The biggest event of the Major League Fishing calendar is almost here. Bass Pro Shops REDCREST Presented by MillerTech will take place Thursday through Sunday on Lake Guntersville. The sixth iteration of the championship will feature some unique wrinkles that set it apart from a normal Bass Pro Tour stop: a 50-angler field, no points and, of course, a $300,000 top prize. That means it could pay off to take a slightly different approach in crafting your Phoenix Fantasy Fishing lineups as well.
We’ve enlisted a handful of experts – including Alabama native Jesse Wiggins, who will compete in his fourth consecutive REDCREST – to share their picks and help you contend for a prize package of your own. Be sure to lock in your lineups prior to takeoff Thursday morning.
Jesse Wiggins, Bass Pro Tour angler and REDCREST qualifier
Flight 1: Ott DeFoe, Drew Gill, Alton Jones Jr., Michael Neal, Jacob Wheeler
The names are the explanations themselves. You can’t make a list of the best anglers in the world without these guys on it.
Flight 2: Mark Davis, Brent Ehrler, Bobby Lane, Justin Lucas, Jacob Wall
For this group, I went with a mixture of locals with some picks that may be a little bit more sneaky. Lucas and Wall live on the lake and should know where to look. As for the other guys, if there’s groups of fish spawning in areas, they can grind in there and steadily stack up weight.
Justin Onslow, MajorLeagueFishing.com senior content manager
Flight 1: Dustin Connell, Drew Gill, Hayden Marbut, Michael Neal, Jacob Wheeler
Flight 1 is absolutely loaded – no shade to Flight 2, but these guys might be my top five picks to win REDCREST 2025. You’ve got two-time winner Dustin Connell, who hails from Alabama and has finished outside the Top 10 just once at REDCREST. Then there’s Jacob Wheeler, who won at Guntersville on the BPT in 2023 and whose only real résumé gap is winning the big one (despite finishing in the top six in four of his five REDCREST appearances). Drew Gill is impossible to pick against right now. He’s on one of the most impressive heaters I’ve ever seen. And how about the qualifier from the Toyota Series Championship, Hayden Marbut? He just happens to have won the Toyota Series Central Division event at Guntersville last year to go along with six other Top 10s at Guntersville (his home lake, by the way) from high school fishing through the Toyota Series. Finally, there’s Michael Neal, a Tennessee River guy with several impressive finishes at Guntersville and four Top 10s in five previous REDCREST appearances. I mean, how do you pick just one of these anglers? Luckily, I get to choose all five.
Flight 2: Justin Cooper, Edwin Evers, Jake Lawrence, Justin Lucas, Jesse Wiggins
Flight 2 doesn’t have the “obvious” choices of Flight 1, but let’s not sleep on these guys. Edwin Evers is a REDCREST champion who finished sixth at Guntersville when the BPT visited in 2023. He knows how to show up for the big game. Justin Lucas, admittedly, hasn’t always finished great at Guntersville (though he’s never been bad there), but he lives in Guntersville, and you can bet he’s fired up for a championship event in his backyard. BPT rookie Jake Lawrence already has two Top 10s in three events this season, and he’s a Tennessee River rat (though his expertise tends to shine further northwest with a bunch of wins at Kentucky and Pickwick Lakes). Justin Cooper is my “gut” pick for this one – he’s got a win on the BPT already this year, and I just have a feeling he’s primed for big things in his first REDCREST appearance. To round out my five, I’m going with Jesse Wiggins. He hails from Addison, Alabama, and while he’s not as much of a Guntersville expert as he is at nearby Smith Lake (and they’re very different fisheries), he’s got experience with talent to back it up. A lot of question marks in this group, but a ton of upside as well.
Tyler Brinks, MajorLeagueFishing.com contributor
Flight 1: Matt Becker, Dustin Connell, Drew Gill, Hayden Marbut, Jacob Wheeler
Flight 1 was impossible! I struggled to decide on this one, but I feel like my team is as good as possible. You have to pick Wheeler, and Connell has a knack for REDCREST and could become the first three-time winner. Gill and Becker have also become must-picks for me based on their performance in recent years, but that meant I had to leave out Alton Jones Jr., another one of my go-to picks for Fantasy Fishing, if I wanted to include a sneaky pick. At least for me, the final pick came down to deciding between Hayden Marbut and Jacob Walker, two Alabama anglers who qualified at lower levels to fish their first REDCREST. Ultimately, I went with Marbut, who has been very impressive on Lake Guntersville. This group has no bad Fantasy squads no matter which five you choose, so I went with my gut.
Flight 2: Luke Clausen, Jake Lawrence, Justin Lucas, Jeff Sprague, Jacob Wall
Although still stacked, I had less stress picking this group and went with a few picks that could separate me from the pack. First, I chose Clausen, who already has Bassmaster Classic and Forrest Wood Cup titles. This is only his second REDCREST, and he finished second to Bobby Lane on Grand Lake in one of the most memorable finishes in Bass Pro Tour history in his first appearance. He appears to step it up on the biggest stage, which fits for this event. Lawrence is a threat anywhere on the Tennessee River. Lucas and Wall uprooted from the West Coast and now live by the lake. Sprague is due for his first big win. I think this could be the perfect time for him to put it all together for an entire event.
