Clifford Pirch holds up two of the five bass he caught in Chickamauga Lake to win $125,000 as the champion of the 2011 FLW Tour tournament. The event, which returns June 27-30, will operate from the Dayton Boat Dock in Rhea County, Tenn.A major bass tournament is returning to Chickamauga Lake this June, and the Walmart FLW Tour anglers seem as excited about it as area businesses.
The June 27-30 event will operate from the Dayton Boat Dock in Rhea County, Tenn., and the nearly 400 anglers will arrive the previous Sunday. They are expected to stay in motels and campgrounds not only in Dayton but as far as Spring City in one direction and to Hixson and perhaps Chattanooga in the other, with Cleveland also possibly catching some of their business.
And that’s significant. Walmart pro Wesley Strader, of Spring City, says he usually travels by camper but still spends “a minimum” of $1,500 for a week at a tournament site – “and sometimes a lot more than that, depending on gas prices and where we go.”
The FLW big boys last visited Lake Chickamauga in April 2011.
“It’s more about the lake than the area,” Strader says. “This lake is a special kind of place. It’s kind of overlooked by a lot of the country, but it’s one of the best fisheries.”