Scottsboro, Ala. – Through the course of the 2025 Bassmaster Opens and Elite Qualifiers, Alabama pro Russ Lane looked like an adult chaperone leading a school field trip.
On Nov. 15, when the three-EQ campaign concluded at Lake Okeechobee, Lane offered up the nine others who’d survived the gauntlet to graduate to the Elite Series a chance to toast their success. He motioned to the lakeside tiki bar and asked his fellow qualifiers to join him in a celebratory cocktail.
At that point, Fisher Anaya, the one angler who’d beaten Lane in the standings, had to call a time out. Like any good student, he needed a permission slip to fully participate.
“I have to ask my mom,” Anaya said, confusing the rest of the crew. “I’m only 19.”
It was a reckoning of sorts for Lane, who correctly figured he was at least twice as old as his fellow rookies-to-be. One day before the start of his second term on the Elite Series, sitting lakeside at Goose Pond Colony at Lake Guntersville, the Alabama pro couldn’t even remember precisely how old he is.
“I’m either 52 or 53, I don’t remember,” he said quietly. He was then reminded that he fished his first Bassmaster Classic 16 months before Anaya was born.
Lane’s own children, Jentzen and Jayce, both in their mid-20s, are more likely to fit in socially with the rest of the 2026 Elite Series rookies than Big Daddy. Indeed, even in terms of that categorization, Lane stands alone. His $1 million plus in lifetime B.A.S.S. winnings disqualifies him from competing for the Rookie of the Year title. He was one of the original Elite Series pros in 2006 and joins the seasoned anglers including Greg Hackney, Gerald Swindle and others, who were here when it started, left after the 2018 season, and then found a way to get back.
Lane admits that his departure was immediately preceded by results that reflected a bad attitude. Over the course of his final seven Elite Series events, he never finished in the Top 50, and three times finished 99th or worse. In his final Elite, on the St. Lawrence River, he finished a miserable 106th, ahead of only one other angler, and far behind many pros without his lengthy and solid track record.
Now, nearly seven years later, he’ll be back on the Elite stage, hoping that this season’s results are vastly different, and that he’ll be singing a different tune at the St. Lawrence when this season comes to a close.
He recognized that getting back to the success of his best years will first require a reevaluation of the game. A bass is still a bass, just as it was in 2006 or in 1906, but tournament fishing has changed irrevocably.
“The game is a chess match now,” he said. “It’s more intense and more complicated. I’ll need to learn the tendencies of the field I’m fishing against before I fully know how to compete against them.”
A Big Daddy renaissance will also need to come from within. The attitude that crushed his 2018 efforts needs to be exorcised and replaced with something at the other end of the spectrum. He recognizes that might only happen if he can understand that 2026 Russ Lane has different strengths – and potentially weaknesses – than 2006 Russ Lane. Fifty-three isn’t 33.
“It started at the Open at Rayburn last year,” he recalled. “I had been having casting issues for several years. I was flipping bushes and my bait would either end up in the top of the bush or 2 feet short. Randall Tharp suggested I get an eye exam. When I got back, I went. The doctor said it was so bad that I wouldn’t have been able to pass a driving test.”
Three weeks later he got Lasik surgery. Even that had a fishing angle to it – he told the doctor to dial in his vision to 60 feet, the length of an average cast.
“Now I see like a hawk and I can skip as good as I did back in my 20s,” Lane concluded.
Skipping like you’re a 20 year old is still in Anaya’s long-range future. He won’t hit that mark until this Elite season is over. He won’t be able to legally drink until he has two complete years under his belt, no matter what Lane offers to celebrate.
But then again, Anaya is just as fuzzy on age as Lane. After a certain number of trips around the sun the numbers just start to blend together, whether you’re 19 or 53. Asked how old his parents are, the young rookie speculated “upper 40s or low 50s.”
He may not be confident in those numbers, but he has every reason to be confident on the water. He’s been on the top pros’ radar for as long as he’s been able to fish tournaments. In fact, one of the most dispiriting occurrences of the young anglers’ career to date was coming in third in the youth state championship as an 8th grader – a tournament won by Oakley Howell, son of 2014 Bassmaster Classic champion Randy Howell, and younger brother of two-time B.A.S.S. winner Laker Howell. Indeed, all of the pieces on the chessboard are somehow interconnected.
Tomorrow, 19-year-old Fisher Anaya and 53-year-old Russ Lane will start and restart their Elite Series careers, respectively. They will both have an equal chance of winning both the tournament and the Bassmaster Angler of the Year race.
“Age is just a number,” Anaya concluded, but pounds and ounces separate the men from the boys, regardless of your year of birth.
