Canadians Chris Johnston 9th
BASS PRESS RELEASE
Kuphall's 17lb gap between second place Wes Logan.
(Photo: BASS)
An Elite angler’s “walk-up” music has no bearing on tournament performance, but Caleb Kuphall’s could not have been more fitting for his dominant wire-to-wire victory in the Berkley Bassmaster Elite at Lake Guntersville, where he tallied a four-day total weight of 85 pounds, 14 ounces.
The second-year pro from Mukwonago, Wis., enters the weigh-in stage each day to the Beach Boys’ Catch a Wave. The opening verse perfectly mirrors the eye-popping Day 1 performance that gave Kuphall nearly a 6 1/2-pound lead and positioned him to ride out the slower periods and end up surging across the finish line by a huge margin.
“Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world.”
“Having as much of a lead as I did, it was very nerve wracking, because you don’t want to blow it,” Kuphall said. “You’re like ‘I’ve got this lead and if I blow it, it’s a catastrophic train wreck.’ I kinda just rode that wave.”
Earning his first Elite trophy and becoming the first Wisconsin angler to do so, Kuphall set the bar high with a Day 1 catch of 27-10. With a windy Day 2 creating position and presentation challenges, his productivity dipped to 15-10, but Kuphall retained the top spot by a 4-9 margin.
Day 3 saw him getting back on track with a 23-9 limit that pushed his lead to 11 1/2 pounds. On Championship Sunday, Kuphall started slow, picked up steady momentum and sacked up the biggest bag of the final round — 19-1 — to collect a $100,000 top prize.
Notably, Kuphall’s 17-14 margin of victory is the second largest in Bassmaster Elite Series history (behind South Carolina pro Patrick Walter’s 29-10 margin last year at Lake Fork). Kuphall is only the 11th Elite angler to win by a double-digit margin.
Kuphall caught all of his bass flipping and punching shallow vegetation. In a tournament that saw competitors trying a wide range of spring tactics, he kept it simple and stuck to a fundamentally sound game plan that helped steady his nerves.
