WALKER, Minn. — It was a nearly cloudless day in northern Minnesota, but Brody Robison and Peyton Sorrow returned to weigh-in on Championship Saturday of the 2026 Strike King Bassmaster College National Championship at Leech Lake presented by Bass Pro Shops soaking wet.
Leech Lake was angry Saturday, and the waves created by gusty northwest winds battered the tournament leaders all day long. They weren’t the biggest waves they had ever fished in, but they were the most punishing.
“If you took your eyes off the (Garmin) LiveScope, you would get very scared,” Sorrow, a senior, said.
Drenched in lake water, the feeling of not having done enough washed over them as they tied up to the dock. But when the scales closed, one key cull late in the day proved to be enough for the University of Montevallo duo to achieve their ultimate goals for the season.
In wire-to-wire fashion, Robison and Sorrow hoisted the National Championship trophies in front of an impressive crowd in Walker, Minn., accumulating a three-day total weighing 61 pounds, 3 ounces to outlast McKendree’s Ethan Fields and Lane Stephens by 9 ounces.
“I’m in disbelief. I can’t believe this is happening right now,” Sorrow said. “This is what everyone in college fishing works towards and the fact that we get to experience this is unreal. It was grit and determination all day. We gave it our all.”
Targeting strictly smallmouth, the multi-year teammates opened the tournament with a limit weighing 24-1 before landing 20-8 on the second day. With the wind pounding several of their best areas, Robison and Sorrow struggled, but caught 16-10 to seal the deal.
Along with the $5,000 first-place check, Robison and Sorrow claimed their spot in the 2026 College Classic Bracket, a head-to-head format that will send one College Series angler to the 2027 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour as well as the 2027 Turtlebox Bassmaster Opens presented by Battery Tender with use of a fully-rigged Nitro Boat and Toyota Tundra.
“I didn’t think we had it, for real,” Robison said. “At the beginning of the year, we wrote a goals list on a piece of paper and winning this tournament and making the Bracket were on that list. We were able to knock it out in one swing. It is pretty cool to see it come to fruition.”
For Robison, this will be his second time competing in the Bracket while Sorrow will get his first crack at the unique derby.
Although largemouth are prominent in shallow vegetation and rice in Leech Lake, Robison and Sorrow knew this event would be won with either all smallmouth or mostly smallmouth. Neither Robison or Sorrow had much experience in northern waters, but spent several weeks during the summer in New York practicing in conditions similar to what they faced in this tournament.
During official practice, they used their side scan to look for the best looking habitat, discovering the bigger smallmouth were relating to very specific boulders across the lake. Primarily, taller boulders with sharper corners were the most productive, but in heavy waves, shorter boulders tended to hold the best smallies.
“We were focusing on square-shaped rocks that had more crevices in them for crawfish to hide,” Robison said. “Circular rocks would just produce a smaller caliber of bass. As the waves got bigger, we had to find shorter rocks. We had around 300 rocks marked and we had to filter through them until we found the right ones.”
Their strategy required a run-and-gun approach that took them all over Leech Lake.
“Once the tournament started, we wanted to drop the trolling motor in the most productive water as fast as possible,” Sorrow explained. “We ran around and hit every corner of the lake and dropped the trolling motor where we thought we could catch the biggest bass. Efficiency was the name of the game.”
“High percentage dragging” A Beast Coast OW Sniper Jig paired with either a Berkley Flat Worm or a CAST Fishing Co. Nova Neko Worm trailer proved to be the most efficient technique of the week. Occasionally a smallmouth would eat it on the fall. In calmer conditions, the jig needed to land on top of a certain rock while in rougher conditions it could land within a few feet of a rock.
In the wind, they tied their jigs to 15-pound fluorocarbon, which allowed the bait to fall faster, and 17-pound fluorocarbon in protected areas.
Robison and Sorrow started in what they felt like was their best area, but the weather made it incredibly difficult, and eventually impossible, to locate smallmouth effectively. The bites they did get were not nearly as big as they anticipated either.
“We had two bass around 10:30 and they weren’t very big,” Robison said. “We ended up getting one more there, but it got to a point we couldn’t navigate with the trolling motor. We made a gut decision to run way up north. It wasn’t protected, but we could at least fish a little more effectively.
“It was some of the most ridiculous fishing conditions,” he added. Because of the geography of the lake, waves were coming from multiple directions. It was reckless.”
As time dwindled, Robison and Sorrow filled out their limit and made two small upgrades in their new region. While they didn’t improve their weight by much, those two upgrades turned out to be the winning fish.
“We made two 4 ounce culls, and it was decided by 9 ounces. Those gut decisions, you have to roll with them,” Robison said.
Fields and Stephens caught the second biggest bag of Championship Saturday, a limit of smallmouth that weighed 19-14 to bump them up to a three-day total of 60-10. As their remarkable Day 3 unfolded, Stephen’s had a feeling missed opportunities earlier in the tournament were going to come back to haunt them.
“It wasn’t for a lack of effort, but we had a handful of missed opportunities this week. You can’t win a derby of this caliber when you lose good fish. We made good decisions, but it wasn’t meant to be for us. We gave it one heck of a run.”
The McKendree duo spent the first two days of the tournament targeting big boulders holding better than average smallmouth in less than 8 feet of water with a Big Bite Baits Rollerama rigged on a 3/16-ounce jighead. The heavier jighead didn’t give the smallmouth much time to think about biting, creating more of a reaction strike.
When the wind battered their shallow boulders on the final day, they scanned deeper water they had never fished before and found a section of rock in 12 to 14 feet of water with big smallies. The jighead minnow produced again in deeper water while a Ned rig added a key fish.
“Today we scanned right away and caught two big ones to get the day going,” Fields said. “We thought then we might have a chance. It was a long, stressful day. We had five keeper bites the entire day.”
Fishing his first ever National Championship, RJ Sanger IV notched a third-place finish with a three-day total of 55-8. Targeting largemouth, Sanger opened the tournament with 16-9 before jumping into the Top 10 with a limit weighing 18-1. He saved the best for last, bringing in five green fish that weighed 20-14, the biggest bag of the final day.
“Being from Florida, I have so much experience fishing grass,” Sanger said. “Then on my first day of practice my transducer went out. So I just stuck to what I know. I was being slow and methodical picking apart what I knew had bass in it.”
Much of the tournament, Sanger targeted reedlines and other emergent vegetation around The Narrows with a Berkley Swamp Lord. At the end of Day 2 and then again on Day 3, one small patch of hydrilla in 10 feet of water produced several 5-pounders and carried him towards the top of the leaderboard.
He flipped that grass with a Rapala CrushCity Cleanup Craw with an ounce and a half tungsten weight.
Montevallo’s Peyton Harris and Dalton Head caught the Big Bass of the Tournament, a 6-0 smallmouth they landed on Day 2.
The overall Team of the Year standings are official. Stephen F. Austin’s Ben Burns and Grant Pursifull finished first with 978 points while Robison and Sorrow finished second with 960 points.
Burns and Pursifull earned their spot in the 2026 College Classic Bracket by winning the Legends Trail division while Robison and Sorrow earned theirs with a victory today. That means Scooter Ligon and Logan Fisher, who finished third in the overall points, claimed the final spot in the Bracket and will join Lunkers Trail champion Anderson Jones in the unique event.
Details for the Bracket will be available in the coming weeks.
The Leech Lake Area Chamber of Commerce hosted this event.