60 pounds of bass gets Neubauer into fall championship event

Having already qualified for one national bass fishing event coming up this May, 17-year-old Grant Neubauer of Medford qualified for another major event in October with his seventh-place finish at the 2025 Mercury B.A.S.S. Nation Qualifier at Pickwick Lake held March 1214.

Pickwick Lake is a nearly 50-mile long reservoir on the Tennessee River covering about 47,500 surface acres when full in the summer. In this tournament where largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass were the legal targets, Neubauer caught 61 pounds, 10 ounces worth of smallmouth bass to comfortably put him among the top 17 spots needed to qualify for the 2025 Mercury B.A.S.S. Nation Championship, which will be held on the Mississippi River in the La Crosse area Oct. 22-25.

“I was pretty stoked,” Neubauer said last week. “I didn’t expect it. I’d never fished a Bassmaster event in my whole life. My practice was pretty bad the whole week. I didn’t expect anything good out of it. But I got into the tournament and just was really consistent, about 20.5 pounds every day.”

Neubauer weighed in the limit of five fish each day of competition, which equated to an average of about 4 pounds per fish.

Last October, Neubauer placed sixth in the Great Lakes regional championship in Phoenix Bass Fishing League, which is part of the Major League Fishing circuit. That was held on the Mississippi River at the Quad Cities. His finish qualified him for the All-American event May 29-31 based at Hot Springs, Ark. The All-American aims to showcase the nation’s best grassroots weekend anglers and offers a top prize of up to $120,000 cash to the winner. The B.A.S.S. Nation Championship in October offers a $50,000 first-place cash prize and the winner gets a spot in the Bassmasters 2026 Elite Series and new boat. Secondand third-place finishers earn paid entry fees for all divisions of the St. Croix Bassmaster Opens with the opportunity to qualify for the Elite Series.

The Pickwick Lake event was based out of Florence, Alabama and included 150 entrants angling. Dylan Nutt, a junior at the University of North Alabama won it with a three-day total of 77 pounds, 6 ounces. His catch consisted mostly of largemouth bass. It was the third tournament he’d won on Pickwick in about a month. Nick Dumke, a University of Montevallo senior, was second at 75 pounds, 12 ounces.

Neubauer said in the four days of practice leading up to the tournament, he and a professional friend Doug Chapin, a former Wisconsinite who now lives in Guntersville, Ala., had early trouble finding fish, but things picked up once the competition began.

“We just kinda worked together and we didn’t find any fish,” Neubauer said. “Really it was just eliminating water. I went into the last two days of practice with a clear mind and just went out there and fished what I usually fish. You can get really stuck up out there. It’s a big body of water. You can completely go fish something you’ve never done, go in the middle of nowhere and just cast and not catch anything.”

Ultimately, Neubauer said he just used his experience fishing Mississippi River currents to work, and it paid off. He worked around some bluff walls and worked off the current pushed by Wilson Dam.

“All the current comes through that and blows a bunch of bait fish and creates all kinds of food for the fish,” he said. “They’ll just sit behind rocks and eddies and all the stuff where they’re not sitting in the actual heavy current and they’ll just jump out. You’ll see them even do it at your bait. They’ll jump out, grab it and go right back down.”

Neubauer was in 14th place after day one at 20 pounds, 10 ounces. He had one less ounce of fish on day two, but ranked 10th for the day. He had the eighth-best day-three haul at 20 pounds, 7 ounces. Unfortunately, he never found the big largemouths that the top finishers did, but, limits of 4-plus pound smallmouths didn’t have him complaining.

“Up here I go to the Mississippi River a lot,” he said. “I fish a lot of current and I’ve won quite a bit of money there. So I figured I would fish something as similar to that as I can and just hopefully make something work.”

While finishing up his senior year of high school, seeking sponsorships and planning tournament and practice fishing trips, Neubauer said having some early success against pros in their 30s and above and some of the nation’s top college anglers certainly is a confidence booster as he chases his professional fishing dream. It all started with fishing local lakes like Miller Dam Flowage and Otter Lake, fishing local tournaments with his uncle and expanding his range to waters like Lake Wissota and the Mississippi River.

“A lot of people are 30s-plus,” Neubauer said. “A lot of these guys are full-time pros in these events. There are still a couple of younger kids that are doing exactly what I’m doing. A lot of the college kids are good. They learn so much and they get to fish all different bodies of water.

“I have a lake in my backyard so I’ve fished since I was really young,” he added. “My uncle helped me out. I got into a couple of tournaments with him. We were pretty good back then. We won a lot and kinda got me into it. We split ways, my dad bought us a boat and we started fishing together. Once I was 16 that’s when you can start fishing legally in the big stuff.”

From fishing as a youth to expanding his knowledge as a teen, Neubauer said when it comes to bass fishing, it ultimately comes down to keeping his approach fairly simple.

“It’s more of a confidence thing in yourself,” he said. “You could legitimately throw any bait out there as long as you’re confident in it. As long as you’re focused and confident in your ability, you can catch them any way you really want. On Pickwick I wasn’t confident the first two days, I was fishing how everybody else said they were going to catch them. Then I went out and fished my own way and settled down.

“You’re fishing for a bass. It’s not like you’re doing anything crazy,” Neubauer added. “You’re fishing for a fish. Bass are everywhere. You just have to fish them and stop worrying about what everybody else is doing. You can really get caught up in the 150 guys that fish for a living. They’re making all of this money doing it, fishing for a living and I’m just a 17-year-old from Medford. But you just have to fish the fish instead of fishing against the competition.”

Included in his fast-filling schedule for the spring and summer are a trip to Arkansas to prep and practice for the All-American and some scouting visits to La Crosse. The October B.A.S.S. Nation event will be held on Pools 7, 8 and 9 on the mighty Mississippi.

“You just never really know, especially on a river like that,” he said. “The La Crosse area changes so much, just with how heavy the current is. The water levels change. Roots will get pulled up and there will be new rocks. It’s always different. I plan to go down there as much as I can. The ice just got off the water, so we may go out there and not even fish, just look around and try to find stuff. You could fish there 100 days in a year and really not learn that much. I’ll be using my graphs and finding stuff, like humps and rocks.”