As his first career day as a Toyota Series boater came to a close, Matt O’Connell got an unwelcome surprise.
O’Connell had decided to make the jump from fishing smaller, local events to signing up for all three tournaments in the perennially loaded Central Division in 2024. He figured it would offer a way to measure himself against some of the best anglers in the country without spending too much in entry fees or traveling too far from his Georgia home. His goals for the season were reasonable – earn a check in each event and qualify for the season-ending Toyota Series Championship.
However, when he arrived at the season opener on Lake Guntersville last February, he’d assumed that 45 anglers from each division qualified for the championship, as had been the case for Phoenix Bass Fishing League Regionals. As he waited to weigh his fish on Day 1, he found out that only the Top 25 in points would qualify.
“I was like, ‘Wait, it’s only the Top 25 that make the Toyota Championship? There’s 260 boats out here,’” O’Connell recalled. “And it kind of made me a little bit shaky.”
Turns out, that wouldn’t be a concern. Buoyed by a massive, 27-pound, 6-ounce bag on Day 2, O’Connell finished second at Guntersville – just 2 ounces behind eventual Toyota Series Championship winner Hayden Marbut. O’Connell would go on to finish 15th at Smith Lake and 13th at Lake Chickamauga en route to winning the Central Division’s Fishing Clash Angler of the Year title.
That AOY victory – earned on lakes he’d barely, if ever, fished against a stable of seasoned pros – might represent the crowning achievement of O’Connell’s recent hot streak. And that’s saying something. Across the past two years, O’Connell has racked up three wins and 17 Top 10s, including consecutive runner-up finishes at the BFL All-American. The only MLF boater who’s accumulated more Top 10s in that span is Bass Pro Tour superstar Drew Gill.
“I had only fished at Guntersville a couple times as a co-angler; I had never fished Smith Lake in my life, and I had never fished Chickamauga before,” O’Connell said. “So, that was the part that really blew my mind. Those lakes are all close enough that you get tons of guys that have tons of experience on all three lakes, and for me to show up and win an Angler of the Year in that division on three lakes that I really had no experience on was pretty cool.”
On the list of anglers with the most Top 10s in MLF competition over the past two years, many of the names surrounding O’Connell are burgeoning pros in their 20s, part of the much-discussed wave of young guns taking the sport by storm: Gill (19 Top 10s), Brody Campbell (14), Emil Wagner (13), Alec Morrison (11) and Paul Marks Jr. (11).
Based on O’Connell’s stats, it would be easy to assume he belongs in that same category. Nope. The 36-year-old represents a fishing everyman who didn’t compete in his first tournament until after college and works a full-time IT job, taking his laptop with him to multi-day tournaments so he can work from the road.
“I didn’t fish my first tournament until I was like 22 or 23,” O’Connell said. “So, I kind of got into it late compared to how most of these guys work now. By 22 or 23 now, you can be an absolute hammer.”
O’Connell got his first taste of tournament competition as a co-angler. From 2013-16, he competed out of the back of the boat in the BFL Bulldog Division. He fished a couple seasons as a boater from his old, 18-foot Triton in 2015-16, then went back to the co-angler side for three years.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, he found himself with more spare time, and he spent just about all of it fishing. His years as a co-angler had shown him the difference between boaters who were consistently successful and those who “tend to just go fish tournaments just to kind of get out of the house” – namely, time on the water. As O’Connell honed his craft, he also upgraded to a Phoenix 721 Pro XP with a Garmin LiveScope transducer. The new boat combined with the time he’d put in took his game to a new level.
“It took me about a year after I got the new boat to get in the groove,” he said, “and it really started rolling from there.”
In 2022, O’Connell finished second in the Bulldog Division AOY standings. That qualified him for a Regional on Lake Murray, where he caught the biggest bag of the event (19-13) on Day 2 and led entering the final day. While he ultimately lost by 1-2 to Carolina hammer Tyler Trent, he still qualified for his first All-American. O’Connell looks back at that event as the first time he truly believed he could win at a non-local level. He also discovered an affinity for multi-day tournaments and the preparation and strategy they require.
