With all the recent shakeups in professional bass fishing, 2025 promises to be a wild ride. Each league adopted their own somewhat unique set of rules for the new season, which should give spectators something different to tune into. But don’t take my word for it, find out for yourself. Below is the schedule and regularly updated results for each league, so you can keep tabs on each stop on the following tours:
- National Professional Fishing League
- Bassmasters Elite Series,
- MLF Bass Pro Tour
2025 National Professional Fishing League Tour Schedule and Results
For 2025, the NPFL will hold six qualifying tournaments during which 118 anglers will compete for three days. Each event has a $100,000 winner’s purse with 40 payouts per event. There is a $20,000 Progressive Angler of the Year award that comes with paid entry fees for the 2026 season for the winner.
There will be a $5,200 entry fee per event; there is no entry fee for the Championship for the Top 42 in Progressive Angler of the Year Points along with season champions and returning champion and a $100,000 first-place prize. The Championship has a $250,000 total purse with payouts to all qualifiers.
NPFL 2025 Schedule
Stop 1: Santee Cooper
Clarendon County, South Carolina
March 6 – 8
Launch and Weigh-In: John C. Land III Landing
RESULTS
| Place | Angler | Total Weight |
| 1st | Jason Christie | 82 pounds, 12 ounces |
| 2nd | Corey Casey | 73-0 |
| 3rd | Caleb Kuphall | 73-0 |
| 4th | Bill Lowen | 71-12 |
Coming into the Strike King NPFL Stop One at Santee Cooper Lakes, estimates suggested that 75 pounds would be enough to claim victory. But Santee Cooper—and Lakes Marion and Moultrie—had other plans, delivering big bass throughout the event. Despite changing temperatures and high winds, Oklahoma’s Jason Christie set a new NPFL three-day weight record of 82 pounds, 12 ounces, surging from sixth place after Day Two to earn his first NPFL Shield and the $100,000 prize.
As the top ten lined up to weigh in, Caleb Kuphall briefly set a new NPFL three-day total weight record, but his time at the top was short-lived. Christie surged ahead with a massive 32-pound, 5-ounce bag on the final day, claiming the hot seat. The last angler to weigh in, Day Two leader Corey Casey, faced his toughest day of the tournament, managing just 15 pounds, 5 ounces. Despite tying Kuphall in total weight, Casey finished second due to the tiebreaker.
With several giants landed over three days, Harmon Davis claimed Big Bass honors with a 10-pound, 9-ounce lunker caught on Day One. Twenty-three anglers cracked the 20-pound mark on Championship Sunday, including North Carolina’s Josh Hooks, who jumped to 40th place with his biggest bag of the week to secure the final check.
Two “dirty thirty” bags were all Jason Christie needed to erase a slow Day Two and charge to victory. The Oklahoma pro stuck to his strengths, locking in a BOOYAH Covert Spinnerbait and going to work on Santee Cooper. He kicked off the tournament with 31 pounds, 6 ounces on Day One, followed by 19 pounds, 1 ounce on Day Two, before surging back to the top with a dominant 32-pound, 5-ounce bag on Sunday—the biggest limit of the day.
All week, Christie focused on cypress trees in Lake Marion, in a well-known area referred to as “The Brickyard.” Searching for the coldest water temperatures he could find, he keyed in on isolated trees in 2 to 5 feet of water.
“Throughout practice and during the tournament, I looked for the coolest water in the area because I didn’t want my fish to leave and try to spawn,” said Christie. “Some parts of the lake were further along, but where I was focusing, the cooler water kept them positioned where I could catch them.”
Fishing just north of Eutaw Springs, he slow-rolled a 1/2-ounce BOOYAH Covert Single Colorado Blade spinnerbait, rotating between chartreuse/white/blue and chartreuse/white.
