The 8th annual Big Bass Tour event wrapped up on Chickamauga Lake earlier this week. Unlike traditional bass fishing tournaments, where anglers weigh in five bass at the end of the day, the Big Bass Tour provides amateur anglers from all skill levels the opportunity to win multiple cash payouts each day during the hourly weigh-ins. Each of the three tournament days features seven hourly weigh-ins that pay ten cash payouts each hour. That means each three-day event offers a total of 210 hourly cash payouts with a total of $150,000 in prizes and payouts.

Banks Shaw from Harrison, Tenn. was this year's overall "Big Bass" winner. His 10.06-pound bass won Shaw a fully outfitted 2023 NITRO Z18 with a Mercury 150L Pro XS outboard.

Following the recent fish kill on Chickamauga Lake, primarily among channel catfish, many anglers and lake users have expressed concerns about the health of the lake. Some anglers reported dead largemouth bass they feared might be associated with the fish kill.

In cooperation with Tennessee tourism officials, Big Bass Tour event officials compiled and shared historical data on the tournament's catch for the last three years. Tournament Organizer Mark Jones said, "Chickamauga is fine, in our opinion, and we don’t see anything out of the ordinary. We’ve hosted events on the lake for 8 years now and all of the datapoints essentially remain the same. I’ll also mention, because of our format (big bass), we see the best sampling of large fish from the entirety of the Chickamauga fishery."

Jones reports that over the three-day 2023 tournament, anglers weighed in a total of 419 bass with an average weight of 4.03 pounds.

Jones said, "This is well in line with 2022 and 2021, where we had 416 bass with an average of 4.17-pounds and 388 bass with an average of 4.18-pounds respectively.

"Our Top 10 bass were 10.06, 10.05, 9.69, 9.13, 9.07, 8.49. 8.13, 7.75, 7.68 and 7.36 respectively. There is nothing in our data that points to any significant decline in the quality of the bass population or fishing in general," added Jones. “Coming into the event, we were notified of social media posts indicating that there was a potential issue, so we made sure that our fishcare team paid special attention to check for any issues or signs of impact to the bass population prior to releasing them back into Chickamauga Lake each day and we are happy to report we didn’t find a single bass with anything out of the ordinary.” said Jones.

Visit their website to learn more about future Big Bass Tour events, sponsored by Bass Pro Shops/Cabela's.