MARBURY, Md. – The Bass Pro Tour’s first-ever visit to the Potomac River was a good one. “The Nation’s River” showed out at Zenni Stage 6 Presented by Athletic Brewing Company, despite the excessive heat. The fishing was just as sweltering, producing the season’s best weights and catch counts.
The top anglers found several ways to approach the tides and utilized a wide range of different lures. Here’s a closer look at how the Top 10 caught ’em on the Potomac and what baits they used to get the job done.
1. Ott DeFoe – 78-11 (32)
Ott DeFoe‘s last regular-season Bass Pro Tour win was in 2021, which is a long drought for an angler who has been as excellent as he has throughout his career. He secured the win on the Potomac by fishing a small creek and using the high tide to his advantage to access extremely shallow water.
DeFoe found his winning area in practice, the first stop he made during the event. He theorized that the hot weather made the backwater creek so productive.
“All those major tributaries have cleaner water, and it’s also much cooler back there,” he said. “I honestly think that the extreme heat we had pushed more fish back in there, and it seemed like there were new fish in there every day.”
Fishing the extremely shallow, clear water, DeFoe caught several fish by visually casting to them with a Sooner Run-colored Bass Pro Shops Wacky Stik-O Worm with a VMC RedLine Neko Hook. Among his other top lures for the week for DeFoe was a green pumpkin-and-orange compact 3/8-ounce pitching jig.
2. Ron Nelson – 51-13 (23)
Ron Nelson continued his excellent 2025 season with a runner-up finish, his best since joining the Bass Pro Tour last season. He adjusted his approach on the Potomac based on the time of day, but vegetation was a key component all week as he bounced around to several areas daily.
“I started each day punching, flipping some, and could get 10 or so bites in the first period and land eight or nine of them,” he said. “I was fishing main-river stuff and targeting stopping points before the fish would migrate further into the creeks with the tides. It wasn’t a hot bite – just a steady bite – and you’d get into little groups of them.”
Nelson utilized a 1-ounce weight and black and blue Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver with a 3/O Owner Jungle Flippin HD hook for those fish. Another of his keys was fishing grass stretches with a 1/4-ounce custom-made black and blue swim jig with a Reaction Innovations Little Dipper on the back.
“My buddy Fletcher or ‘Bubba’ makes those jigs for me, and they’re hand-tied, and the lighter weight was key to keep it higher in the water column,” Nelson said. “Also, if one came out and flared and missed it, I could snatch it back out of there quickly and make another cast. I also caught quite a few on a green pumpkin black flake 5-inch Yamamoto Senko on a wacky rig.”
3. Bradley Roy – 44-11 (20)
In his first Top 10 of the season, Kentucky pro Bradley Roy stuck it out in Potomac Creek every day and alternated his approach based on the conditions.
“I decided to lock down in that area and do different things depending on the tide,” he said. “I thought that was a better approach than trying to run around to different sections of the river to catch certain tides. I caught most of the fish I weighed with a white and chartreuse 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer. I was fishing it everywhere – around docks, shallow grass, and laydowns, and the fish just moved a little bit further out as the water came out of the back of the creek.”
Roy also mixed in a drop-shot, buzzing toad, buzzbait and a handful flipping a beaver-style bait, but said the ChatterBait was the clear top producer. As far as what tide was best, he said it differed from what he was used to.
“We always talk about how good the low tide can be, but after four days of fishing, I decided that the high tide going out was the best this week,” he said. “The water back there was so shallow, I think the fish were more comfortable and easier to catch with a little more water on them.”
4. Cole Floyd – 43-11 (21)
Ohio’s Cole Floyd continued his hot streak with his fourth Top-10 finish in a row, and he did it with a shallow-water approach in Potomac Creek.
“I stayed there the whole time, fishing docks all week,” he said. “I had some other stuff I found in practice in different creeks that I thought I’d visit, but didn’t know how good my area was and never had to leave. I stayed there and caught them a little differently every day.”
With wind and overcast conditions early in the week, he caught fish on a 3/8-ounce Strike King Thunder Cricket (bruiser color) with a chameleon-colored Strike King Rage Bug on the back. During sunny conditions, he flipped the same Rage Bug on a 5/O Hayabusa round bend hook with a 3/8-ounce Strike King Tour Grade Tungsten weight. Floyd also mixed in a black frog around docks and shady areas when the sun was high.
5. Zack Birge – 41-9 (20)
Zack Birge won the Qualifying Round, automatically punching his ticket to the final day after catching 145-8 over the first two days. His pattern was simple; running creeks and covering water with a 3/8-ounce Z-Man/EverGreen ChatterBait Jack Hammer in ghost gill with a Missile Baits Spunk Shad in bombshell on the back. Another top producer was a 6-inch Strike King Cut-R-Worm in watermelon red on a 3/32-ounce weight and 5/O worm hook.
