Brody Robison is only the third Columbia PFG College Fishing Presented by Abu Garcia angler to make REDCREST, but at Bass Pro Shops REDCREST Presented by Mercury & Lowrance on Table Rock, he definitely added a highlight to the ledger. In 2024 at Lay Lake, Dalton Head finished 12th; then in 2025, Braylon Eggerding finished 39th at Guntersville. Last week at Table Rock, Robison finished 11th, missing out on a Championship Round appearance by tiebreaker.
Doing that well in the biggest event of the University of Montevallo angler’s career definitely qualifies as a success, especially when viewed from the outside. But for Robison, it also brought some missteps into sharp focus.
Near-miss gives Robison areas to improve
When the Qualifying Round wrapped up, Robison was tied by weight with Brent Ehrler but on the outside looking in to the Championship Round.
“Personally, I’m pretty upset with my performance, but I know I should be very grateful for that finish in that caliber of a tournament,” he said. “It’s just, I’m a competitor. I like to win. I had so many missed opportunities. It just wasn’t my time.”
In need of one more scorable bass, Robison had it on the line and then some.
“I had one in my arms – it was a 2-12, a spawning smallmouth I caught on Day 1,” he explained. “I rolled up on her, hooked her first cast, had her in my arms, full-on smallie scoop, and a wave pulled her out. My elbow dropped down, and she slipped out of my arm. Pretty brutal looking back now, but it didn’t feel bad then. I was catching them every cast.”
Of course, that one fish cost him, but there could have been other chances as well.
“I only needed one more bass, not just that day, but over the two days,” he said. “It definitely makes you rethink the whole tournament.”
As a newcomer to the every-fish-counts format, Robison thinks that there’s the most room for improvement on the strategic side of the game.
“The first day, I didn’t really know what I was going to do – that was a lack of preparation for that format,” he said. “In my head, I thought I could fish it like a normal tournament and kind of fish around for the first period before everyone got on a hot streak. But those guys start out on a hot streak. I tried to do a bait deal the first morning, and it completely burned me. I thought spawning smallmouth were my backup plan, but it turned out that should have been my initial plan.”
That scale of ‘hurry up and catch’ is something that Robison will have a better grasp of if he finds himself in another REDCREST or competing on the Bass Pro Tour down the line.
“It’s one of those deals where you’ve got to be part of it to understand what you should have done,” said Robison. “Everybody’s different. The way I practice for a tournament is I go check off boxes. I have a lot of ideas and go over water and rule out crazy ideas that were in my head. For that tournament, you need to practice every day as (if it were) the tournament, and you need to be landing on the highest percentage water every time you drop the trolling motor come tournament time. You have no time for running crazy ideas or weird little nuances. It has to be the best water you found every time you drop the trolling motor.”
Still a lot to be proud of
Despite a painful near-miss, Robison wasn’t far off the winning pattern, and he figured out a lot of the best things to be doing on Table Rock for the week. That, strategy aside, is a big part of tournament fishing.
“I love Table Rock; it’s very versatile and it seems very patternable,” he said. “It seems like when you get on a deal, you can stay on a deal.”
After trying unsuccessfully to ‘Scope fish on bait early on Day 1, Robison pivoted and put up four smallmouth in about 15 minutes.
“I just started running isolated stumps in 8 to 20 foot of water, throwing that CAST Fishing Co. Nova on a Ned rig, a shaky head and a Berkley Lab Series Minnow. I was just picking those fish off. If they wouldn’t bite first cast, I would roll on, because I had about 50 of them marked. I ran that deal the whole first period.”
After that, with his forward-facing sonar cut off, Robison transitioned to a cool largemouth pattern, fishing for spawning bass that he located on the fly.
“I was fishing 45-degree banks – areas I could make one cast with a bait that had significant draw power and cover the whole spawning column,” he explained. “So, I was running banks that I could have that coverage on, doing some sight fishing, but most of it was just blind casting and keeping an eye on my bait.
“I’d use something to pull them to the boat, and then break them down from there,” he said. “It’s a cool deal. I did it on Norfork freshman year in a college tournament, and I’ll be honest, in practice one day I had like 30 scorables doing it.”
Unfortunately, the pattern also showed Robison that he’d made another slight misstep.
“I thought I was really going to smash them,” he said. “But, the area of the lake I was in, I think they were finishing up spawning, rather than the area everyone else was, where the fish were getting in the heat of the spawn. By the tournament, a lot of my fish were turning into fry-guarders or making their way out.
“Day 2, I went the whole second period and only had one bass,” he said. “The last period, I started getting on transition banks and gizzard spawn areas, and that’s where I caught my last couple fish.”
It would have been easy for Robison to miss the adjustment on Day 2 and go down with the ship. Instead, he hung in there, putting the heat on the competition and finishing ahead of several seasoned pros.
All told, it was another big success for Robison and Montevallo angling.
“The whole thing was really special,” he said. “It’s a different feeling, blasting off next to all my heroes. And even being in the boat yard around those guys, it’s crazy. And that format, I had no idea how strenuous that was. I mean it – I’ve never fished that hard in my life. Props to those guys for doing it day in, day out, especially those guys like Jacob Wheeler and Drew Gill and Dustin Connell, who absolutely catch ‘em every time – that is insane. It was a super cool experience, and I’m very grateful to finish that high.”