Elite

The Cast: Giant bass of Texas

Get your big bass fix with Texas-size catches on The Cast episode airing Jan. 11 at 9 a.m. on FS1.

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Captions by
Craig Lamb
Everything is bigger in Texas or so goes the saying. The proof is in the size of the largemouth inhabiting lakes large and small throughout the state. The legend and lore of Texas as a top destination for anglers seeking a personal best (PB) trophy largemouth began in 1986. 
Destiny was in the works when Lake Fork guide Mark Stevenson caught a largemouth weighing 17.67 pounds that he named Ethel. The largemouth caught in November 1986 became the first entry into the now 40-year-old program known as Toyota ShareLunker, with the entries used to produce genetically superior offspring in a scientific breeding program administered by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Photo: Texas Parks and Wildlife
In 2024, Lake Fork produced 109 ShareLunkers with 20 entries weighing 10-plus pounds. In February of that year, Toledo Bend went on a hot streak with 19 ShareLunkers, led by a 13.61-pounder. Also in 2024, Sam Rayburn gave up 25 entries, topped by a 13.79-pound largemouth. Pictured is the 13-pound ShareLunker Legacy entry caught from Lake Fork by Louisiana angler Mark Terrebone in 2018. Photo: Texas Parks and Wildlife. 
It’s no surprise that ShareLunkers are the most-sought prizes to be caught in Bassmaster Elite Series events held in Texas, with exception of the coveted blue trophy and $100,000 winnings. On some occasions, the bonus comes with a B.A.S.S. Century Club belt for topping the 100-pound overall weight. 
From 2019 through 2025, Lake Fork produced ShareLunker entries, Century Club belts and set records for the Elite Series. It started with a bang in 2019, when Brandon Cobb caught his PB weighing 11-1. Cobb won the event with 114 pounds, and earned a Century Club belt. 
Feast your eyes on this sequence of photos of Cobb’s double-digit catch. 
The Elite Series returned in October 2020 with Patrick Walters scoring the win with 104-12. The runaway victory came with a winning margin of nearly 30 pounds. Get your big bass fix with this sequence of Walters on his whopping Day 3. 
Walters cut his huge deficit to Livesay almost in half with this 9-5, and he continued to gain as his topwater bite heated up.
Walters added a 5-1, 5-14 and 6-5 to build a limit weighing 31-3 and earning another Century Club belt with 102-5.
The 2021 Elite held at the state’s crown jewel of big bass lakes produced an epic winning weight of 112-5 for native son Lee Livesay, also a part-time guide on Lake Fork. Runner-up and defending Lake Fork champ Patrick Walters had 102-5, while also scoring a second Century Club belt. 
Walters cut his huge deficit to Livesay almost in half with this 9-5, and he continued to gain as his topwater bite heated up.
Walters added a 5-1, 5-14 and 6-5 to build a limit weighing 31-3 and earning another Century Club belt with 102-5. At one point, he stood within a pound and half of Livesay and threatened to score back-to-back victories on Fork with another decent cull.
Carl Jocumsen earned the Phoenix Boats Big Bass bonus on Day 3 with this 9-5. It came just a week after the Australian was filmed catching a 10-pounder.
Jocumsen’s monster, brought into the weigh-in, helped him climb to 11th place, just ounces away from securing a Top 10. The day’s clearing skies produced 41 limits and 15 bags over 20 pounds, and the average fish weight went up to 3-11.
Brandon Palaniuk had 36-4 over the first two days before making a Day 3 charge behind this early 7-8. Two 5-pounders helped him to 23-13, but his climb from 35th fell just short of fishing the finale at 14th.
Clifford Pirch started 80th with a small limit and was suffering through the second day before he felt this lunker tug on his line. The 9-13, almost half his 21-15 limit, put him inside the cut. He had one of the 16 bags topping 20 pounds, after 36 big bags on the first day.
Pirch’s bass was the Phoenix Boats Big Bass of the day, and it held out as the largest of the tournament, earning him $2,000 in bonus money along with $10,000 for finishing 36th.
The 10 anglers went out on Championship Sunday saying it would take 30 pounds to win, a Dirty 30 as Seth Feider put it. Things got interesting early as Livesay, starting fifth 6-15 back of Brandon Card, landed two 3-plus bass to take the lead at 6:54 a.m. A minute later, Chris Zaldain busted a 5-6 to take the lead. He held the top spot for all of 19 minutes as Livesay took it over for good with this 9-2 at 7:14 a.m.
