I thought back to being a high school angler when I was younger and wishing I could have taught myself some of the fundamentals of fishing with a partner, because those fundamentals can truly set a team up for success.

There are so many things you can do to maximize your chances of catching more fish during a tournament with a partner, and I didn’t really realize that until I started paying close attention to angler footage from team circuits like the Alabama Bass Trail and other team championships. You can also see this dynamic unfold in college anglers, because nowadays collegiate anglers are as well seasoned as some of the anglers you see on the pro trails.

Maximizing teamwork on the boat comes down to a few simple strategies that help both anglers grow and maximize potential. In this article, I’m going to cover some of the most important techniques, from the most practical basics to a few more advanced team dynamics.

Power dynamics

Let’s be honest. When you are fishing with a partner you’ve never fished with before, or even a partner you’ve always fished with, there can be a lot of unspoken tension if you don’t have open communication.

It seems like there are a lot of situations where partners don’t have great synergy because they don’t have a fully established power dynamic on the boat.

Let’s say you’re on a team and one angler has a couple more years of experience, plus some hardware that establishes them as the more experienced angler. If that’s the case, you might want to have them lead the two-person team. They are most likely going to have a more accurate cast, better decision-making skills, and a stronger understanding of fish behavior and the lake you’re fishing.

Even if you’re a team of beginners with similar skill levels, you still need to establish who is the team leader. That way, if you reach a split decision on tournament day and have conflicting opinions, that captain can make the final call and keep the team moving efficiently with fewer roadblocks.

If you are a Junior or High School angler, you can also make your adult boat captain the decision maker. However, I still recommend taking on this process yourself, because as much as you can learn from a boat captain, there comes a time when you need to take the decision-making on yourself.

That’s how you learn tournament fishing more intimately, and it also allows you to feel the full reward of success when you do well. Trust me, a team that creates and executes their own plan and has success will be much more accomplished and driven than a team that relies on a boat captain to make every decision. I have experienced this firsthand.

I would also recommend having a conversation with your boat captain ahead of time, letting them know you want to take on more responsibility, just in case they disagree and mistake it as disobedience or disrespect.

Finances

This one can be a touchy topic for some people, especially if you’re rocky in your finances (we have all been there). But you need to understand teamwork is a 50/50 exchange.

It is customary for every angler to split expenses down the middle, including:

• Gas
• Baits needed for that weekend
• Boat snacks
• Lodging
• Entry fees
• Any cost related to the tournament at hand

The only exception is that a co-angler is not responsible for boat financing costs, insurance and oil.

This half-and-half rule applies to both practice and tournament days.

In the same way you split costs, you will also split earnings. This includes tournament winnings, contingency money and even contingency earnings for the type of boat the tournament was fished in. This does not include personal sponsorship benefits an individual has, or any personal earnings someone makes outside of the team tournament format.

I’ll warn you now: if any of these financial aspects are out of balance, it will affect the way a team member fishes and the psychological synergy between two anglers. You might also gain a bad reputation for not being able to carry your weight as a teammate, which can hurt your reputation in the team circuit world.

If you are going through financial hardship, you may be able to negotiate with your partner if both sides agree.

Practice

Practice begins with research first and foremost, and a team should come together and do research together. I want to emphasize “together,” and here’s why:

When you do research separately, you form your own ideas and opinions about a lake, and those views are most likely going to be slightly different than your partner’s. Then you have to spend time filling your partner in on why you feel that way, and that takes up a lot of time when you’re actually on the water trying to practice.

It’s better for a team to be on the same page and see where both anglers are getting their information so everyone is aligned before you hit the water.

On-the-water practice

Your best approach is often to break down water using two separate boats so you can cover more surface area and gather more information. If you take this approach, it’s also important to frequently update your partner throughout the day. That way you maximize efficiency.

For example, say you’re fishing the north end of a lake and your partner is staying south. Halfway through the day, you might discover that a jerkbait on bluff walls is not only catching a lot of fish, but bigger fish, and that some bluff walls are better than others. If you don’t tell your partner as soon as you realize it, they might spend the rest of the day fishing unproductive areas with unproductive baits when they could be finding more bluff walls that will be productive on tournament day.

If you’re practicing out of one boat

If you’re practicing from one boat together, a good strategy is to find an area of the lake with a lot of diversity. You want to be able to hit docks, bluffs, creeks, points, rocks, bridges and ledges without making long runs, so you spend more time with your lure in the water.