“I opted to fish the NPFL this season because I wanted to fish more,” he said on stage. “When I’m back home in Oklahoma, I don’t fish a whole lot, so this keeps me focused and hungry. Anytime you can get a victory, it’s special. When you do this long enough, you never know when it’s going to be the last one.” —NPFL
Stop 2: Lake Norman
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
April 16 – 18
Launch and Weigh-In: Blythe Landing Park
Stop 3: Douglas Lake
Dandridge, Tennessee
May 22 – 24
Launch and Weigh-In: Dandridge Boat Ramp
Stop 4: Lake Eufaula
Eufaula, Oklahoma
June 18 – 20
Launch: Xtreme Cove Marina
Weigh-in: Nichols Point
Stop 5: St. Lawrence River
Massena, New York
July 9 – 11
Launch and Weigh-In: TBD
Stop 6: Logan Martin
Oxford, Alabama
Sept. 25 – 27
Launch: Lincoln’s Landing
Weigh-In: Oxford
2025 NPFL Championship: Lake Hartwell
Anderson, South Carolina
Date TBD – Fall, 2025
Launch and Weigh-In: Green Pond Landing
You can find the full NPFL 2025 Schedule and more info here.
Bassmaster Elite Series Schedule and Results
The 2025 Bassmaster Elite Series schedule features a slate of nine events held in seven states across the country on diverse bodies of water. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the tour trail. B.A.S.S. is increasing its contribution to payouts by $200,000 for 2025, which puts the total investment in payouts for the Elite Series and Bassmaster Classic at more than $4.1 million.
For more details on the 2025 Elite payouts, go here.
Bassmaster Elite Series 2025 Schedule
Stop 1: St. Johns River
Palatka, Florida
Feb. 20 – 23
RESULTS
| Place | Angler | Total Weight | Total Winnings |
| 1st | Bill Lowen | 73 pounds, 14 ounces | $101,000 |
| 2nd | Jay Przekurat | 73 – 10 | $20,000 |
| 3rd | Shane LeHew | 73 – 9 | $16,000 |
| 4th | John Garrett | 71 – 70 | $15,500 |
Twice in three days vegetation threatened to thwart Bill Lowen’s efforts. Both times persistence prevailed, as the Brookville, Indiana, pro tallied a four-day total of 73 pounds, 14 ounces to win the 2025 FXR Pro Fish Bassmaster Elite at St. Johns River.
Lowen, who won his first Elite title at Pickwick Lake in 2021, placed third on Day 1 with 21-5, then took over the lead with a second-round limit of 24-4. Sacking up 18-1 on Semifinal Saturday, Lowen held the top spot and entered Championship Sunday with a 5-4 lead over his nearest competitor.
Day 4 proved excruciatingly stingy, as Lowen struggled to coax fish that showed increasing sensitivity to the week’s severe cold front. He missed his limit by one keeper, but after anchoring an otherwise slim bag with a 7-pound, 7-ounce bass, Lowen turned in a final bag that went 10-4 and edged Jay Przekurat by 4 ounces.
“Today was weird; I lost my fifth fish three times, and one of them was a good one — maybe 4 or 5 pounds,” Lowen said. “I’ve always said, ‘When it’s your time, it’s your time and you can’t do anything wrong.’
“Even though I lost those fish, the good Lord was looking out for me. To say I’m a two-time Elite winner is unbelievable.”
Lowen caught all of his fish in Deep Creek, north of the tournament site, on the river’s east bank. He chose this artery because its 20-plus-foot depths offered greater stability than shallower areas. — Bassmaster
Stop 2: Lake Okeechobee
Okeechobee, Florida
Feb. 27 – March 2
RESULTS
| Place | Angler | Total Weight | Total Winnings |
| 1st | Brandon Palaniuk | 95 pounds, 4 ounces | $102,000 |
| 2nd | John Garrett | 79 – 7 | $21,500 |
| 3rd | Kyoya Fujita | 77 – 4 | $15,000 |
| 4th | Will Davis Jr. | 76 – 5 | $13,000 |
The gift that kept on giving finally stopped giving. Thankfully, that gift had given enough for Brandon Palaniuk to cruise across the finish line with a four-day total of 95 pounds, 4 ounces in the Champion Power Equipment Bassmaster Elite at Lake Okeechobee.
“It’s so crazy how things happen for a reason,” Palaniuk said of a slow day that tested his resolve. “This morning, me and (seventh-place Greg DiPalma) were fishing next to one another and I watched him lose several big ones. I hate that and I love it, at the same time.
“I don’t wish that upon anyone, but if he would have caught those, I would have been sweating bullets. I could not get a bite, and then I just kept sticking with it and picking off one here and there.”
