From young guns to experienced vets, this year’s Tackle Warehouse Bassmaster Opens Elite Qualifier Top 9 showcases plenty of talent. Let’s take a look at their seasons and how it might translate to the 2025 Bassmaster Elite Series.
Covered here are the second through ninth place. Read full coverage of EQ top finisher Easton Fothergill’s amazing season.
Cody Meyer has been around the professional bass world for a long time now. Starting his career in California, he qualified for the FLW Tour and collected 30 Top 10 finishes before moving to the Bass Pro Tour. The now Idaho resident was close to qualifying for the Elite Series in 2022 through the Northern Division, but a 128th-place finish at the Upper Chesapeake Bay doomed those chances.
Meyer left no doubt in 2024, nearly winning the Tackle Warehouse EQ title. He finished no worse than 52nd during the nine-tournament season, notching Top 10s in four of the last five events and top fives in the last three.
The first two events at Lake Okeechobee and Lake Ouachita were the only events he finished not in the Top 10 in points. A 44th-place finish at Santee Cooper Lakes lifted him into eighth, and from there, he continued to work his way up.
Once a world record holder for catching a 10.8-pound spotted bass, Meyer is a strong spotted bass angler. Some of his best finishes throughout his career have been at fisheries like Lake Lanier and Lake Hartwell. Those same concepts make him great on smallmouth fisheries as well, highlighted by his work at Oneida Lake in 2023 and Leech Lake in 2024.
A quick look through his stats also shows consistent top finishes at tidal systems, and he will get two cracks at those in 2025 when the Elite Series visits the Albemarle Sound and the Sabine River.
Tucker Smith started making a name for himself in high school, winning three straight Bassmaster High School National Championships before going to Auburn University and winning a Team of the Year title and a College National Championship.
After fishing a partial Opens schedule in 2023, Smith jumped head on into the EQ’s this year and made an impression early by finishing second at Okeechobee. He followed that up with a 33rd-place finish at Ouachita before a disappointing 144th-place finish at Santee Cooper that sent Smith tumbling to 29th in the points standings.
He rebounded by almost winning the Lake Logan Martin event, finishing second again. Over the next five events, Smith finished no worse than 35th and notched three top 20 finishes.
An Alabama native, Smith is very comfortable fishing for spotted bass and largemouth. He has also shown he is strong in smallmouth events with a College Series win at Saginaw Bay and a strong showing this year at Lake St. Clair.
Hailing from the shores of Lake Lanier, Marks showed off his ability to use his electronics to find bass in offshore situations. That started, remarkably, at Lake Okeechobee where he used forward-facing sonar to find offshore bass in a canal. He then finished eighth at Lake Ouachita to take the early lead in EQ points.
The next four events were a bit of a roller coaster, as Marks finished 118th at Santee Cooper, 23rd at Logan Martin, 105th at Lake Eufaula in Oklahoma and then 11th at St. Clair. On the outside looking in after St. Clair, Marks rattled off four straight top 12 finishes to end the season, capping the year off with a sixth-place finish at Lake Martin.
Spotted bass are obviously in Marks’ wheelhouse, but two of his best events in 2024 were on smallmouth fisheries. A variety of baits came into play for the 23-year-old, but a jerkbait and some form of jig were his most productive lures in his highest finishes.
A Lake Lanier guide, Emil Wagner is a spotted bass guru who has shown he can compete anywhere in the country. If it hadn’t been for a 189th-place finish at Santee Cooper, the 26-year-old very well could have made a run at AOY.
Outside of Santee Cooper, Wagner’s worst finish of the year was 27th at Lake Martin. He notched Top 10s at Logan Martin and Leech Lake and top 15s at Okeechobee, Lake Eufaula and the Mississippi River.
Still, Wagner needed all of those good finishes to recover from his performance in South Carolina. After Santee Cooper, Wagner found himself in 44th in the points race and did not reenter the Top 9 until after Leech Lake.
Similar to Meyer, Andrew Loberg grew up on the West Coast, winning two Toyota Series Championship in 2021 before joining the Opens this past year. Loberg was quietly consistent throughout 2024, notching eight top 50 finishes, with only one stumble at Santee Cooper, where he finished 95th.
With a 43rd-place finish at Logan Martin, Loberg began to climb the standings. His best finish came at Lake Eufaula, where he power fished to notch a second-place finish. He followed that with a 26th and 16th at Lake St. Clair and Leech Lake respectively to move into fifth place in the points race.
The Texan opened the season with a 31st at Okeechobee followed by a 13th at Ouachita. With a fourth-place finish at Santee Cooper, Dakota Ebare put himself in Angler of the Year contention.
His next three events were top 50 finishes that kept him in second place in the standings behind Fothergill, and it appeared he would continue fighting with the young Minnesotan for the top spot after the first day of Leech Lake. After landing a limit weighing 21 pounds on Day 1, Ebare landed just one 2-pounder on the second day to finish 94th, effectively taking him out of contention and dropping him to eighth in points.
Needing good finishes, Ebare wrapped up the season with a 44th at the Upper Mississippi before putting the exclamation point on the season with a third-place showing at Lake Martin.
Son of longtime pro Stephen Browning, Beau Browning decided to jump into the EQ race for the first time this year. The University of Montevallo competitor started the Opens season by notching a Top 10 at Lake Okeechobee. Following Okeechobee, Browning finished the next five tournaments between 48th and 76th.
While solid finishes, Browning had fallen out of the Top 9 in points, but a 13th place at Leech Lake followed by two top 20 finishes at the Upper Mississippi and Lake Martin vaulted him above the cutline.
An Arkansas native, Browning can do a little bit of everything from power fishing in the shallows to fishing offshore with forward-facing sonar. He won a College Series event in 2022 at Norfork Lake by fishing a shallow flat using a jig and a ChatterBait and also notched a Top 10 in 2023 at the James River.
There will now be a fifth Canadian angler touring with the Elite Series. Evan Kung hails from Pickering, Ontario, just outside of Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario. Naturally, Kung is a strong smallmouth angler who excelled down south in 2024.
After a disappointing EQ performance in 2023, Kung opened this season strong with a 17th-place finish at Lake Okeechobee. Back-to-back ninth-place finishes at Ouachita and Santee Cooper vaulted Kung into first place in the points race. He remained in first until the Eufaula Oklahoma event, where he struggled and finished 95th.
As the season progressed, Kung found himself in a fight for his EQ life. He followed Lake Eufaula with a 65th-place finish at Lake St. Clair, a 15th at Leech Lake and then an 86th place at the Upper Mississippi River. With his chances at making the Elite Series on the line, Kung claimed 28th at Lake Martin to finish ninth in the standings.
