Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing our American fans a Happy Thanksgiving!

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Since the first time you stepped on an Ultrex™ foot pedal, how has your fishing experience been improved? We want to hear about it directly from YOU! 

Submit a short video telling us what you love about your Ultrex trolling motor and your clip could be featured in an upcoming Ultrex video. 

Don't wait. If you're one of the first 60 entries you'll receive a t-shirt for free. 

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Scott Martin Moves to BASS Opens for 2020!

Scott Martin, a 20 year pro with FLW, decides to join the BASS Opens for 2020. He has not be given a free pass to the BASS Elites, so Scott will try to qualify for 2021 Elite season. The main drive for the move is to win a Bassmaster Classic for his dad Roland.

2020 FLW Pro Circuit Schedule

Fishing League Worldwide (FLW), announced the full details, including rules, entry dates, schedules and the location for the 2020 Championship. The circuit will feature a field of 150 pro anglers competing across seven regular-season tournaments, which culminate to the FLW TITLE. A new event, the TITLE will showcase the top 50 pros from the FLW Pro Circuit regular season as they compete for an $820,000 purse.

The seven regular-season events will operate under a four-day, five-bass limit format with a full field of 150 anglers competing on days one and two. The field will cut to the top 30 on day three, and then the top 10 will advance to the championship round on day four. In the FLW TITLE, anglers will compete using the Major League Fishing catch, weigh, and instantly release format. The TITLE field will divide into two groups of 25 (Group A and B) whereas Group A competes on days one and three and Group B competes on days two and four. Based on the cumulative two-day weight total, the top ten from each Group (field of 20) will advance to day five. The top 10 pros after day five will advance to the sixth and final day of competition for the opportunity to become the inaugural FLW TITLE Champion with a top prize of $200,000.

2020 FLW PRO CIRCUIT SCHEDULE

Jan. 23-26 – Sam Rayburn Reservoir – Brookeland, Texas

Hosted by the Jasper County Development District

Feb. 20-23 – Harris Chain of Lakes – Leesburg, Fla.

Hosted by Lake County, Fla.

March 19-22 – Lake Martin – Alexander City, Ala.

Hosted by the Alexander City Chamber of Commerce

April 2-5 – Cherokee Lake – Jefferson City, Tenn.

Hosted by the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce

April 23-26 – Lake Hartwell – Anderson, S.C.

Hosted by Visit Anderson

May 14-17 – Lake Dardanelle – Russellville, Ark.

Hosted by the Russellville Advertising & Promotion Commission

June 27-30* – Detroit River – Trenton, Mich.

Hosted by the Detroit Sports Commission

*Saturday-Tuesday event

2020 FLW TITLE CHAMPIONSHIP

Aug. 8-13 – St. Lawrence River – Massena, N.Y.

Hosted by the Town of Massena

2020 FLW PRO CIRCUIT PAYOUTS

Place – Payout

1 – $100,000

2 – $30,000

3 – $25,000

4 – $20,000

5 – $19,000

6 – $18,000

7 – $17,000

8 – $16,000

9 – $15,000

10 – $14,000

11-20 – $11,000

21-30 – $10,500

31-50 – $10,000

51-60 – $5,500

61-75 – $5,000

Big Bass (days one and two) – $500

2020 FLW TITLE PAYOUTS

Place – Payout

1 – $200,000

2 – $50,000

3 – $30,000

4 – $25,000

5 – $19,000

6 – $18,000

7 – $17,000

8 – $16,000

9 – $15,000

10 – $14,000

11-20 – $11,000

21-30 – $10,500

31-50 – $10,000

Big Bass (days one and two) – $500

B.A.S.S. announces new national tournament series for kayak anglers

The popularity of kayak fishing is at an all-time high, just one of the reasons B.A.S.S., the world’s largest fishing organization, has formed a new tournament trail aimed specifically at kayaking enthusiasts.

