383 for his victory. This tournament was originally scheduled for Lake Oneida earlier this season but was postponed due to unsafe boating conditions and later rescheduled for Saturday on the Potomac. Northeast Division anglers clashed again on Sunday in a one-day Super Tournament on the Potomac River to conclude their season.
To get the win in Saturday’s event, Johnson relied primarily on a homemade black-and-blue ball-head jig. Catching the Berkley Big Bass of the day – a 5 1/2-pounder that earned him $355 – along with a pair of 4-pounders boosted him to the top of the standings.
“It was not a total slugfest,” he said. “I caught 15 fish probably. I stayed in one area for most of the day, for probably four or five hours, but then the back half of the day I started running around a little bit and kind of chasing the tide. The water had totally stopped moving where I was. It was wind against tide today, so it kind of held the water up and slacked off a bit.”
Johnson’s primary area was a creek he located during practice on Friday. He targeted four key stretches, hitting each one twice and flipping a “little bit of a mix” of targets.
“I was trying to concentrate on hard cover,” he said. “But the hard cover needed to have grass around it. It couldn’t just be like a random bank of laydowns. It had to be hard cover within a grass bed.”
Johnson, who owns a commercial swimming pool business with his college roommate, caught that big kicker early in the morning. He said it was entirely unexpected – a nice surprise on tournament day – and helped him accumulate about 16 pounds in the first three hours of competition. When he left his starting creek in the afternoon, he ran around to areas where he could find some moving water. That changeup produced the key 4-pounder that sealed his victory.
“I just tried to keep the trolling motor moving and take as many casts as I could,” he added. “I was trying to pick everything apart. I was flipping every 5 feet.”
The top 11 boaters finished the tournament:
1st: Alex Johnson, Milltown, N.J., five bass, 18-12, $3,383
2nd: Todd Langford, Great Falls, Va., five bass, 16-4, $2,014 (includes $500 Phoenix MLF Contingency Bonus)
3rd: Stacey Craft, Dunkirk, Md., five bass, 14-4, $1,008
4th: Fred Aldridge, Brandy Station, Va., five bass, 13-10, $707
5th: Connor MacDougall, Cape Coral, Fla., five bass, 12-15, $606
6th: Robert Grike, Dumfries, Va., five bass, 12-14, $555
7th: Jeffrey Davis, Wendell, N.C., five bass, 12-13, $479
7th: Logan Kaplon, Rural Valley, Pa., five bass, 12-13, $479
9th: Joe Zombek II, Scranton, Pa., five bass, 12-12, $829
10th: William Kronander, Brownsville, Pa., five bass, 12-10, $335
10th: John Duarte, Middle River, Md., five bass, 12-10, $335
Complete results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Lenny Baird of Stafford, Virginia, won the co-angler division and $2,064 Saturday, after bringing five bass to the scale that totaled 14 pounds, 13 ounces.
The top 10 co-anglers finished:
1st: Lenny Baird, Stafford, Va., five bass, 14-13, $2,064
2nd: Matt Hummel, Dillsburg, Pa., four bass, 12-15, $934
3rd: Robert Wedding, Welcome, Md., five bass, 12-7, $505
4th: Clarence Dove, Linthicum Heights, Md., five bass, 12-5, $353
5th: Hunter Navari, Colchester, Vt., five bass, 11-4, $303
6th: Melvin Smitson, Baltimore, Md., five bass, 10-9, $278
7th: Richard Jordan, Muncy Valley, Pa., five bass, 10-2, $252
8th: Logan Bloomfield, East Berlin, Pa., five bass, 10-0, $227
9th: Troy Mills, Lewistown, Pa., five bass, 9-14, $202
10th: Andrew Hostler, Tyrone, Pa., five bass, 9-9, $177
Matt Hummel of Dillsburg, Pennsylvania, earned the Berkley Big Bass co-angler award of $177, catching a bass that weighed in at 5 pounds, 13 ounces – the largest co-angler catch of the day.
After Saturday’s tournament, Daniel Gray of Butler, Pennsylvania, held the lead in the Fishing Clash Northeast Division Angler of the Year race with 937 points, while Lenny Baird of Stafford, Virginia, led the Fishing Clash Northeast Division Co-angler of the Year race with 972 points.
https://dev.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_123/bfl-potomac-2091624.html
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