If by the end of the day you find the rocks at a certain depth and water temperature were holding the most fish, then you can dedicate another day of practice to areas of the lake with similar rocks, similar depth and similar water temperature.

Game plan and communication

Once practice is over, it’s a good idea to sit down with your map and come up with a game plan. It’s always good to have two different game plans in case you run into issues.

Example game plan

Plan A: Fish the areas of the lake with rocks in 6 feet of water with a crankbait and parallel the rocks.

Plan B: If they aren’t biting on the rocks and we haven’t filled a limit by 10:00 a.m., switch to fishing docks with swim jigs and wacky rigs to fill a limit.

If neither Plan A nor Plan B works, and the weather conditions are completely different from what you expected, then you go into adaptation mode and start fishing the conditions. You might even be so dialed into the lake that your team leader wants to try something completely different from what you practiced, as long as it’s logical and you’ve tried everything else.

A really effective way to stay organized is to divide your day into time zones.

Example time zones

• Morning: Go into the backs of pockets with a buzzbait and try to get a topwater kicker during the prime topwater bite
• 8:00–10:00: LiveScope the mouth of a creek that held fish and fill out a limit
• 10:00–12:00: Fish docks while the sun is at full brightness
• 12:00–Weigh-in: Fish rocks with crankbaits the rest of the day, and hit the bridge on the way back to the ramp

Dividing your day into time zones helps with efficiency and keeps you from spending too much time in your head wondering how long you should stay in an area if you aren’t making progress.

And of course, if the plan isn’t working, you can always override the schedule. Trust me, it’s a lot more fun going in with a plan and adjusting as needed than going into the day fully on intuition, especially when you’re fishing with a partner.

Trolling, casting, and positioning dynamics

Most anglers assume the team leader needs to troll and the other team member should stay in the back of the boat. Now, if we really wanted to get into all the variables that affect who should be on the trolling motor, we could write a whole separate article. But let’s simplify it as much as possible.

First things first:

• The person who is best at trolling should be up front
• The person who is best at target casting should be up front
• The team leader should most likely be up front on the trolling motor

Now, if you have two well-seasoned anglers with equal casting skills, this is where things can change.

Say you are fishing a line of docks and one partner is really skilled at skipping while the other is really skilled with a Rat-L-Trap. Whoever is skipping should be up front, and the Rat-L-Trap angler should be in the back casting in open water and paralleling across the docks so the angler skipping has room to work.

Now if you’re fishing rocks with a crankbait and both anglers are throwing crankbaits with slightly different diving depths, the angler with the shallower crank should be up front paralleling the rocks as closely as possible. The partner can also be up front by the trolling angler and cast along the deeper side of the boat, still paralleling the rocks but staying slightly farther out.

If both anglers can cast in this formation, it can be an extremely efficient approach.

Anglers with good synergy understand that whoever has the hot bait getting the most bites is usually on the trolling motor. And when that bait is hot, it can be smart for the other angler to throw it too, but cover zones the leading angler hasn’t hit yet. That’s how you cover as much water as possible.

None of this has anything to do with ego or feeling less important because you aren’t up front. An efficient angler does not have time for emotions and egos if they want to be the best and catch fish. It’s simply not efficient.

Netting and culling

One last component of this team dynamic is netting and culling.

Say you are fishing a tournament and the team leader is on the trolling motor catching fish on a minnow, and they’re catching fish after fish. You can fish with them and also throw a minnow, but if they have the hot hand with the right twitch technique, then your focus needs to be netting fish quickly and efficiently.

After that, take the fish back to the livewell and handle culling so the hot hand can stay chasing the school and keeping their bait in the water.

This applies to all techniques, not just LiveScope. You might start to think, “Oh, I’m just the net boy/girl, which means I’m less important.” Yeah, I’m going to need you to stop right there. That mindset will drain your efficiency and drag your team down.

Sorry, but we don’t have time for that.

What the ultimate team looks like

To recap everything we just learned, let’s walk through what the ideal partnership looks like in a narrative to give the full picture.

Jack and Jill fish a tournament on Lake Guntersville in May.

Jack and Jill first meet up at Jack’s house to do research. They watch videos of tournaments on Guntersville together while also looking online at articles, websites and any public information on Guntersville during May. They discuss their findings and whatever personal experience they have on Guntersville.