Starting strong with a third-place, first-round limit of 23-7, the pro from Rathdrum, Idaho, moved into the Day 2 lead by sacking up 34-10 — his personal best and the heaviest bag weighed in a Bassmaster Elite at Lake Okeechobee. That feat sent Palaniuk into Day 3 with a 9-12 lead over Day 1 leader DiPalma.
On Semifinal Saturday, the fish shied from the previous days’ pressure. Enduring a few painful losses and a close call that sent a big crankbait colliding with his face (no serious injury), Palaniuk caught 23 pounds and expanded his lead to an 18-3 advantage over Day 1 leader Greg DiPalma.
Palaniuk, a two-time Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year, endured a stingy Day 4 and sealed the deal with a final-round limit of 14-3. Edging John Garrett by 15-13 — the fourth-largest winning margin in Bassmaster Elite history and Palaniuk’s second double-digit win (also his first Elite win at Bull Shoals, 2012) — he collected the $102,000 top prize and his sixth blue trophy.
Stop 3, Bassmaster Classic: Lake Ray Roberts
Fort Worth, Texas
March 21 – 23
2025 Bassmaster Classic Results
| Place | Angler | Total Weight | Total Winnings |
| 1st | Easton Fothergill | 76 pounds, 15 ounces | $308,000 |
| 2nd | Trent McKinney | 68 – 7 | $50,500 |
| 3rd | Lee Livesay | 66 – 10 | $40,000 |
| 4th | Hunter Shryock | 64 – 14 | $30,000 |
Nineteen months ago, Easton Fothergill was lying on a gurney in an Alabama hospital, awaiting surgery to remove an infected abscess from his brain.
Sunday afternoon, in front of thousands of fans at Dickies Arena, Fothergill stood tall as champion of the 2025 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour.
Fothergill, a 22-year-old native of Grand Rapids, Minn., finished the three-day event on Lake Ray Roberts with a total of 15 bass for 76 pounds, 15 ounces. It was the biggest winning weight in the 55-year history of the most prestigious fishing tournament in the world and was exactly 8 1/2 pounds more than the nearest competitor in the field of 56 anglers. Fothergill is also the second-youngest champion in Bassmaster Classic history (only Stanley Mitchell who won the 1981 Classic at 21 was younger.)
For most anglers, the Ray Scott Trophy and a $300,000 check are the biggest prizes to accompany a Classic victory. But for Fothergill, just being able to compete in the Classic was the ultimate prize. He said every feeling was heightened given his very real brush with mortality less than two years ago.
“It’s indescribable, the trajectory of my life since that first bad moment,” Fothergill said. “Everything has come true that I’ve ever wanted. It’s pretty crazy.”
Fothergill fished with confidence on Lake Ray Roberts, having to switch spots and techniques every day of the tournament. The versatility was necessary as Day 1 was extremely windy, Day 2 was calm, and Championship Sunday was somewhere in between. Rising temperatures started the spawn on Ray Roberts, too, and bass were scattered across the 23,950-acre reservoir as they began moving to shallow water.
As Fothergill would find out, that made getting bites difficult on Ray Roberts. The difference for him was he was able to get big bites every day, something most of his peers couldn’t do.
“Eighty percent of my catches this week came on a 3/32-ounce Neko rig (red bug),” he said. “I caught a couple on an off-white jerkbait, too, but I had confidence in the Neko in the (slightly stained) water.”
Fothergill’s most important catch of the week came mid-afternoon Championship Sunday and with only four bass in his livewell, at that. He spotted a fat bass suspended near a tree in the back of a slough. He went back to the Neko rig, casting delicately to not spook the bass. He said he “lost four baits to that tree within 10 minutes. I just broke them off rather than spook that fish … The funny thing was she swam out and wasn’t even interested in the bait. But then she turned back and just ignited on it.
“I was scared (of losing) at 1 o’clock and with only four fish,” he said. “But that was the fish that got it for me.”
He started with a bang at the Classic, catching 24-15 on Day 1 (good for third place) and followed with a tournament-high 29-6 on Day 2. That gave him a commanding lead of 8 1/2 pounds, which is exactly the cushion he finished with on Championship Sunday. He caught 22-10 on Day 3, including the 8-pounder, which was the Mercury Big Bass of the Day.
