BY DAVE LINK
Hudson Mynatt and Wilson Shepherd of the Karns High Fishing Team have a hot streak going at Douglas Lake – and it’s not even their home lake.
They have won their last two tournaments at Douglas, most recently clinching the Bass Anglers Invitational Trail (BAIT) Classic on May 23 in Dandridge.
And the methods Shepherd and Mynatt went about winning the two Douglas events were far different.
Regardless, the angling duo for the Karns Fishing Team – now finishing their first season of competition together – are the BAIT Team of the Year, and they plan on teaming up again in 2026-27.
“We had a good year this year, so we’re excited for next year,” said Mynatt, a rising junior at Karns. “It’s going to be another good year, I hope.”
Shepherd will be a senior next year at Maryville High, which doesn’t have a fishing team. He used to fish for the Alcoa Fishing Team, which disbanded after the 2024-25 season when coach J.J. LaRue resigned following the graduation of his son, Walker, from Alcoa High.
J.J. LaRue got Shepherd connected with Mynatt, and bingo. A winning team.
Shepherd and Mynatt are looking forward to one more tournament this summer – the Bassmaster High School National Championship — and then next season.
“It should be a good year,” Shepherd said. “It should be fun.”
Like winning twice at Douglas Lake this year.
Here’s how Mynatt and Shepherd did it:
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DIFFERENT STRATEGIES
Shepherd and Mynatt won the March 21 tournament on Douglas Lake, which was one of five stops on the BAIT Trail, including the May 23 BAIT Classic.
In the March event, the Karns duo won with the five-bass limit weighing 13.55 pounds, including a 4.16-pounder caught by Mynatt. Mac Fritts and Cayden Wright of Campbell County were second (five bass, 13.07 pounds).
In the May 23 BAIT Classic, the format changed to a three-bass limit, which Shepherd and Mynatt reached with the winning weight of 9.15 pounds. Their biggest bass weighed about 3.30 pounds. Only the top 25 high school teams and the top five junior teams from the BAIT circuit qualified for the Classic.
Shepherd and Mynatt caught most of their bass in the March event fishing shallow water while using imitation minnows — then crank baits later in the day.
“The one we won in March,” Mynatt said, “we were up on the bank most of the time, not using livescope as much, but in this tournament, we were offshore most of the day. That’s how we caught two of the three keepers, so it was a whole new style of fishing compared to March.”
Shepherd said they watched the May 8-10 Major League Fishing (MLF) Tackle Warehouse pro tournament on Douglas Lake and knew the strategy for their tournament later in the month would change.
“That pro tournament was there a couple of weeks ago,” Mynatt said, “so we kind of got an idea that they were out deep and offshore from that tournament, and every summer, those fish go offshore, so we had an idea of what we needed to do to be successful, and during practice, we kind of just dialed that in.”
Mynatt said practices have been crucial to their successes on Douglas Lake. They have two wins and an eighth-place finish at Douglas this school year.
“I feel like every practice we have there,” Mynatt said, “we’ve always figured out the fish, and we’ve been able to find better size fish there than most other people have been able to find, so that’s helped a lot because there’s a lot of those 1- to 2-pounders, and we found some 3-pounders, and we just like the style of fishing, and how it fishes there.
“This past weekend, we were fishing out deep, like 20, 25 feet deep, fishing for schools offshore, and we like fishing like that.”
With Mynatt’s father Justin as boat captain, Hudson and Shepherd had their three keepers early in the morning and landed about 35 fish during the day using crank baits, jigs, and imitation minnows.
“We were kind of catching fish all day,” Mynatt said.
Mynatt caught the 3.10-pounder at about noon, when he and Shepherd really found the fish.
“We got on this big school out offshore,” Shepherd said. “You could catch one every cast, and Hudson was fortunate enough to run across a pretty good one, and we got it in the boat with some other pretty good ones. I’d say it was around 11 to noon, not real early.
“We stacked up a limit early in the morning and went out to that school and caught a good bag out of that school.”
TIGHT FINISH
When they returned for weigh-ins, Shepherd and Mynatt quizzed some of the competition about their catches but were tight-lipped about what they’d caught.
Shepherd and Mynatt earned a $1,000 paycheck for winning and a $200 bonus from Hearthside Bank for Team of the Year.
They won by less than a pound over second-place teammates Titus Loveday and Logan Williams of Karns Fishing (three bass, 8.54 pounds, $600), while Lakeway Christian’s Landon Hickey and Spencer Brown were third (three bass, 8.13 pounds, $450) and Smoky Mountain Fishing’s Hoyt Evans and Joey Russell were fourth (three bass, 8.00 pounds, $300).
“Every tournament on Douglas, the weights are really tight,” Shepherd said. “Anybody could win it, and I know a bunch of my buddies were fishing the Classic. I knew we had a chance because we had a pretty good bag for Dougas, but the weights are always so tight.”
Briley Wolfe (second from left) with Thomas Burns of the Smoky Mountain Fishing Team. Sunny DeFoe (far left) and Ott DeFoe (right right) are BAIT Organizers.
In the juniors’ division, Thomas Burns and Briley Wolfe of Smoky Mountain Fishing were first (three bass, 8.16 pounds, $600), ahead of Brody Bible and Sawyer Mynatt of Karns Fishing (three bass, 7.83 pounds, $250) and third-place Keaton Lytle and Cody Lytle of Smoky Mountain Fishing (three bass, 6.99 pounds, $200).
Bible and Mynatt won the BAIT Team of the Year for the juniors’ division and got a $200 bonus from Hearthside Bank.
Shepherd and Mynatt hope to end the season with a top finish in the Bassmaster Nationals at Kentucky Lake on July 30-August 1.
They were on the same lake early in this school year, caught some fish, but didn’t place.
“It was our first tournament together,” Mynatt said. “I think me and Hudson know how to fish together now. We’re comfortable in the boat together.
“It’s probably going to take a different style of fishing to do good in this tournament, but I think we’ve come a long way in the past year where we can have a shot at doing really well.”