Next, they create a three-day practice plan leading up to the tournament. They decide to fish from two separate boats and divide Guntersville into upriver and downriver. Jack finds an area upriver with lots of diversity and a range of depth, while Jill does the same thing downriver.

Jack and Jill constantly update each other throughout the day in a group text. Jill finds that a chatterbait is catching really big fish in grass and in the backs of pockets downlake, while Jack finds a lot of fish on LiveScope around the openings of creeks. They continue testing and executing both patterns across the lake.

Practice is over and it’s the day before the tournament. This is a one-day tournament. Jack and Jill make Plan A and Plan B, and Jill is established as captain.

Plan A: Fish with a buzzbait and frog in the grass downriver first thing in the morning, then go upriver and fill out a limit, then spend the rest of the day looking for big fish.
Plan B: Fish with a frog, fill a limit with LiveScope and if they don’t catch anything on the chatterbait by 12:00, spend the rest of the day LiveScoping for upgrades.

Jack and Jill arrive at the ramp the next morning. Jack gives Jill gas money and lodging money, brings boat snacks and contributes some tackle for the day.

They go to their first spot. Jill puts the trolling motor down and starts throwing a buzzbait up front (the faster bait) to cover water quickly, while Jack is in the back throwing a frog and targeting any areas Jill might have missed. They catch two keepers and move to the next spot.

Jack then gets on the trolling motor to fish with a minnow on LiveScope (Jack’s specialty), while Jill also throws a minnow standing beside him up front. Jill nets and culls, they fill their limit and make two upgrades.

Next, they go to their grass spots downriver with Jill in the front throwing a chatterbait. Jack decides to throw a swimbait, and Jill agrees. They both cull two fish but don’t get any more bites until 12:00.

With two hours left, they mutually agree to LiveScope the rest of the day until weigh-in.

At the end of the day, they place in fifth place with 26 pounds and split a $1,500 check. They also earn a small $500 contingency check from Phoenix and decide to put it toward lodging and gas for the next tournament.

That’s a rock star team. They fished with composure and endurance the whole day and cashed a check because of it.

One might think his father, an angler his entire life, was responsible for naming him, but he simply gave the go-ahead.

“Actually, my mom gave me that name,” Anaya said. “She said, ‘I think he’s gonna like to fish,’ and dad was like, ‘Let’s run it.’ How they knew, I have no idea.”

Oh, they knew. And Anaya is living up to it very well, thank you.

In November, days before his 20th birthday, Anaya won Angler of the Year in the Nitro Boats Bassmaster Elite Qualifiers, becoming the third youngest to reach the Elite Series. For an encore, Anaya recently earned a spot in the 2026 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic.

Anaya competed with his dad, Ryan, in the TNT Fireworks Bassmaster Team Championship on Lake Hartwell. He knew he had a good chance to continue his roll, but things didn’t look great once the Dec. 3-6 event began.

“I went up there for pre-practice and caught them really well,” he said. “I stand a shot at making it. Everything’s just gotta go right.

“The first two days, everything went wrong. We just kept losing them, couldn’t keep them hooked up, and I don’t understand why.”

They squeaked in as the fifth and final team to advance to the Classic Fish-Off. As the 10 anglers went head-to-head, Fisher found his stride, and maybe some good fortune.

“That was a crazy tournament,” he said. “It was just like almost every move I made was perfect. I lost one fish in two days. Every move I made felt wrong, but it was right in the long run.

“I would pull in and I’m like, ‘This don’t even look right.’ And there would be a big one sitting on it. I guess if it’s your time, you can’t make a wrong move.”

Anaya took the lead on Day 1 with 19 pounds, 8 ounces, but a slower morning on Day 2 had him worried, at least until his instincts kicked in.

“It was a little bit sketchy,” he said, “Lunchtime rolls around, you’ve been fishing all the stuff you just caught 19 pounds off of, you’re like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.’ You pull in a pocket you ain’t ever fished before and they’re everywhere, and you catch 20 pounds. I’m not going to ask no questions.”

With Day 2’s 20-7, Anaya totaled 39-15 to win the Fish-Off by 1-10. He closed the B.A.S.S. tournament year by earning the 56th and final berth to the March 13-15 Classic on the Tennessee River out of Knoxville.