Local favorite Lee Livesay, who hails from Longview, Texas, some 170 miles from Ray Roberts, closed the gap early Sunday and tied Fothergill atop the leaderboard with 58-5 each. The pair traded blows throughout the late morning until Livesay’s bite went slack. That’s when Day 1 leader Trey McKinneyratcheted up pressure on Fothergill.
McKinney, a 20-year-old from Carbondale, Ill., and the 2024 Dakota Lithium Elite Series Rookie of the Year, was in sixth place coming into Championship Sunday. He shot into third place mid-morning courtesy of a fat 7-11 largemouth that put him only 1 pound behind Fothergill and Livesay. By 1 p.m., McKinney was alone in second place, though he still trailed Fothergill by 6-5. He narrowed the gap in a hurry, however, with his fifth keeper — a 6-pounder that put him 2-5 behind the leader.
But Fothergill slammed the door with his 8-pounder, only his fifth keeper of the day. It was a fitting way to win the sport’s biggest tournament, as it changed the narrative for the young ace from the North Star State. He’s said before he felt others saw him as a hyper-talented angler who had the terrible misfortune of having to undergo brain surgery.
McKinney wound up closest to Fothergill with 68-7 over three days. Livesay placed third with 66-10. Rounding out the Super Six are, fourth, Tennessee’s Hunter Shryock 64-14; fifth, Canada’s Cory Johnston, 58-7; and sixth, Florida’s John Cox, 56-13.
John Garrett was the first person outside the cut to 25 for the final day of 55th Bassmaster Classic, but the 8-12 he caught on Day 1 remained the Mercury Big Bass until the end, earning the Tennessee pro $2,500. Fellow Tennessean Brandon Lester hooked the heavy (8-6) on Day 2 and Fothergill’s 8-1 was biggest Day 3, earning both anglers $1,000 prizes.
Fothergill also took home an additional $10,000 for being the highest-placing entrant in the Toyota Bonus Bucks program, while Cox earned $5,000 for being the second-highest placing entrant. As part of the Yamaha Power Pay program, Fothergill earned an additional $20,000 while Lester claimed an additional $3,000 for being the second-highest placing entrant. — Bassmaster
Stop 4: Pasquotank River/Albemarle Sound
Elizabeth City, North Carolina
April 10 – 13
Welcher Wins Tourney With Biggest Margin in Elite History
| Place | Angler | Total Weight | Total Winnings |
| 1st | Kyle Welcher | 118 pounds, 12 ounces | $106,000 |
| 2nd | Brandon Lester | 73 – 5 | $20,000 |
| 3rd | Trey McKinney | 72 – 1 | $15,000 |
| 4th | Easton Fothergill | 68 – 6 | $12,500 |
For the full even results go here.
Kyle Welcher loves fishing rivers. After the St. Croix Bassmaster Elite at Pasquotank River/Albemarle Sound, it is easy to see why.
With a stunning four-day total of 118 pounds, 12 ounces, Welcher claimed the first title of his Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series career, earning a coveted blue trophy and the $100,000 first-place prize. The 2023 Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year opened the tournament with a bang, landing 30-11 to take the Day 1 lead, which he never relinquished.
He backed it up with 30-3 on Day 2 and 34-0 on Day 3, the Rapala CrushCity Monster Bag of the Tournament, and capped off the week with a 23-14 limit, anchored by a 7-3 largemouth. “I didn’t think I would get a Century Belt, for sure,” Welcher said. “When I heard we were coming here, I was excited. I feel comfortable in rivers and was really excited to go to one without a lot of history. But when I saw the forecast about 10 days away from practice, that kind of took the wind out of my sails. (I didn’t think) it was going to set up for the way I like to fish.
“It ended up falling right into my wheelhouse in a way I’m super comfortable fishing.”
It was a beatdown of historic proportion. Welcher’s winning margin of 45-7 over second-place Brandon Lester is the largest in Elite Series history, shattering the previous mark of 29-10 set by Patrick Walters at Lake Fork in 2020.
His winning weight is also the 13th-largest four-day winning total in Elite Series history while the Pasquotank River becomes the 11th venue in Elite Series history to produce a Century Belt.