Today, B.A.S.S. officials announced the schedule for the inaugural Huk Bassmaster B.A.S.S. Nation Kayak Series powered by TourneyX presented by Abu Garcia. The trail will feature five regular-season events in 2020 on well-known bass fisheries across the country with a championship to be held in conjunction with the 2021 Academy Outdoors + Sports Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk.

“You don’t have to look very hard these days to find a kayak in the bed of a truck or strapped to the roof of a SUV,” said Bruce Akin, CEO of B.A.S.S. “People are bass fishing from kayaks all over the world — and they’re doing it everywhere from big lakes and rivers to small creeks and ponds.

“With this new trail, we wanted to give those anglers an opportunity to show what they can do from a small craft.”

The inaugural tournament will be held in conjunction with the 50th edition of the Bassmaster Classic on Logan Martin Lake in Pell City, Ala., on March 5. Classic competition kicks-off on nearby Lake Guntersville the next morning. Other events will be held on Lake Fork in Lake Fork Marina, Texas (March 14), Chickamauga Lake in Dayton, Tenn. (May 23), the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wis. (Aug. 15) and Clear Lake in Lakeport, Calif. (Aug. 29).

Entry fees for all of the events will be $250, and each will pay 30 places. Based on a full field of 150 kayaks, the total purse for each event will be $30,000.

“Huk is proud to work with B.A.S.S. on this exciting new tournament series designed to push the limits of kayak fishing,” said Melinda Hays, Freshwater Community Manager for Huk. “Bass fishing is an integral part of our DNA here at Huk and we endeavor to inspire anglers to explore their home waters by kayak.”

Hollen Wins 2019 BASS National Championship on Lake Hartwell

By Andrew Canulatte 

BASS PRESS RELEASE

Cody Hollen had a feeling that his favorite lipless crankbait would be a difference-maker during Friday’s final round of the TNT Fireworks B.A.S.S. Nation Championship.

Boy, was he ever right.

The 35-year old angler from Beaverton, Ore., caught the heaviest bag of the tournament — a five-bass limit that weighed 13 pounds, 12 ounces — to vault from 10th place to the tournament title here on Lake Hartwell in the northwest corner of the Palmetto State.

Hollen finished with a three-day total of 32-12, and he reaped a wealth of spoils with the victory. Not only did he grab a berth in the 2020 Academy Sports + Outdoors Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk, he also won a Skeeter/Yamaha cash award of $20,000, an invitation to fish the 2020 Bassmaster Elite Series and paid entry into the 2020 Basspro.com Bassmaster Opens division of his choice.

He was one of 59 boaters and 115 total anglers who qualified for the championship at Hartwell. Competitors hailed from 47 states and 11 foreign countries, and they competed for a total of $140,300 in prize money this week.

Hollen made the final push to jump ahead of all of them, and it was his decision to fish exclusively with a Yo-Zuri lipless crankbait in the chrome with a blue back color that paid dividends, he said. He tried other lures earlier in the tournament, but he eventually decided to forego variety for what was working best.

“I had confidence coming into today,” Hollen said. “I had five or six cane piles way down lake where the water was cleaner than it was up here. They were in those cane piles. I was setting myself up maybe 30 yards back of them and casting into them.

“The bait would hit the cane pile and the fish would hit it hard.”

Hollen was in 19th place after Day 1 with a limit that weighed 9-2, and he followed with a 9-14 limit on Day 2 to make the cut. He entered the final day in 10th place, but he trailed leader Justy Varkevisser of South Africa by only 3-5.

Remembering

Remembering the people who sacrificed so much so we can live in peace.

Winter Bassin' Bait: The bucktail jig

Bucktail jigs use to be the best cold water/ winter time bait for bass. Recently, they have been pushed out by more modern techniques but they still work. Non't sure where to find a good bucktail jig? Check out VMC.

