DECATUR, Ala. — It’s easy to throw around the word “powerhouse” in college sports, but in the case of the University of Montevallo Fishing Team, the superlative is starting to stick. On a blustery championship day on Wheeler Lake at the Abu Garcia College Fishing Presented by YETI National Championship Presented by Columbia PFG, Montevallo teammates Brody Robison and Peyton Sorrow methodically worked their way to a five-fish limit of 19 pounds, 14 ounces to lay claim to Montevallo’s second national championship trophy in three years.
Fellow Montevallo angler Nicholas Dumke (fishing solo), brought 19-4 to the scale to skate into second place, giving the Falcons a 1-2 sweep of the top two spots. The Montevallo team of Brent Godwin and Hunter Odom finished seventh for good measure.
Robinson and Sorrow finished the three-day event with 64-15, outdistancing Dumke (59-0), the McKendree University duo of Ethan Fields and Jaxson Freeman (56-10) and the Carson-Newman University team of Nicholas Dellaporta and Drew Pitts (55-14)
It was far from easy for the eventual winners, though. Shifting springtime conditions, fluctuating currents and an unproductive practice caused Robison and Sorrow to develop their patterns daily throughout the three-day event. The final day also brought a cold front and west wind that blew against the current, making for even more challenging conditions.
“I stayed pretty optimistic, even when we weren’t catching much,” Robison said. “This is my comfort zone, this TVA-style fishing. I’m familiar with the bite windows, and we’ve been doing a lot of fishing on the TVA lately. Going into the final day with a lead, it wasn’t what I expected right out of the gate, but I had optimism that it was going to happen.”
Sorrow, Robison not to be denied
Sorrow and Robison entered Championship Friday buoyed by a tournament-best 23-9 on Day 2. They left Ingalls Harbor with a 2-7 lead over John Berry and Blake Bullock of Blue Mountain Christian University, and a 5-5 cushion on Dumke, ready to pick up where they had left off the day before. But, as was the case on Day 2 when they caught their fish late in the day, the Montevallo pair took awhile to warm up.
They went fishless through much of the morning, catching one 12-incher before finally connecting with a keeper around 10:30 a.m.
“If you would’ve asked me at 10 a.m. if we were going to catch a bass all day, I probably would’ve answered ‘No, we’re probably not going to catch a single bass,’” Sorrow joked.
At around 11:30, they caught the fish that clued them in for the rest of the day – a 3-pounder that they plucked off of a stump in deeper water, a discovery that encouraged the Montevallo pair to shift their focus from shell beds in 3 to 5 feet of water to structure in 5 to 12 feet. They spent the rest of their time plinking a 5-inch gizzard shad-style minnow on a Queen Tackle jighead, gradually culling up to their final 19-pound bag while their fellow Falcons followed them around the lake, cheering them on.
“We’ve had some awful practices lately, but we keep pulling something off in the tournaments,” Sorrow said. “We have such a great support system with (their Montevallo teammates), and they challenge us to be better. Iron sharpens iron. We have all of these hammers on this team, and it was so cool today – we were out there in some pretty rough water, and we had five boats on us all day, cheering for us. They stuck it out all day in that rough water, that meant a lot to us.”
Dumke’s late flurry lifts him to second
Dumke entered the event as a solo angler with some confidence, having collected two Top 25s in as many Toyota Series events this year. His performance as a lone wolf was nonetheless impressive, considering that he had only seen Wheeler Lake once previously, shortly after arriving at Montevallo from Minnesota his freshman year. Dumke fished with 2025 Bassmaster Classic winner Easton Fothergill in high school and through Fothergill’s college eligibility at Montevallo, finishing second in the 2024 Natty and winning a College Fishing event with Fothergill on Table Rock that same year.
Entering the week on Wheeler, Dumke’s expectations were low, thanks to a practice that he described as “horrendous.” Like his Montevallo teammates Robison and Sorrow, Dumke’s whole tournament hinged on fish he located daily, and then returned to the following day.
“I had one spot that I rolled up to on Day 1 where a school was fired up, and things kinda unfolded form there,” Dumke said. “I found a couple of areas on Day 2 that I fished on Day 3. Every single day, I had maybe one or two areas from the day before that saved me, and those changed day by day or even hour by hour because of the current.”
Dumke caught the majority of his fish on a pro blue Rapala PXR Mavric 110 jerkbait and added a few on a CrushCity Freeloader on 1/8- and 3/16-ounce jigheads and a redbug CrushCity Janitor on a 1/8-ounce Neko.
Top 10 teams:
- Brody Robison and Peyton Sorrow – University of Montevallo – 64-15 (15)
- Nicholas Dumke – University of Montevallo – 59-0 (15)
- Ethan Fields and Jaxson Freeman – McKendree University – 56-10 (15)
- Nicholas Dellaporta and Drew Pitts – Carson-Newman University – 55-14 (15)
- Tripp Berlinsky and Bryce Dimauro – University of North Alabama – 55-6 (15)
- Cooper Gilroy and Hayden O’Barr – University of Alabama – 53-6 (10)
- Brenton Goodwin and Hunter Odom – University of Montevallo – 53-5 (15)
- Stone Smith and Drake Wadsworth – Northwestern State University – 53-1 (15)
- John Berry and Blake Bullock – Blue Mountain Christian University – 49-11 (13)
- Riley Faulkner and Szymon Piton – Carson-Newman University – 46-11 (14)