“I’m super thankful really. I kind of felt it building like that early on Day 2,” the 32-year-old said. “I’ve been fishing for a long time, and when stuff starts going your way, you have to get out of your own way and let it happen. There were a lot of signs pointing me to fish how I fished.”
Elite Series competitors were dealt a difficult hand this week in eastern North Carolina. A cold front pushed through the area during practice, sending temperatures from the high 70s down to the high 50s and low 60s. Strong winds made for choppy conditions in the Albemarle Sound throughout the week.
While many of his fellow competitors made lengthy one-way runs to the Roanoke, North and Chowan Rivers (to name a few) through those rough waters, Welcher stayed within a couple of miles of takeoff and maximized a mile-long stretch of the Pasquotank River. — Bassmaster
Stop 5: Lake Hartwell
Anderson, South Carolina
April 24 – 27
Stop 6: Lake Fork
Yantis, Texas
May 8 – 11
Stop 7: Sabine River
Orange, Texas
May 15 – 18
Stop 8: Lake Tenkiller
Cookson, Oklahoma
June 12 – 15
Stop 9: Lake St. Clair
Macomb County, Michigan
Aug. 7 – 10
Stop 10: Mississippi River
La Crosse, Wisconsin
Aug. 21 – 24
2025 Bass Pro Tour Schedule and Results
The Bass Pro Tour is Major League Fishing’s top-level competitive professional fishing circuit. This year, 66 anglers will compete in seven Stage events, culminating with Redcrest, the tour championship. For detailed information on the league anglers, schedule of events, rules, and competition formats for each event, go here.
2025 Bass Pro Tour Schedule
Stage 1 (BP Tour): Lake Conroe
Conroe, Texas
Jan. 30 – Feb. 2
RESULTS
| Place | Angler | Points | Winnings |
| 1st | Justin Cooper | 80 | $150,000 |
| 2nd | Colby Miller | 79 | $45,000 |
| 3rd | Jacob Wall | 78 | $35,000 |
| 4th | Alton Jones, Jr. | 77 | $30,000 |
Friends, family, and fans joined Justin Cooper in celebrating his first Bass Pro Tour event win at B&W Trailer Hitches Stage 1 Presented by Power-Pole.
It was a hard-fought battle for the Louisianan angler as he and Colby Miller were neck-and-neck until the very end. For a moment, Miller had claimed the No. 1 spot on SCORETRACKER but a last-minute 1-pound, 10-ouncer pushed Cooper back on top with 78-5 on 34 scorable bass to Miller’s 77-4 on 35 scoreable bass.
Cooper and the rest of the Top 10 anglers hit the stage for the Post Game Show to share their thoughts on the first event of the 2025 Bass Pro Tour season before Cooper was presented with his trophy and $150,000 grand prize. —MLF
Stage 2 (BP Tour): Harris Chaine of Lakes
Leesburg, Florida
Feb. 13 – 16
RESULTS
| Place | Angler | Points | Winnings |
| 1st | Bobby Lane | 80 | $150,000 |
| 2nd | Mark Davis | 79 | $45,000 |
| 3rd | Matt Becker | 78 | $35,000 |
| 4th | Terry Scroggins | 77 | $30,000 |
Across a decorated 17-year career that includes a REDCREST victory, one of the few accomplishments that had eluded Bobby Lane was a national-tour win in Florida. He’d come close – in fact, the last time the Bass Pro Tour visited the Harris Chain of Lakes, Lane finished second to Ott DeFoe – but had yet to lift a trophy in his home state.
Midway through the Championship Round at Suzuki Marine Stage 2 Presented by YETI at the Harris Chain of Lakes, it looked like Lane would have to keep waiting.
Matt Becker and Mark Davis shot out of the starting blocks, both amassing more than 30 pounds in the first period. Lane, meanwhile, started on the opposite end of Lake Apopka from where he’d caught most of his fish due to the strong south wind and struggled to gain traction. Halfway through Period 2, he’d tallied just 17 pounds, 6 ounces and trailed Davis by more than 20 pounds – and as the wind continued to increase in intensity, presenting baits and generating bites became more difficult by the minute. — MLF
Stage 3 (BP Tour): Lake Murray
Columbia, South Carolina
March 6 – 9
RESULTS
| Place | Angler | Points | Winnings |
| 1st | Drew Gill | 80 | $150,000 |
| 2nd | Jacob Wheeler | 79 | $45,000 |
| 3rd | Marshall Robinson | 78 | $35,000 |
| 4th | Mark Daniels, Jr. | 77 | $30,000 |
The Championship Round of PowerStop Brakes Stage 3 Presented by Strike King quickly turned into a microcosm of the past two years on the Bass Pro Tour: a one-on-one battle between Drew Gill and Jacob Wheeler for the top spot.