“I really figured out how much I enjoyed putting multiple days in and really getting to break places down,” O’Connell said. “Usually when you’re fishing just regular divisions of BFLs, I would go for a day that week, maybe two days, but you’re still just showing up and fishing a one-day tournament.”
O’Connell would carry that momentum into 2023. He won the Angler of the Year title in the Bulldog Division, finishing in the Top 10 in three of the five events. He finished second behind Wagner in the All-American on Lake Hartwell, then got some revenge a few months later when he claimed his first MLF win in a two-day Super Tournament on Hartwell, where Wagner finished third.
In 2024, not only did he pass his first Toyota Series season with flying colors, he continued to dominate locally, too. O’Connell won a BFL on Clarks Hill Lake, then won another Super Tournament on Hartwell. He once again finished second in the All-American, this time on an unfamiliar fishery, Tennessee’s Cherokee Lake. Over the past two years, he’s made more than $150,000 in earnings solely at the Toyota Series and BFL levels.
While O’Connell has mainly stuck in the Southeast, he’s experienced success on a diverse range of fisheries. He’s clearly mastered herring lakes like Hartwell, Clarks Hill and Lake Lanier; but he’s also excelled on the Tennessee River and smaller impoundments like Lakes Oconee, Sinclair and West Point, which are regulars on the Bulldog Division schedule.
O’Connell believes the key to his success has been identifying areas or patterns that suit the way he likes to fish. Forward-facing sonar prowess is a big part of his game (although he only has one LiveScope transducer on his boat), but his skillset is more versatile than just shaking a minnow. O’Connell likes to find bass on forward-facing sonar and target them either with big baits (he’s notched Top 10s using a glide bait, Alabama rig, hollow-belly swimbait and topwater plug) or finesse offerings like a hover rig, Ned rig or drop-shot.
“We have all these good lakes in Georgia, but we don’t really get a lot of great practice shaking a minnow,” O’Connell said. “The lakes here, for whatever reason, when it comes to that minnow stuff, are weird. … You can use forward-facing sonar, but you have to get extremely good at it, because there’s so many different species swimming around. There’s tons of hybrids, tons of stripers, you get catfish that act goofy. So, I think it’s allowed me to kind of learn some other angles with the forward-facing sonar. Guys in places where all they have to do is go throw a minnow at them every single day, they’re good with that, they can do that. But our lakes here, when I go fish Sinclair or Oconee, I really am not throwing a minnow hardly at all.”
Given how well his 2024 season went, O’Connell had hoped to take another step forward in 2025 and perhaps compete on a national tour. Life had other plans.
He’s expecting his first child in mid-March, right in the thick of tournament season, and getting married in October. Add in his job responsibilities and the fact that he doesn’t have a ton of sponsor support aside from a partnership with Australian tackle startup Cast Fishing Co., and O’Connell decided to compete mostly regionally again this year.
He’s signed up for the Toyota Series Central Division, but his baby’s due date is the same week as the event on Chickamauga. If he can’t fish Chickamauga, he’ll jump in two other Toyota Series events so he can try to qualify for the Championship on Grand Lake via the Wild Card.
“Fingers crossed (the baby) might come a couple weeks early,” O’Connell said with a laugh.
Since he won’t be able to move up to a national tour this year, O’Connell’s goal is to turn a few of his recent near misses into wins. While he’s not complaining about 17 Top 10s over two years, he’s come in second place five times. Three of those wins would have earned him six-figure paychecks – the type of break that might give him the financial cushion to try fishing full-time.
O’Connell did note with a wry chuckle that those three runner-up finishes have at least put him among good company. The guys that beat him – Wagner, Marbut and Marks – are among the hottest young anglers going.
“I’m on the cusp, I’ll put it that way,” O’Connell said. “It’s so hard to even get in position to get a top-three that you never know when you’re actually going to have a chance at winning something. … Maybe (this year) I’ll actually bust one of these big wins.”
The ultimate dream would be hoisting the trophy at the All-American, which is set for Arkansas’ Lake Hamilton in late May. O’Connell has never been there before. Given his recent track record, though, that’s no reason to count him out.