“I went out with a bang, got to break in the brand new boat (921 Elite X Phoenix) with the win,” he said. “Heck, that’s one way to go out.”

Anaya is the latest wunderkind in the bass fishing world. At 18 years, 7 months and 19 days, Trey McKinney stands as the youngest to fish the Elites. He eclipsed Bradley Roy, who qualified two weeks before his 19th birthday.

McKinney went on to win the 2024 Rookie of the Year, was twice AOY runner-up and has won two Elite tournaments. Some other young guns making their mark are 2025 ROY Tucker Smith, 23, who won the Lake Fork Elite, and Easton Fothergill, who won two Opens before becoming the second youngest Classic champ at 22.

Anaya would certainly like to follow their lead and become the next big, young thing.

“One-hundred percent,” he said. “That’s the name of the game — try to stay consistent, be at the top. If you want to compete, you’re consistently trying to figure out what they’re doing each day, because they change each day.

“I’m just trying to try to stay at the top. Who wants to lose? No one likes to lose.”

Anaya hasn’t seen much losing of late. In his EQ run to the Elites, he posted three Top 10 finishes and a worst of 24th. He was thrilled to have a shot as the youngest of the EQ young guns. While he’ll do everything in his power to continue his hot streak, he tempered expectations, even though his Elite career opens in February on his home pond of Lake Guntersville.

“Honestly, I’m just going to be happy that I’m here. If I catch fish, I catch fish. That’s just a bonus,” he said. “I’m living my lifelong dream. It’s something I’ve dreamed of since I was a little kid. There’s no reason to get upset or mad if you don’t catch them. You’re in the spotlight. You’re living someone else’s dream, so why be mad?

“I’m going to just go and be happy. I want high expectations. I want to catch them, as does everybody else. If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. I will come back the next tournament to try again.”

Sure, Fisher will keep plugging along, his career trajectory to be determined one event at a time. With a small sample, Fisher has lived up to his name.

Just imagine if he’d been named Champ.

Fresh off fishing atop the 2025 Bassmaster Elite Qualifier Points Standings last month and locking down a spot in the Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series for the next two seasons, the 20-year-old Anaya won the TNT Fireworks Bassmaster Team Championship Classic Fish-Off Saturday on Lake Hartwell. His two-day total of 10 bass weighing 39 pounds, 15 ounces was just enough to hold off fellow Alabaman Barrett Choquette, who finished second with 38-5.

The win secured for Anaya the final spot in the 2026 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour when it’s held March 13-15 on the Tennessee River in Knoxville, Tenn. He slipped into the Fish-Off after he and his father, Ryan, finished fifth in the Team Championship portion of the tournament on Thursday. The Top 5 teams in the team standings (10 anglers) had their weights zeroed and then fished individually on Friday and Saturday for a Classic berth. 

And as he did throughout the past year, the younger Anaya rose to the challenge.

After catching mostly spotted bass during the Team Championship, Anaya dialed in on a hungry largemouth bite on Friday. His Day 1 weight of 19-8 gave him the Fish-Off lead and the confidence he could produce another big bag on Saturday. 

He did just that, weighing 20-7 — the heaviest total of the Fish-Off. But it was far from an easy task. Hartwell, the 76,450-acre reservoir straddling the South Carolina/Georgia border, is known to switch up on anglers as it did on Anaya on Day 2.

“It was tough on me early today,” Anaya said. “I caught a 3-pounder on my second cast, and I just knew they were gonna’ bite again. Then I caught a small one, but from that time, I went hours without a bite. I decided to run to some spotted bass I knew I could catch, and I got to like 12 pounds. But I knew that wasn’t going to be enough to win this thing. I had this gut feeling I had to fish new water.”

Listening to his instincts proved wise.

“I moved and the second pocket I went into, I caught two over 4 pounds,” Anaya said. “Then the next pocket I went to, I caught another two over 4 pounds.”

Anaya caught his best bass, throwing a Neko (green pumpkin Crush City Janitor Worm) with an 1/8-ounce weight in it. The colder temperatures (which stayed in the lower 40s throughout the Fish-Off) forced him to be patient, waiting for Lake Hartwell bass to bite.

“They weren’t super deep, maybe 10 to 12 feet,” he said. “I’d just had to throw it on them and deadstick it. I’d let the bait sit there. Some casts it might take five minutes to get them moving and some casts it might be instant. But eventually, I could end up catching some if I ran enough water.”

