Wheeler Lake is located on the Northern part of Alabama with the Tennessee River flowing through it. This would be my first time competing on this body of water, but I felt right at home with this river system and the stained water. When we arrived for the first day of practice a major cold front came through creating some snow in the area. Water temperatures still remained in the upper 50's to low 60's.  The event was to take off from Ingalls Harbor which is located about in the middle of the lake. I had chosen to basically concentrate from that area up river to the dam. During practice I had spent some time in the creeks but wasn't able to find many fish there. On the main river there was good current and I decided to concentrate more on that and the eddies it created. In these areas I was throwing a medium diving crankbait and also a 5 inch swimbait. There was all three species of bass using these areas, but most of the time it was a spotted bass or smallmouth relating to the current. There was some shallow wood I was working near creek mouths and this would produce my largemouth bites. I had a good practice and I felt confident about how I was approaching the event. Day one of the event started a little slow but by afternoon I had generated a few key bites and caught 19-01 which had me sitting in 18th place for the first day.  The second day I basically ran the same water and patterns and had another good day with a 16-02 and moved up one place for the championship round. Both the first and second day of the event there was good current moving down the river which really positioned the fish and had them feeding well. On the championship day of the event they really cut the current down and it dramatically effected the bite. I was able to get bite but only smaller fish for the day and 6-14 which had me fall to 39th place for the event. Still a really good event and was satisfied with the outcome for my first tournament there and all the local pros that competed in it.