Gill and Robinson steal the show, run away with Summit Cup

Drew Gill and Marshall Robinson of Team Coign dominated the Championship Round, stacking up 69-11 on 38 scorable bass to claim the Summit Cup trophies. Photo by Rob Matsuura. Anglers: Drew Gill, Marshall Robinson.

November 22, 2024 • Joe Opager • General Tire Team Series

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY, Fla. — In a Championship Round field that included a former REDCREST champion, multiple Bassmaster Classic winners and three anglers with decades of experience living and fishing in Florida, it was a pair of young guns that ran away with the event. Representing Team Coign, 22-year-old Drew Gill and 21-year-old Marshall Robinson combined to catch 38 bass weighing 69-11 on Lake Garcia – more than double the total weight of second place – to win the Bass Pro Shops Summit Cup Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches.

The event was the fourth and final General Tire Team Series Presented by Bass Pro Shops event of the 2024 season.

“Oh my gosh, what a week,” an elated Gill said in his postgame interview. “It’s been a long week, and we’ve put in a lot of work: three different lakes, no practice. We came out here and got it done today and had an absolute ball. This lake was a super good time.”

Finishing in second place was Team Star brite, represented by brothers Bobby Lane and Chris Lane, who caught 23 bass weighing 31-7. Team REDCON1 – Skeet Reese and John Murray – finished in third with 13 bass weighing 31-3, while Terry Scroggins and Britt Myers, representing Team Lucas Oil, weighed in 12 bass totaling 21-6 to finish fourth.

Gill and Robinson bucked traditional Florida tactics, catching most of their weight with spinning tackle and drop-shots. Photo by Rob Matsuura

Lake Garcia represented the playing field for the anglers in the Championship Round, and like Headwaters and Stick Marsh earlier this week, typical Florida tactics such as vibrating jigs, lipless crankbaits and flipping and punching were expected to dominate. Gill and Robinson bucked that trend completely, pairing spinning rods and drop-shot rigs with forward-facing sonar to stack bass on SCORETRACKER® early and often.

The drop-shot accounted for all but two of the team’s scorable bass. It wasn’t just effective at generating numbers of bites, either – Gill landed the Berkley Big Bass of the day, a 4-7 largemouth.

“The deal for me, the last two days specifically, was the drop-shot,” Gill said. “I was throwing a 7-inch finesse worm on a 1/0 medium-wire drop-shot hook with a 1/4-ounce drop-shot weight. I was using a 14-pound test leader – a little bit over a foot – and throwing an upsized worm, which was really important. It’s been windy with adverse conditions, and being able to make precise casts and cut through that wind with the heavier weight, upsized worm and thicker leader but also (light enough) to help keep that bait falling nice and slow, allowing it to drift where it needed to go, was super important.

“We switched between a couple of colors – mainly green pumpkin and plum,” Gill continued. “It was a 1-2 punch for us. We came out and won our Knockout Round with this bait on Stick Marsh, and then came out here on Garcia. We fished the offshore sand flats and hydrilla clumps and looked for clean water and isolated targets. That was the deal for us today.”

On a fishery that is known for its plentiful vegetation, MLFNOW! host and western Florida native J.T. Kenney joked that the duo went out in the 30-minute ride around prior to the start of competition and located one of maybe three locations in the entire lake that could be fished in that style. That location was all that the two young anglers, known for being proficient with their electronics, needed.

“I knew right away from the start that we had made a good decision,” Robinson said. “We caught a couple early and we had the momentum rolling right away within the first 45 minutes. It kind of happened just like it did yesterday (in the Knockout Round) – we got out to an early lead and then just tried to maintain it and keep the pace.”

The win capped a dream 2024 season for Gill, who has now won at the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals, Bass Pro Tour and Team Series levels. While he led the way with 45-15 on 23 bass, Team Coign never would have made it to the Championship Round had it not been for Robinson, whose clutch catch with about 2 minutes left in the Elimination Round boosted the duo above the cut line.

From that moment on, there was no slowing down the two rising stars.

“We’d been talking about it all week – how badly we wanted to win this one,” Robinson said. “There were some really big names in this tournament, and to get the win today and get to bring one of these trophies home, it’s pretty sick. These trophies are huge, and I’m so pumped.”