Anaya, who represented the Alabama Bass Trail at Lake Hartwell, said most of his catches came near the dam on the south end of the reservoir. 

“It was about a 20-minute run one-way, but it sure was worth it,” he said. “When it’s meant to be, you can’t do wrong.”

This was Anaya’s second consecutive trip to the Classic Fish-Off. The Anayas finished third in last year’s Team Championship at Kentucky Lake, and Fisher placed third of the six anglers who qualified for the 2024 Fish-Off. The young phenom was dominant in Division 2 of the St. Croix Bassmaster Opens presented by SEVIIN held earlier this year, and he finished no lower than 24th in those four tournaments. Then he proved himself in the trio of Nitro Bassmaster Elite Qualifier tournaments presented by Bass Pro Shops, finishing third, fifth and 19th in those derbies to pave a path into the Elite Series.

And now, he’ll add his first Bassmaster Classic to this burgeoning resume.

“When I pulled into that last pocket and caught that last big one, I thought ‘That might have done it. I might be going to the Classic.’ It’s crazy … I knew I had a shot at winning here. I just had to fish clean and catch everything that bit.”

Choquette, representing the Alabama B.A.S.S. Nation, actually led late on Saturday, according to BASSTrakk, but the 18-year-old from Headland, Ala., fell just short. He caught 19-8 on Saturday and finished 1-10 behind Anaya in his quest for a Classic berth.

“Five days ago, I was taking my first exams at Troy University,” he said. “I didn’t have much time to think about strategy. My brother (Hudson) did well in the Team Championship, and I caught some good ones in the Fish-Off. I caught a 5-pounder to start today and another 5-pounder to end the day. I’m proud of what I got done, but Fisher got us by a little bit.”

Choquette threw a green pumpkin Wacky Rig with a Technical Tungsten head with a little Sakamata Shad trailer to boat his best bass in the Fish-Off.

The remainder of the Top 10 who advanced to the Fish-Off are, third, Justin Raines, Lake Hartwell 5 Alive No Scope Series, 33-1; fourth, Dalton Head, Lake Hartwell 5 Alive Fall Series, 32-4; fifth, Hudson Choquette, Alabama B.A.S.S. Nation, 31-4; sixth, Bradley Day, Lake Hartwell 5 Alive No Scope, 30-10; seventh, Peyton Sorrow, Lake Hartwell 5 Alive Fall Series, 29-15; eighth, Austin McCall, Lake Hartwell 5 Alive Scope Trail, 27-15; ninth, Xander Patton, Lake Hartwell 5 Alive Scope Trail, 26-5; and 10^th, Ryan Ayana, Alabama Bass Trail, 23-2.

In all, 200 teams from 48 different states and three other countries qualified for the Team Championship via their respective team trails. A total of $120,000 was divided among the Top 50 teams competing at Lake Hartwell, including $50,000 to Head and Sorrow when they clinched the team title on Thursday.

Visit Anderson and Green Pond Landing hosted the week’s events.

That wasn’t the case, though. Far from it. 

BassTrakk, the digital phone app used to report weights of the bass caught throughout the day, was malfunctioning for the marshal aboard Anaya’s boat. So, while folks at home might have thought Anaya was striking out on this 76,450-acre reservoir, the young phenom actually was hitting a home run on this fabled fishery straddling the South Carolina/Georgia border.

Anaya stormed to the top of the leaderboard Friday with a limit of five bass weighing 19 pounds, 8 ounces. The Classic Fish-Off will be determined Saturday when the 10 remaining anglers in what was a field of 400 conclude the final tournament of the 2025 Bassmaster season. At stake, of course, is the final spot in the 2026 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour when it’s held March 13-15 on the Tennessee River in Knoxville, Tenn.

Most of the other nine anglers in the Fish-Off are hot on Anaya’s heels, however, with just more than 5 pounds separating seventh place from Anaya’s pole position. Barrett Choquette, an 18-year-old Alabaman who fishes for Troy University, is second with 18-13. Bradley Day, who fishes with the Lake Hartwell 5 Alive No Scope Series and lives about two minutes from the docks at Hartwell’s Green Pond Landing, is third with 18-10.

Anaya said his marshal informed him halfway through Friday’s competition that the BassTrakk app wasn’t registering the weights he punched into his phone.

