Hoping to realize their big dreams, anglers who caught the bigger bass now roll onto the biggest stages of B.A.S.S.
After nine events spanning nine months, the Tackle Warehouse Bassmaster Elite Qualifier season concluded on Oct. 12. Nine of 152 EQ anglers graduated to the 2025 Bassmaster Elite Series via the season-long points race, and event winners were awarded berths into the 2025 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic.
With two victories in St. Croix Opens, 22-year-old Easton Fothergill of Grand Rapids, Minn., totaled 1,606 points to hold off Cody Meyer for the EQ Angler of the Year title by 16 points.
“He is someone I have always looked up to, and for me and him to go neck and neck was a super cool experience,” Fothergill said for this article detailing his incredible season.
Meyer, who lives in Eagle, Idaho, earned more than $1.4 million in other circuits before giving B.A.S.S. a try. With three Top 10s and only one event below the check cut of 45th, Meyer amassed 1,590 points.
“I’m just thrilled to go fish the Bassmaster Elite Series. It was always my dream when I was a kid,” Meyer said. “I just want to thank Bassmaster and all my great sponsors. It’s been a heck of a year.
“With all these young kids, it shows the high school and college series are working. I’m definitely the old man here.”
Not as young as 2024
Six of the nine Elite qualifiers are under 30 years old. Seventh-place Dakota Ebare, who also topped $1 million in MLF, is second-oldest at 32, while Andrew Loberg, who took sixth, is 30.
Third-place Tucker Smith and sixth-place Paul Marks are 23. Fifth-place Emil Wagner is 26, and 22-year-old Beau Browning and 25-year-old Evan Kung finished eighth and ninth, respectively.
The average age of those nine is 27.1, up from 2024’s 24.8 average that clipped six years off the previous season. At 33, Ben Milliken was the oldest of last year’s class, with Trey McKinney setting the mark as youngest-ever Elite qualifier at 18.
In a Bassmaster first, all nine rookies qualified for the Classic via the points, and McKinney and John Garrett won blue trophies. McKinney took over as youngest Elite winner at 19 years, one week.
What might the 2025 Elite rookies accomplish?
To winners go spoils
Alongside their title and purse, winners of the St. Croix Opens receive a berth to the Classic, as long as they fish all three events in that division. Eight anglers punched tickets to fish Lake Ray Roberts out of Fort Worth, Texas, next March, with Fothergill’s second Open win moving to the Elites.
Elite pro Scott Martin started the season off with a big bang on his home fishery of Lake Okeechobee. In winning his first B.A.S.S. title, Martin set several records weighing in at the Roland Martin Marina, where his father had won decades earlier. It was a good thing as he went on to suffer his worst Elite season, finishing 92nd in points.
There was more home cooking in the next several Opens as Arkansas’ Jeremiah Kindy won at Lake Ouachita, South Carolina’s Kyle Austin was victorious at Santee Cooper Lakes and Alabama’s Josh Butler prevailed at Lake Logan Martin.
Fothergill ended that trend when he won on Oklahoma’s Lake Eufaula in June. In July, Wisconsin Elite Jay Przekurat won at Lake St. Clair, double qualifying with his subsequent seventh-place finish in the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year race, moving a Classic berth to Tyler Rivet.
In late August, Fothergill won at his home body of water Leech Lake, a first-time Bassmaster venue. His double qualification gave Australian Carl Jocumsen, who finished 44th in AOY points, a spot in the Classic.
With two more Opens, Jonathan Kelley, 45th in points, had two shots, but Georgia’s Cody Stahl erased one by winning at the Mississippi River out of La Crosse, Wis.
For the finale at Lake Martin, Kelley was rooting for finalists Will Davis Jr. and Butler to double qualify. However, he remained first man out after Florida’s Bobby Bakewell, 26, claimed that title and Classic berth.
Big bass abundant
From start to finish, it was a big bass bonanza in the Opens in 2024, including three double-digit fish. Bakewell added icing with his 4-10 on Martin — “that’s like a 10-pounder in Florida. “I’m going to watch that clip a thousand times.”
That buzzbait bruiser helped Bakewell rally from third with 13-12, the biggest on Championship Saturday, to total 35-15. The fish he said “gave me a shot” took Phoenix Boats Big Bass from Davis by 1 ounce.
