Camping and chasing checks: The nomadic lives of Brody Campbell and Chad Mrazek

On Oct. 13, Chad Mrazek finally made it home – if you can really call it that. Mrazek still lists his hometown as Montgomery, Texas, as that’s where his parents live on the shores of Lake Conroe. But Mrazek hadn’t been there since last Christmas. 

For nine and a half months, Mrazek and fellow Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit angler Brody Campbell had been crisscrossing the country, fishing tournaments at a breakneck pace. As they work to climb the professional ranks, the two Mercury pros have committed to spending as much time on the water at as many different fisheries as possible, sleeping in truck bed campers along the way. 

While it’s not uncommon for anglers to camp when they travel to tournaments, no one has embraced a schedule with quite as much travel as Campbell and Mrazek. Campbell fished 22 MLF events in 2025, while Mrazek fished 21 (the upcoming Toyota Series Championship on Grand Lake will cap the year with No. 23 and 22, respectively). No other boaters at any level of MLF competition will fish more than 20 on the season — and the three other pros who hit that mark (Drew Gill, Colby Miller and Keith Poche) will each fish two Fishing Clash Team Series events, where they don’t have to bring their own boats.

The commitment to, in Campbell’s words, living “full-on nomad style” has paid off. Campbell won twice and notched five other Top 10s in 2025, earning more than $225,000 in MLF competition. Mrazek broke through at the end of the 2023 season (his first year traveling nationally) by winning $200,000 at the Toyota Series Championship, and he’s continued to succeed since. He logged eight Top 10s in 2025 and cashed more than $133,000. 

As both anglers prepare to tackle similarly packed schedules in 2026, they discussed the benefits and challenges of life on the road. 

Logistical and financial hurdles

Mrazek started camping in his truck during his rookie season touring nationally on the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals, while Campbell – who hails from Ohio – has been venturing south for Toyota Series events since 2020. The two didn’t know each other prior to 2023, but after chatting at a few tournaments, they hit it off. When Campbell made his leap to the Invitationals in 2024, they decided to travel together. 

The two late-20s anglers view their lifestyle as a business decision, maximizing the amount of time they can spend both practicing and competing while minimizing costs. 

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Campbell said. “You can’t drive from Alabama and then have to go to Ohio for a week and then have to drive Maryland or wherever for a tournament. We’ll go to these tournaments – we’ll have one at Guntersville and might stay there and then stop at Pickwick and Chickamauga on the way to the next one. We’ll just kind of hit lakes on the way and kill some time, if we have any time in between (events).” 

Mrazek said having a companion on the road has been “money.” Not only can the two compare notes and bounce ideas off one another on the water, it also provides a safety net.  

“He’s had truck issues, I’ve had truck issues, camper issues, boat issues,” Mrazek said. “Everything has problems when you travel that many miles. So, having someone behind me just to help out is huge. There’s a bunch of instances where if it wasn’t for us being together, then we probably would have been in a pretty serious bind.” 

Both anglers raved about being able to see so much of the country and experience so many different fisheries over the past two years. However, living on the road does present some challenges, chief among them being where to sleep for the 300-plus nights a year they’re away from home. 

Most often, they park their rigs at campgrounds. Campbell noted that they’re starting to develop a network of friends who live near some of the frequent tournament destinations that can offer them a free place to park and access to household amenities. Mrazek also mentioned that a few other anglers and their wives who camped at Invitationals events have helped the pair out. He specifically shouted out Kyle Cortiana and Charles Abshire. 

“Their wives are super good to us,” he said. “If we have a tournament that Charles is there, his wife, Joni, she’ll bug us and beat it out of us: She’s like, ‘Make sure you leave your laundry at your door, I’m coming to get it. You guys don’t have a choice.’ She really helps out with that. That’s awesome.” 

Gear storage and organization present another obstacle. Mrazek has learned to plan his wardrobe far in advance, packing as few clothes as possible to get him through multiple seasons. 

“I leave the house in Texas in the wintertime, and I’ve got what I’ve got, and that’s what I’ve got,” he said. 

Tackle is an even bigger issue. Mrazek, who says he’s the more organized of the duo, keeps a few bins of tackle that he doesn’t think he’ll need based on the fishery or time of year in his truck so that his boat isn’t too cluttered. Campbell simply keeps all his gear for the year loaded into his Phoenix. 

“My Phoenix 721 stays loaded down with the fishing tackle,” Campbell said. “That’s kind of where all my tackle goes. My boat would be a lot faster if I didn’t, but I keep everything with me for the year.” 

Of course, both anglers are constantly needing to restock or try a new bait. Campbell said they frequently overnight shipments of tackle, having them delivered to friends’ houses, the local post office or even campgrounds – although that doesn’t always work out. 

“I had one order sent to a campground this year that I really needed that never showed up,” Campbell said. “So, you kind of do have some problems with sending it to random places. The post office is really the best bet. That’s kind of what we lean to now after getting burned a few times.” 

More than all those logistics, the biggest hurdle is paying for the whole road trip. Mrazek started the 2025 campaign with a bit more financial cushion thanks in large part to his Toyota Series Championship win. Still, he set out last winter with funding for only about half the season. Campbell estimated he started with money for a quarter of the year. Winning the first MLF event he fished – a Toyota Series event on Sam Rayburn in January that earned him $67,522 – took a lot of pressure off him.

“It’s nerve-wracking, it’s scary,” he admitted. “(Rayburn) was a major weight off my shoulders, because then I was free for the whole year. If that didn’t happen, we might not be fishing next year.”

