SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — As expected, Bass Pro Shops REDCREST Presented by Mercury & Lowrance showcased a wide range of ways to catch bass. The 35-angler field faced different conditions all three days on Table Rock Lake. And even though postfrontal weather slowed the bite during the Championship Round, the competitors caught a healthy number of all three bass species using a range of techniques. Just about every area of the lake played, too, with the Top 10 featuring anglers fishing in Long Creek, the lower and middle sections of the main lake and the James River arm.
While Jacob Wheeler finally getting the REDCREST monkey off his back was the main story (and rightfully so), plenty of other interesting nuggets emerged from the event. Here are a few notes and quotes before we turn the page and start preparing for Yuengling Light Lager Stage 5 Presented by YETI, which will kick off April 30 on nearby Beaver Lake.
Non-BPT qualifiers held their own
While REDCREST is the Bass Pro Tour championship, it features anglers from just about every level of Major League Fishing competition. Several of the non-traditional qualifiers put together excellent showings on Table Rock.
Montevallo University’s Brody Robison was the highest finisher of the bunch. Robison, who won the 2025 Columbia PFG College Fishing National Championship alongside teammate Peyton Sorrow, then earned his REDCREST berth by bettering Sorrow at the Toyota Series Championship on Grand Lake last fall, finished 11th – the first angler below the Lucas Oil Cut Line. The near-miss had to be tough to swallow, especially considering Robison actually tied Brent Ehrler for 10th place at the end of the two-day Qualifying Round but lost the tiebreaker, which was the biggest individual bass of the round. Still, Robison showed that he can hang with the best in the game and established himself as yet another name to watch from the college ranks.
Matteo Turano, who won the Phoenix Bass Fishing League All-American in 2025, also put together a strong showing. He spent most of the Qualifying Round in the Top 10 before slipping to 15th on Saturday afternoon. Turano has a chance to join the Bass Pro Tour field full-time next year – he’s currently 12th in the 7 Brew Angler of the Year standings on the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit, and three of the anglers ahead of him are already on the BPT roster. The top five non-BPT pros at the end of the season will earn invitations to join the tour.
Perhaps most impressive of all, considering the circumstances, Italy’s Luca Della Ciana finished one spot behind Turano. The first-ever angler to qualify for REDCREST from the MLF International ranks, Della Ciana stacked up 47 pounds on Day 2 to climb from 29th place at the start of the day into the top half of the field. He did it while fishing out of a borrowed boat more than 5,000 miles from home. Della Ciana said he caught his fish strolling and also targeting bedding bass with Senkos.
“It is an insane experience, this REDCREST at Table Rock Lake,” Della Ciana said. “I have only one problem – 6 pounds from the cut.”
Omori carries the flag for traditional techniques
Table Rock is known as a prolific forward-facing sonar fishery, and the technology certainly played a big role at this event. Wheeler used forward-facing sonar to power his strong Period 1 during the Championship Round, when he amassed more than 35 pounds and put the event out of reach.
But overall, REDCREST continued a trend we’ve seen throughout 2026: Forward-facing sonar isn’t dominating at the same clip as it has in years past. Of course, part of that is due to the league limiting anglers to just one of three periods per day in which they can use the technology. But it isn’t drastically out-producing other techniques during that time. While anglers have forward-facing sonar at their disposal for one-third of the event, it accounted for about 36.5% of the total weight at REDCREST, according to SCORETRACKER Insider™.
As has been the case all year, Takahiro Omori did the most damage with traditional techniques. Omori, who won Stage 2 on Lake Hartwell, hasn’t turned on his forward-facing sonar transducers at all in 2026. He finished second on Table Rock by employing his usual strategy – running way up the rivers and throwing a bladed jig around shallow cover. Mark Daniels Jr. and Jeff Sprague also made the Top 10 by almost exclusively power fishing.
Omori was charging hard at the end of the Championship Round. He stacked up seven scorable bass for 17-11 in Period 3. Easily the best final period of the field, it moved him up from fifth place to second and earned him an extra $25,000.
Other notes:
- Anglers found success targeting all three species (four if you count meanmouth, the smallmouth-spotted bass hybrid) on Table Rock. In the end, largemouth easily led the way, accounting for about 62.7% of the total weight across the three-day event. Smallmouth and spotted bass showed up at a similar rate, with smallmouth comprising 19.7% of the total and spots at 17.5%.
- This event provided clear proof that momentum matters in tournament fishing. Each of the winners from the first four regular-season events of 2026 (Drew Gill, Zack Birge, Omori and Wheeler) finished in the top five, as did the top three in the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year race (Wheeler, Birge, Gill).
- Now that Wheeler finally has his REDCREST trophy, the next breakthrough that seems inevitable is at least one of Ehrler or Sprague claiming their first Bass Pro Tour win. Both finished in the Top 10 at REDCREST. Ehrler is now up to 21 career Championship Round appearances – tied for third most in BPT history and the most for any pro without a win. Sprague is right behind him with 16 Top 10s.