You’ve probably heard the words “Bassmaster Classic Bracket tournament” mentioned several times this week. What is it exactly?
It’s a brand new idea. The Top 8 finishers (listed below) at the Busch Beer Bassmaster Elite at Cayuga Lake will go head-to-head in a bracket format tournament on the Niagara River out of Buffalo, N.Y., July 19-22. The tournament will have $50,000 in prize money, and the winner is guaranteed a spot in the “Super Bowl of Bass Fishing,” the 2017 GEICO Bassmaster Classic.
The Classic Bracket will be streamed live on Bassmaster.com and will feature — for the first time ever in Bassmaster competition — catch-weigh-release scoring. That is, competitors will have their catches weighed instantly on the water by judges, and the bass will be released back into the water at the spots where they were caught. Only the heaviest five bass per angler will be counted. Fans will be able to keep up with the weights via BASSTrakk on Bassmaster.com.
Here are the top eight from Cayuga who will fish in the Classic Bracket:
- Kevin VanDam
- Jordan Lee
- Brett Hite
- Jacob Powroznik
- Koby Kreiger
- Keith Combs
- Dean Rojas
- Drew Benton