The 2025 road trip route

Shortly after last Christmas, Campbell and Mrazek hit the road and rendezvoused in Florida. They spent about a month in the Sunshine State, mostly fishing on the Kissimmee Chain – the site of the first Invitationals event of the season. While there, Campbell won a local team tournament that earned him a welcome $15,000 payday. 

From there, they traveled to Texas, where Campbell won again on Sam Rayburn. Next stop was another Toyota Series event on Pickwick Lake, then a return to Florida, first for the Toyota Series event on Lake Okeechobee, then the Invitationals opener. They spent the next three months hopping around the Southeast. From the season-opener on Rayburn through a Toyota Series event on Lake Guntersville May 14-16, they competed in 15 tournaments in 17 weeks. 

While Campbell admitted to being “kind of a last-minute guy” when it comes to finding places to stay and rigging tackle for each event, both anglers said they take their preparation seriously even amid such a busy schedule. They try to spend time on each fishery before it goes off-limits (one of the perks of spending so much time on the road), and in the days leading up to competition, they’ll study maps and past tournament results. 

“Even if we have like a half-day or something to stop somewhere, I’ve just put the boat in and just graphed, like not made a single cast,” Mrazek said. “I think that’s really important. I’m a big grapher. I spend a lot of time behind the steering wheel idling.” 

With the arrival of summer, the schedule relented a bit, giving Campbell and Mrazek more opportunities to fish for fun and make a little extra money. After the Invitationals event on the James River in June, they spent the next two months in New York near either Lake Champlain or the St. Lawrence River. That gave Mrazek a chance to work with one of his sponsors, Candlewood Fishing Camp, taking youth anglers out on various fisheries in the Northeast. He also ran a few guide trips on the St. Lawrence. 

The extra time in New York earned Campbell some money, too, in the form of his Toyota Series win on the St. Lawrence. 

“I found a boulder back a couple months before the tournament, just out there fun fishing, playing around,” he said. “And I ended up catching a couple key fish off that same boulder.” 

The duo finally left New York around the start of September, driving to Wisconsin for the Invitationals Championship on the Upper Mississippi River. From there, they headed back east to the Potomac, then spent a week or so with Campbell’s family (where they jumped in a Phoenix Bass Fishing League Super Tournament on the Ohio River, because why not). The last stop on their tour was a return to Guntersville for the Ultimate Angler Championship. 

After that, both anglers finally headed “home.” They didn’t get too comfortable, though – they’re in Oklahoma now preparing for the Toyota Series Championship. They might squeeze in a few scouting excursions to fisheries on next year’s schedule before year’s end, too. When it’s all said and done, Mrazek estimated he’ll only spend about a month of the past year at his parents’ house. 

Lessons learned along the way

Campbell and Mrazek don’t plan on living out of their campers forever. Both hope to reach a point where they can make enough money off sponsorships that they don’t have to fish quite so many tournaments. 

In the meantime, they believe traveling is the best way to get there, and both are gearing up for another busy schedule in 2026. They’ll fish the revamped Pro Circuit with an eye on qualifying for the Bass Pro Tour and fill the gaps with Toyota Series events. 

“I don’t know how long I want to do the super hard schedule,” Mrazek said. “I think it would be nice to get into that Bass Pro Tour, and then I would be able to cherry-pick and slow down a little bit more. But as of right now, I’m definitely not where I want to be on a long-term basis. So, I’m just going to keep working toward that. And I think the best time to learn is in pressure situations, in games. So, just keep fishing as many tournaments as we can – that’s our plan.” 

Both anglers believe fishing so many new places across the country has prepared them to take the next step in their careers and succeed once they get there. Mrazek noted that they won’t go to many, if any, fisheries they’ve never laid eyes on before. 

“We might have a week and a half instead of a week until the next tournament, that’s like automatic – ‘Where are we going?’” Mrazek said. “’Let’s go kill some days somewhere we have to go next year or where we haven’t been yet.’ So, we’ve stopped in between at places like Lanier and Dale Hollow and places we weren’t scheduled, but we know we’re going to be there in the future.” 

Campbell said the experience has taught him that, while bass largely behave the same across the nation, there are always a few location-specific details that can get him extra bites – perhaps a specific color or way of presenting a bait.  

“Some of these bodies of water, I’ve noticed there’s different nuances of maybe the cadence of how you need to work your bait to get them to fire – say on the TVA versus a Smith Lake, where it’s spotted bass, they just act different,” he explained. “So, just learning how you need to work your bait to trigger these fish and what baits they fire on across the country has been invaluable.” 

The biggest lesson Campbell learned in 2025 was the importance of maximizing every opportunity. He wound up sixth in the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year standings for the Invitationals – just one point out of fifth place, which would have earned him an invitation to join the Bass Pro Tour. Mrazek wasn’t far behind in 12th. 

“I can look back on so many opportunities I had to make it; it almost makes me want to throw up,” he said. “Just one fish that I tried to boat-flip cost me the Bass Pro Tour. There’s 10 different times where I would have had that one point. So, it kind of makes me sick, and it made me realize going into 2026 how key one little bite is out there.” 

Breaking into the top five and earning a BPT invite will be the top priority for Campbell in 2026. But he’s not necessarily crushed that he has to spend another year living out of his camper. The “full-on nomad” lifestyle might not be his permanent plan, but he’s relishing the experience. 

“I live, eat and breathe bass fishing – and just a little bit of deer hunting on the side,” he said. “That’s all I really want. My ambitions are I want to be on that Bass Pro Tour; I want to be on that highest level, and this is the only way I know how to do it. I can’t work full time at a job and feel like I am showing my best abilities out there on the water. And I just love traveling. I love meeting new people across the country, going to local dive bars and meeting the locals and just seeing the country. The last two years have been just unbelievable. And it helps that we’ve been making some money to stay doing it.”