Mitchell Forde, MajorLeagueFishing.com managing editor
Flight 1: Drew Gill, Alton Jones Jr., Nick LeBrun, Hayden Marbut, Jacob Wheeler
As everyone else has noted, Flight 1 is stacked – there’s several guys I left off my lineup who I wouldn’t be remotely surprised to see lift the trophy. That said, until they give me a reason to think otherwise, Gill, Jones and Wheeler are automatic picks for me. Of everyone in the field, I think Jones and Wheeler are most due to win their first tour championship. Marbut has been dominant everywhere of late, but especially on Guntersville and the rest of the Tennessee River. I’m a little nervous about the fact that this will be his first every-fish-counts event and that the forward-facing sonar restrictions might hamper him, but we saw Dalton Head use local knowledge to overcome the learning curve a year ago, and I expect the same from Marbut. Lastly, I like to try and include at least one name in each group that I think perhaps not everyone else in the world will pick, so that’s LeBrun. It’s admittedly not much of a reach – he won at Guntersville in 2022 and is always a threat when fish can be caught shallow.
Flight 2: Mark Davis, Nick Hatfield, Justin Lucas, Ron Nelson, Jacob Wall
I get the sense that Lucas and Wall spend a lot of time on Guntersville – perhaps more than any of the other full-time touring pros who live on the lake. So, even though this is a time of year that doesn’t figure to offer a huge home-lake advantage, I’m betting they’ll have something sneaky up their sleeves. My last three picks are a bit more creative. Davis has had an awesome start to the season, and I think this event could be right up his alley, allowing him to find a zone with spawning fish and methodically pick it apart. Same goes for Nelson – even if he can’t see them, he’s one of the best in the game at catching spawners. Finally, Hatfield has always been strong on the Tennessee River. He finished second to LeBrun in that 2022 Pro Circuit event and fifth on Pickwick in the same season. Plus, both him and Nelson made the Top 10 at REDCREST last year, so they shouldn’t be intimidated.
Drew Kuebler, MLF account executive and former Bellarmine University angler
Flight 1: Drew Gill, Alton Jones Jr., Hayden Marbut, Jacob Walker, Jacob Wheeler
Flight 1 is LOADED with anglers I suspect to be strong contenders for the REDCREST title. Luckily, I’ve got some angling experience myself on Guntersville in April (including a Top-25 finish that qualified me for the 2022 Abu Garcia College Fishing National Championship), so I have a general idea of how things could unfold. To begin, Gill is one of the hottest anglers in the country right now, and has proven this year he can catch them a wide variety of ways. On top of his Stage 3 win on Lake Murray and the unbelievable fact that he’s six-for-seven on 2025 Top 10s in MLF events, Drew (Gill) beat Drew (me) in the aforementioned 2021 College Fishing event on Guntersville. Next, Jones and Wheeler are staples on the Bass Pro Tour, and both had Top 10 REDCREST finishes in 2023 and 2024. To be bunt, you’re just plain silly if you don’t include these two guys in your lineup. Rounding out my Flight 1 selections, Hayden Marbut and Jacob Walker are two up-and-coming Alabama anglers who have previous success on Tennessee River impoundments. I’m really excited to see these guys compete in the every-fish-counts format. My honorable mentions for Flight 1 include Matt Becker, Dustin Connell, Ott Defoe, Michael Neal, and Andrew Nordbye.
Flight 2: Brent Ehrler, Nick Hatfield, Jake Lawrence, Justin Lucas, Jacob Wall
The Flight 2 lineup was a bit trickier to choose from, but let’s start with an immediate lock in Wall. He started 2025 red hot with back-to-back Top 10 finishes, and while he stumbled at Stage 3, Guntersville is the Oregon transplant’s new home lake, where he’s seen a ton of recent success. Sticking to the trend of locals (and West Coast transplants), Lucas also calls the shores of Guntersville home, and I think 2025 could be the year he notches his first Top 10 in REDCREST. Next up, let’s talk about the two picks that could make or break it for me – Ehrler and Hatfield. Ehrler is a consistent angler who’s due for a big win, and Hatfield is two-for-two on Top 10s in pro-level MLF championships (ninth at REDCREST 2024 and seventh at the 2022 Pro Circuit TITLE). Rounding out Flight 2 is someone who’s really impressed me so far this year in Lawrence. In his Stage 1 travel vlog on YouTube, The TVA hammer admitted he was worried about how competitive he would be in the Bass Pro Tour format this year, but the Tennessee pro has looked just as sharp so far as he did in MLF5 events in recent years. I expect a Top 10 out of him this week. To conclude with some honorable mentions from Flight 2, Zack Birge, Edwin Evers, Keith Poche and Spencer Shuffield could all be sleeper picks.
One more thing: If you’ve made it this far, you’re in luck! I have a prize for the first person to find me and mention this article to me at the REDCREST Outdoor Expo this weekend. I’ll have my name tag on – good luck!