Bakewell was reminded that he jumped the gun inquiring about the $750 bonus for his 5-2 smallmouth at La Crosse. Stahl edged him with a 5-4 largemouth on the final day that helped him win.
Other Phoenix Boats Big Bass that helped secure wins were Fothergill’s 6-4 on Leech and an 8-12 on Eufaula and Butler’s 7-13 on Logan Martin. Greg Bohannon took the $750 bonus with a 6-2 at Lake St. Clair, edging Elite Seth Feider’s 6-1.
Two 10-pound bass came from likely fisheries, but another was a surprise. Randall Tharp kicked off the year with a 10-3 on Lake Okeechobee, and Mark Hutson matched it with a 10-3 at Santee Cooper.
On Arkansas’ Lake Ouachita, where the average catch was 2-8, Evan Kung drew crowds with a 9-14 beast on Day 1, which surely would take big bass. Nope. Zach Goutremout did him a pound better on Day 2, his 10-14 winning Phoenix Boats Big Bass of the event and the Opens season.
Rewriting the record book
The Bassmaster record book received several monster updates through Opens competition in 2024. On Okeechobee, Martin set single day, Opens and three-day event records.
Where he can walk out his front door, check the conditions and predict where they might be biting, Martin had quite the season opener. Going ninja mode with an unwrapped boat, he discovered the juice he marked with an exclamation point was empty.
Zigzagging through around 50 boats in the area, Martin landed big after big, including a best of 9-12, to weigh 33-2. It eclipsed Whitney Stephens’ 32-12 caught five years earlier on the Harris Chain as the largest single-day limit in Opens history.
But Martin wasn’t done. After 25-13 on Day 2, the 48-year-old caught 31-7 for a mind-blowing 90-6 total. It topped Gerald Swindle’s Open record of 80-13 set in 2011 on Lake Toho and broke the all-time three-day total in B.A.S.S., held by former Elite pro Byron Velvick with 83-5 at California’s Clear Lake in 2000.
“I couldn’t have scripted this any better,” Martin said. “I just wanted to win a tournament here in front of the hometown crowd at some point in my career. But the records — I had no idea. To win here in front of my mom and dad and to break records, it was just God’s perfect timing.”
Rewriting the record books wasn’t done. Kyle Austin landed the fourth-best single-day total with 31-8 on Day 2 at Santee Cooper, pushing Martin’s third day at Okeechobee down the top 5 list. Austin’s winning weight of 83-7 took over second place in Opens and overall three-day derbies, and the totals of Laker Howell (80-9) and Martin (80-3) settled in right behind Swindle in fourth and fifth, respectively, in Opens.
Bombs didn’t explode seasons
It’s often said one bad day can derail an angler’s EQ hopes, however, several qualifiers overcame finishes lower than 100, of which Paul Marks had two.
Three suffered “bombs” at Santee Cooper, where even Fothergill posted his lowest finish of 83rd. Emil Wagner had his worst event by far, taking 189th. That knocked him to 44th in the points, but a fourth at Logan Martin and never finishing below 27th the rest of the way helped him end fifth in points.
Third-place EQ finisher Tucker Smith took a hit with a 144th at Santee, but he rebounded at Logan Martin with his second runner-up finish. In the final five events, Smith was in the teens three times and never below 35th.
Marks, who was leading the points after Top 10s in the first two events, took big hits with a 118th at Santee and 105th at Lake Eufaula, knocking him to 19th in points. In the final four tournaments, he was never lower than 12th and made two final days, ending in the fourth spot.
Ebare stood second in points after four midseason events, closing to just one point back of Fothergill after St. Clair. A 94th at Leech Lake made him sweat the final two events, and a third at Lake Martin helped him take seventh in points.
Loberg overcame a 95th, his only missed check, and Kung, who led the race after four derbies, suffered through a 95th and 96th but hung on for ninth with six events better than 28th.
Browning heeded the advice of father Stephen Browning, a longtime Elite, who told him to make sure to get his points. With four finishes better than 20th, Browning narrowly missed checks in four other events and had a worst of 76th to finish eighth in points.