It’s hard to win on your home lake as an Elite pro, and doing it twice, back-to-back, is a monumental achievement. Lee Livesay did it, winning at Lake Fork in 2021 and again in 2022, this time with a winning weight of 113-11. 
Livesay caught 32 pounds on Day 1 (and didn’t lead), then 28-10, 27-5 and 25-12 on the next three days to seal the deal. The top four anglers earned Century Club belts, including runner-up Brandon Palaniuk with 102-2. 
Phoenix Boats owner Gary Clouse caught this 8-pound, 10-ounce largemouth relatively early on Day 1, when 85 of the 92 anglers filled five-fish limits despite strong gusts. The field caught 447 fish totaling 1,676-5 for an average weight of 3-12. It went down slightly on Day 2 to 3-10, then grew to 4-2 on Day 3.
Like he had in 2019, Chad Pipkens landed the Phoenix Boats Big Bass of Day 2 at 8-11. It was the exact same weight as his “new personal best” that helped Pipkens lead in 2019 with 62-14. This time, his 8-11 helped Pipkens build a 27-8 limit that pushed him up 28 spots to 11th. With his second limit under 20 pounds on Day 3, Pipkens missed the Top 10 cut that required 70 pounds.
Bill Lowen brought this 8-8 to the stage at the Sabine River Authority facility in his Day 1 limit weighing 24-12, good for 12th. Lowen followed it up with 20-6 before his best day of 26-3 that pushed him into Championship Sunday at ninth. Needing 28-15 to earn a belt, Lowen gave it a valiant effort but came up short with 96-12, good for eighth.
The 2024 Elite at Lake Fork was one for the books. All Top 10 Championship Sunday anglers earned Century Club belts, including Canadian angler Cooper Gallant. 
Trey McKinney’s 8-8 bolstered his Day 3 bag of 30-0, his smallest of the week. It included three fish just over 5 pounds, so with a cull or two, McKinney might have breached 100 pounds in three days. As it was, he led in his second Elite event with 97-5.
McKinney, 19, went into the record books as the youngest Elite winner, doing so as a rookie in just his second event. He racked up a winning weight of 130-15, with his worst day (if you call it that) producing a limit weighing a mere 30 pounds. 
Justin Hamner’s 11-7 largemouth lasted the entire season to win Phoenix Boats Big Bass of the Year. 
Japanese pro Taku Ito made the most of a midmorning 10-5, rocketing up the leaderboard. With a 7-12, 6-6 and 6-3, Ito added an 8-6 in the afternoon to fall just shy of a “Freaky 40” with 39-1. That ended up earning Ito a $2,000 bonus for the CrushCity Monster Bag of the event, but 22-9 then 17-6 saw him finish 21st.
Stetson Blaylock maximized his day with a best of 9-10. Along with an 8-6, 7-6, 6-10 and 5-6, the Benton, Ark., eighth-year pro brought in his best limit ever, 37-6 to stand second.
Amazingly, a near-repeat of the previous year’s accolades occurred in April 2025 at Lake Fork, where yet again the entire Top 10 finalists earned Century Club belts. And yet again, another Elite rookie won the tournament. This time it was Tucker Smith with a winning weight of 127-8.
Buddy Gross set off the Skeeter Boats Big Fish Alert (BFA) early on Bassmaster LIVE with this 9-11. In the weigh and release format, anglers could only bring in one fish measuring longer than 24 inches, but this fatty came up short. Gross did not as he also had 6-8 and a late 6-11 in his Day 1 leading limit of 33-9. The two-time Elite winner rode that to his first cut of the year; however, he dropped to 41st after not filling his limit the next two rounds.
Randy Howell brought this 8-3 “over” to the Elite stage, helping him weigh one of the 50 limits topping 20 pounds on Day 1. The veteran from Guntersville, Ala., stood 44th with 20-5. He added 18-15 and 17-10 to finish 43rd, and he moved up two spots to 52nd in the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year standings.
A Guntersville transplant from the West Coast, Andrew Loberg’s best was this 8-2 in a 23-0 limit. After a slow start, the 31-year-old rookie was looking to build momentum after a solid 15th-place showing at Lake Hartwell.
Rookie Emil Wagner brought in an 8-13 that bolstered his 27-4 Day 1 limit. With only 10-8 on Day 2, the 27-year-old from Marietta, Ga., dropped about a pound outside the cut to finish 52nd. After climbing to 31st in AOY with his ninth-place finish at Hartwell, Wagner fell back six spots.

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