By Mitchell Forde,
Bass Pro Press Release
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — With 2 1/2 hours left to fish in Bass Pro Shops REDCREST Presented by Mercury & Lowrance, Jacob Wheeler sat on the front deck of his bass boat and made a phone call. Trying to distract himself from the fact that the $300,000 prize and REDCREST trophy that had long eluded him were within reach, Wheeler FaceTimed his wife, Alicia, and their two children, Olivia and Hudson, during the final period break.
At that point, Wheeler led his nearest pursuer by more than 17 pounds. With postfrontal conditions making for a tough bite on Table Rock Lake, just about everyone knew that the title that had long seemed inevitable was now imminent – including Olivia. The 7-year-old asked, “Daddy, you’re going to win, right?”
“I’m just like, ‘Honey, I’m going to try, but it’s not a guarantee,’” Wheeler said with a laugh. “’It’s OK if I don’t. We’re going to try our hardest.’”
Was that Wheeler trying not to get ahead of himself? Sure. But he had good reason not to get too excited. Since winning the Forrest Wood Cup in 2012 at age 21, Wheeler has accomplished just about everything there is to accomplish in tournament bass fishing: 11 Bass Pro Tour wins, a Bassmaster Elite Series win, four Fishing Clash Angler of the Year titles. But despite four top-six finishes, he had yet to win Major League Fishing’s championship event.
Sunday, he finally got it done.
After pulling away from the rest of the Championship Round pros early, Wheeler cruised to a 51-pound, 11-ounce total on 21 scorable bass. That topped runner-up Takahiro Omori by 13-3 and earned Wheeler the one piece of hardware he’s been missing – the REDCREST trophy.
“It’s just been the thorn in my side,” Wheeler said. “I’ve had some really close calls. The ball has not bounced my way in these tournaments.
“It means the world. It really does.”
Here’s how the Top 10 pros finished the Championship Round:
- Jacob Wheeler – 51-11 (21)
- Takahiro Omori – 38-8 (15)
- Zack Birge – 32-15 (12)
- Brent Ehrler – 29-7 (12)
- Drew Gill – 28-1 (12)
- Alton Jones Jr. – 24-14 (9)
- Mark Daniels Jr. – 23-14 (10)
- Spencer Shuffield – 20-9 (8)
- Jeff Sprague – 17-3 (7)
- Dustin Connell – 12-8 (5)
Wheeler separates himself with strategy
Ever since Table Rock was revealed as the playing field for REDCREST, Wheeler has been eyeing this event – and for good reason. His first career BPT win came on the fishery in 2019.
But he didn’t spend more time studying or pre-practicing than he does for any other tournaments. For events that occur around the bass spawn, he thinks doing so is counterproductive.
So, instead of out-working the competition, he out-strategized them.
“I might not have been on the best fish, but I just played my hand right,” Wheeler said.
During practice, Wheeler found a group of prespawn smallmouth at the end of a main-lake point in Long Creek. When he returned there to start Day 1, he discovered a healthy population of spawners, too. He boated 10 scorable bass for 24-4 during the opening hour of the event, taking an early lead. He wound up finishing the day in third with 52-2, which put him 14 pounds clear of the Lucas Oil Cut Line.
That strong start afforded Wheeler the luxury of using Day 2 to explore new water. Even though weights zeroed between the Qualifying Round and Championship Round, Wheeler pointed to Saturday as the day he won the event.
On Day 2, Wheeler opted to conserve his period with forward-facing sonar until Period 3, using the early hours to expand the shallow largemouth bite he chased without the technology. He found a few productive stretches where he could get bunches of bites on a bladed jig. Then, once he topped the 75-pound mark, he cut off his hooks. Even when he fell to ninth place in the third period, just one spot inside the cut, Wheeler stuck to his strategy, knowing every fish he could save might be crucial. He estimated that half the smallmouth he caught during his big first period of the Championship Round were spawners he pinpointed on Saturday afternoon.