He fished several areas, but a smaller creek coming into Potomac Creek was his primary area, and he fished everything in front of him depending on the tide.
“On the high tide, it needed to be on docks and isolated structure like duck blinds and things like that,” he said. “As the water started dropping with the tide, they’d get on the edge of the pads and little grass lines along the creeks’ drop-offs. Any isolated wood still in the water was almost guaranteed to have a fish on it during low tide.”
6. Adrian Avena – 40-12 (20)
New Jersey pro Adrian Avena has plenty of experience on the Potomac and tidal water in general, and fished a good portion of the tournament boundaries chasing the different tides.
“It was a two-part approach – fishing grass on higher tide and then hard cover in creeks during the lower tides,” he said. “I utilized the whole river and kind of hodgepodged it with one fish here and one fish there. I caught a lot of fish on a black Berkley Choppo 90 on the top of grass during the high tide and then in the creeks at low tide. I also fished a 5-inch Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General in green pumpkin and black and blue, Texas- and wacky-rigged whenever I was in some cleaner water.”
A final bait he employed was a 1/2-ounce jig with a Berkley Stank Bug on the back.
“That was for all of the hard cover stuff; it could have been a laydown, boat dock, or duck blind,” he added.
7. James Elam – 36-7 (18)
James Elam secured his second Top 10 of the season and used a pile of different baits as he fished the south end of the competition boundary in and around Potomac Creek.
“I caught scorable bass on 11 different baits in the tournament, but it was four or five main ones,” Elam said. “I was just using them as different tools depending on the tide, the wind and what was in front of me. It was a junk-fishing event, for sure.”
Some of his top baits were a 3/8-ounce green pumpkin Z-Man/EverGreen ChatterBait Jack Hammer, a custom-made swim jig Elam pours with a Mustad hook, a shallow crankbait, an albino-colored soft plastic jerkbait and a 5-inch LIVETARGET ICT Stick Worm in blue purple. He rigged both soft plastic baits on a 4/O Mustad AlphaPoint Assault Wide Gap Hook.
“Each bait was better in different places, and some spots you could only catch them on one bait, it seemed like,” Elam said. “I caught them best this week on the outgoing tide from high tide to around three-quarters high. I didn’t catch them as well on the dead low tide because it was too slick and calm during our event, and it seemed like the fish didn’t get comfortable when it got that low.”
8. Keith Poche – 35-7 (15)
After winning at the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals James River event four days before this event, Keith Poche kept it rolling and led after the first day on the Potomac with the same pattern. He ran far up a creek in search of cooler water.
“When it gets hot like that, the bass pile into that stuff and there’s also a lot of bait in there,” he said. “It was clear back there, so I started out with a Berkley Swim Jig and fished fast. I also caught quite a few on a shaky head with a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General and pitching a Berkley Pit Boss. On those, it was green pumpkin some days, and black and blue was better on other days. I just rotated through those baits depending on where the fish were positioned during that time with the tide, flipping overhanging trees and swimming the jig down edges of the grass.”
As the tide dropped, Poche returned to key areas within the creek.
“They would pull out into these deeper spots and depressions, but it was tougher; they weren’t feeding much,” he said. “As the water returned, the fish fed better and would get into that grass and flooded stuff. The last day, the tide never got as high, which slowed the bite for me.”
9. Spencer Shuffield – 31-1 (15)
Spencer Shuffield has an affinity for the Potomac River and says it’s one of his favorite venues. He scored another excellent finish on the famed fishery, primarily with a rotation of different hard baits in several areas of the river.
“I caught them on several different baits, but most of my weight came on a black Yo-Zuri popper and a Yo-Zuri 3DR-X SR50 crankbait in shad patterns,” he said. “I was fishing the popper over shallow grass flats when the tide was high, then targeting the inside edges of grass when the tide would get lower. The crankbait was better when I was around groups of fish sitting in 5 to 6 feet of water during low tide.”
10. Keith Carson – 30-1 (14)
Fishing a discharge area in a creek off the Potomac, Keith Carson fished the current and caught a good portion of his bass by casting to fish he saw swimming.
“The water was really clear, and you can see them and flick it in front of them and they’d come over and eat it,” he said. “They were in that cool running water and cruising around. I’d also catch a few blind casting around until I saw one.”
His bait was a 5-inch Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General in baby bass that he wacky-rigged. Carson’s primary area was in the same creek as DeFoe’s, but he did explore other areas.
“I had some spots in different creeks, but the main thing all week was trying to find moving water from the tide,” he said. “I focused on pinch points and places where the tide would cause a little more current. The General was the main bait, but I also caught some on a Berkley Frittside 5 in Lone Ranger in some other areas.”