Gill and Wheeler have been arguably the two most dominant pros not just on the BPT but in all of professional bass fishing over the past two years, when Gill arrived on Major League Fishing’s top tour. Both have multiple national wins in that span. They finished first and second in the 2024 Fishing Clash Angler of the Year race and are now back in the top two spots in 2025.
So, perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the two employed virtually identical game plans on Lake Murray, using forward-facing sonar during Period 1 to rocket to the top of SCORETRACKER®, then skipping boat docks with Neko rigs for the rest of the day. They separated themselves from the rest of the pack in the first couple hours of the Championship Round, but neither angler ever built a comfortable lead over the other in the race for the $150,000 top prize.
Ultimately, despite a stressful third period that saw him fail to catch a scorable bass during the final 89 minutes, Gill prevailed. His total of 58 pounds, 2 ounces edged Wheeler by 2-3 – less than the average size of a scorable bass caught on Lake Murray this week.
Even though he spent the final hour convinced Wheeler was going to run him down, Gill came away with his second Bass Pro Tour victory in just 10 career events and his fourth win across BPT, Team Series and Tackle Warehouse Invitationals competition in the past 13 months.
“If you had told me, ‘Hey, last hour and a half, you’re not going to catch a bass. Do you think Wheeler is going to catch 4 pounds?’ I would have been like, ‘Absolutely, he is,’” Gill said with a chuckle. “And [the bite] just died for both of us.” —MLF
Bass Pro Shops Redcrest Championship: Lake Guntersville
Huntsville, Alabama
April 3 – 6
RESULTS
| Place | Angler | Winnings |
| 1st | Dustin Connell | $300,000 |
| 2nd | Wesley Strader | $50,000 |
| 3rd | Zack Birge | $40,000 |
| 4th | Paul Marks, Jr. | $28,000 |
Dusting Connell Claims Third Championship Title
The 2025 iteration of Bass Pro Shops REDCREST Presented by MillerTech on Lake Guntersville marked the third time Major League Fishing’s championship event has been held in the bass-fishing mecca of Alabama.
For the third time, Dustin Connell is keeping the trophy in his home state.
Connell ran away from the field on Championship Sunday, both figuratively and literally. After making a roughly 70-mile trek away from the history- and largemouth-rich waters of lower Lake Guntersville to the tailrace below the Nickajack Dam, Connell stacked up 87 pounds, 11 ounces on 27 scorable bass. The best single-day total of any angler at the event (despite a 65-minute delay due to weather), that was enough to hold off a late charge from Wesley Strader by 8-5.
Connell earned $300,000 for the win and further cemented himself as the best big-event performer going. The only angler to win REDCREST multiple times, he’s claimed the title in back-to-back years and three times total – he previously won on Lake Eufaula in 2021 and Lay Lake in 2024. He’s now just the third angler ever with three tour championship titles. Only Bass Fishing Hall of Famers Kevin VanDam and Rick Clunn have won more with four apiece.
This also marked his seventh total win on the Bass Pro Tour. Shortly after it became official, an emotional Connell said that, in some ways, it’s the most special one yet.
“I think just me winning the tournament doing my own deal, winning it with my style of fishing that I love, and then coming off of a couple tough tournaments and just a lot of adversity, I was very, very, very shook up,” Connell said. —MLF
Stage 4 (BP Tour): Chickamauga and Nickajack
Chattanooga, Tennessee
May 1 – 4
General Tire Heavy Hitters: Smith Mountain Lake
Franklin County, Virginia
May 17 – 22
Stage 5 (BP Tour): Kentucky Lake
Calvert City, Kentucky
June 5 – 8
Stage 6 (BP Tour): Potomac River
Marbury, Maryland
June 26 – 29
Stage 7 (BP Tour): Saginaw Bay and River
Bay City, Michigan
Aug. 7 – 10