2020 MLF Schedule

Andrew Upshaw Wins 2019 Costa FLW Series Championship on Lake Cumberland!

2^nd Cumberland win for Upshaw in 2019

by Curtis Niedermier

FLW PRESS RELEASE

He did it again.

Fog delay and bluff walls key to win for Upshaw.
(Photo: FLW)

For the second time this season, Andrew Upshaw is an FLW champion thanks to consistent days spent targeting big Southern smallmouths. The Tulsa, Okla., pro won the 2019 Costa FLW Series Championship on Lake Cumberland in Burnside, Ky., with a three-day total weight of 42 pounds, 15 ounces. The win comes less than seven months after Upshaw won the FLW Tour event on Cherokee Lake in east Tennessee.

“I’m just going to call it blind luck,” says Upshaw about his recent string of success on smallmouth fisheries. “And I’m glad to have it, to be honest with you.”

Complete results

Upshaw calls it luck, but his recent performances say otherwise. He’s actually a smallmouth fanatic, and it showed this week.

“For the duration of my Tour career, we’ve fished enough smallmouth fisheries that I’ve kind of learned how they set up and stuff like that,” he says. “The other thing is, one of my favorite places to fish in the country is Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie. I really love catching smallmouth up there. Now, they set up totally different up there, but that love for smallmouth drives me to learn how to catch them in other places.”

Like up north, the smallmouths down here are aggressive fish. Upshaw had that in mind as he formulated a game plan. He knew that if he was going to win with smallmouths, he needed to find a pattern that would get him a lot of bites. Cumberland is full of fish, so if he wasn’t getting bit consistently, he wasn’t on a program that could win. 

He eventually found the right stuff down on the reservoir’s lower end.

“What I figured out was main-lake transition bluffs, but it had to have the river channel swing on it – true river-channel swings,” Upshaw says. 

The best transitions started at 45 to 50 feet deep adjacent to the wall and shallowed up to 22 to 24 feet deep. 

“Right where it started slightly flattening out, that’s where they’d be sitting,” Upshaw says. “I had about 15 spots, from about Conley Bottom down. Some of them didn’t ever fire like they did in practice, and some did better than they did in practice.”

Upshaw figures a lot of these fish are already in or near their wintertime holes. Some might eventually shift over to the deeper water near the bluffs, but others will stay put. More fish were transitioning into these areas during the tournament, which meant he had new bass coming to him. He was on so many fish that, yesterday, Upshaw actually left them biting after multiple culls for ounces. He was consistently on more fish than his fellow competitors, and by getting more bites, he eventually was able to assemble limits of the quality fish needed to win. 

2019 Costa FLW Series Championship on Lake Cumberland Day 1: Roger Cousens Slams 17-02lbs of Smallmouth!

Smallmouth rule on Cumberland

by Curtis Niedermier

FLW PRESS RELEASE

Zimbabwe locks up lead with 17-02lbs of smallmouth.
(Photo: FLW)

The road Roger Cousens had to travel to live out his dream of being a professional bass angler in the United States included a 19-hour flight to Atlanta and a five-hour drive to Burnside, Ky., where today, the 62-year-old International Division qualifier from Zimbabwe took the day-one lead in the Costa FLW Series Championship on Lake Cumberland.

To be fair, Cousens competed in the U.S. a few times in the 1990s, but the Evinrude and Mercury outboard technician has never fished a pro-level event with as much on the line as there is in this one. After catching a 17-pound, 2-ounce limit that included a mix of largemouths and smallmouths, he leads the way over California’s Robert Nakatomi by 3 ounces.

“It feels fantastic right now,” he says. “It’s pretty hard to believe that I’m leading a tournament of this caliber with this number of anglers. It’s pretty amazing.”

Cousens says he’s a big-bass specialist, which he’s proven in his last two FLW events. To qualify for this week’s championship, he weighed in more than 100 pounds in three days of fishing at the FLW Zimbabwe Championship.