“Yesterday, my boat official was like, ‘You’re 4 pounds out from 10th and 11th. Do you maybe want to put a hook on?’” Wheeler said. “I’m like, ‘Nah.’ I was playing it so tight. Yesterday was the day I won this tournament.”
Building an insurmountable early lead
Prior to Championship Sunday, Wheeler couldn’t sleep. Once on the water, it didn’t take him long to calm his nerves and claim the top spot on SCORETRACKER®.
His first bass of the day, a 4-pounder, gave him the lead 15 minutes after lines in. He never relinquished the top spot. He quickly added seven more scorable bass to bring his total to 20-15 within the first hour.
That opening flurry was made possible by the type of breaks that haven’t gone Wheeler’s way in past editions of REDCREST. He hooked and lost the same 4-pounder on Day 1, and some fresh fish that weren’t there Friday moved into the area to spawn.
“The one big one I lost on Day 1, that fish was still there, and I ended up catching that one – that was that 4-pounder I caught this morning,” he said. “So, there’s things like that that happened, that was like the grace of God.”
From there, Wheeler transitioned to running individual spawners that he’d marked on Day 2. Showcasing his trademark efficiency, he added six more scorable bass for more than 15 pounds, bringing his Period 1 total to 35-11. The second-best single period of any angler throughout the event, that essentially turned the rest of the day into a race for second. He maintained a 10-plus-pound lead until lines out.
While using his new Lowrance ActiveTarget 2 XL transducer to target smallmouth, Wheeler utilized the one-two punch of a jighead minnow and a Ned rig. He mixed a 4.25-inch Rapala CrushCity Freeloader and a 4.5-inch CrushCity Mooch Minnow with a CrushCity Salted Ned Roll. After turning off his transducers and heading to shallower, stained water, he fooled most of his largemouth with a Z-Man Evergreen JackHammer ChatterBait paired with a Freeloader in either sungill or green pumpkin magic.
Despite his early lead, Wheeler thought he still needed to stack up about 30 pounds of largemouth to finally hoist the trophy. But it didn’t take long to see that the bluebird skies had hampered the shallow bite. The situation was eerily similar to the most recent Bass Pro Tour event – the Championship Round of Stage 4 on Lake Brownwood, a grinder in which Wheeler also grabbed an early lead then held on to win.
“That cold front did the same thing it did on Brownwood,” Wheeler said. “Yesterday, they bit. It’s the same exact scenario happened today. First day of the front, they’re OK; they bite still. Second day of the front, it’s like a ghost town.”
REDCREST box finally checked
Once his boat official counted down to lines out and the win finally became official, Wheeler let the tears flow. He dedicated the victory to his late father, who died from cancer just a few days before REDCREST 2025.
“It was super emotional, because my dad told me he wanted me to win one for him before he passed away, and (not doing so) was just a tough one to swallow,” Wheeler said.
But his prevailing emotion was relief. Wheeler can finally stop hearing about how he hasn’t won the big one.
“This is the thing: I can brush off a Jake Lawrence last-minute buzzer-beater win and placing second (in the regular-season),” Wheeler said. “But you only get once a year to take a crack at this tournament. And so, it just means more.”
It means more than perhaps any previous win for Wheeler’s résumé, too. He further bolstered his standing as the dominant angler of his era and one of the greatest of all time. Since the inception of the Bass Pro Tour in 2019, he’s up to 12 wins to go along with four Angler of the Year titles. He joins Kevin VanDam as the only angler ever to win multiple tour championship events and four-plus AOY crowns.
In the afterglow of his win, Wheeler wasn’t ready to think about greatest-of-all-time debates. But it’s not lost on him what finally adding a REDCREST trophy to his collection means to his legacy.
“Does it define my career? No. I don’t really feel like it does,” Wheeler said. “But it definitely adds an additional layer to it. And that to me is what it’s about. Like, wow, you got it done in the event that you can only fish once a year. And that in and of itself is what I’m so thankful for.”
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