“I told him, ‘Well, I guess we’re gonna’ surprise some people,’” Anaya said, laughing.

Because he was unable to report his catch, Anaya led off Friday’s weigh-in at Green Pond Landing. He had a bounty to share, too.

“I caught probably 15 pounds in the first 20 minutes this morning,” Anaya said. “Soon as I got to my spot, I caught three big largemouth. A little later, I ran new water and caught another big one and then I found an area that had a bunch of big ones –— looked like they all were 4 pounders. I caught one and then left. So, I’m hoping they stick there for tomorrow. I’m not sure where I’ll start, but I’m gonna’ run around and hopefully find the ones I need to win this thing.”

After catching his best bass off points and just inside pockets during the Team Championship portion of this event, Anaya said bass are now stacking in the backs of shallow drains as winter conditions continue to take hold of the Palmetto State. Temperatures hovered around 40 degrees most of Friday with low cloud cover casting a gray pall over the expanse of Hartwell. 

Still, Anaya’s growing star has shone.

“I’ve been throwing a Neko (green pumpkin Crush City Janitor Worm) and I have caught a few on a shad-colored minnow this week,” he said. “I started in about 20 feet of water to begin the week. and I probably caught them in about 10 feet today. I had four largemouth after weighing nothing but spots the first few days. Things have been unpredictable, but I know there are at least five more largemouth swimming out there, I’ve just got to stumble across them.”

This is Anaya’s second consecutive trip to the Classic Fish-Off. He and his dad, Ryan, finished third in last year’s Team Championship at Kentucky Lake, and Fisher placed third of the six anglers who qualified for the 2024 Fish-Off. 

The Anayas finished fifth in this year’s Team Championship, which concluded Thursday. To their benefit, the 2025 Fish-Off field was expanded from six anglers to 10, allowing the duo from the Alabama Bass Trail another crack at a Classic Fish-Off. 

The younger Anaya again is making the most of his opportunity, though he’s already proved his mettle in some of the sport’s biggest events. He finished atop the 2025 Bassmaster Elite Qualifier Points Standings last month, guaranteeing him a spot in the Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series for the next two years. He also finished no lower than 24th in the four Division 2 St. Croix Bassmaster Opens presented by SEVIIN held earlier this year.

Choquette had to finish exams at Troy before he could head north to Hartwell for the Team Championship. He and his brother, Hudson Choquette, represent the Alabama B.A.S.S. Nation, and they finished fourth in the team tournament. Now Barrett is within a pound of the lead in the biggest derby of his life.

“My brother was up here for practice and found our best spots, so I left those to him today,” Barrett Choquette said. “I ran all new water today and it all paid off, surprisingly.”

Choquette said he’s fishing shallow water along Hartwell’s banks. He primarily used a Neko rig (green pumpkin) on Friday.

“There weren’t many bites. I think every bite I had came in the boat. They were nice to me today. They all ate it deep.”

Day, a 27-year-old fishing home water, said his bite came later on Friday.

“It was 11 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon for me today,” Day said. “That was the window. This lake is so prone to those little windows, you have to be around them when they’re biting.”

Day said he’s cruising shallow water on the southern end of Hartwell. He’s relied on a Shaky Head worm and a jig this week, both in green pumpkin variety, but said he’s prepared to switch his approach if necessary. 

“You have to fish the day,” he said. “You can fish a few history places, but eventually you have to let the day unfold.”

Justin Raines, of the Lake Hartwell 5 Alive No Scope Series, and Peyton Sorrow, of the Lake Hartwell 5 Alive Fall Series, are tied for fourth with 17 pounds caught Friday. 

Sorrow teamed with Dalton Head to win the Team Championship on Thursday, and Head is now in sixth place in the Fish-Off with 16-1. Rounding out the field are Lake Hartwell 5 Alive Scope Trail teammates Austin McCall (14-5) and Xander Patton (13-2). Hudson Choquette is ninth with 11-14 and Ryan Anaya is 10th with 8-8.

In all, 200 teams from 48 different states and three other countries qualified for the Team Championship via their respective team trails. A total of $120,000 was divided among the Top 50 teams competing at Lake Hartwell, including $50,000 to Head and Sorrow.

The final day of the Bassmaster Classic Fish-Off is scheduled to begin at 7:20 a.m. ET Saturday. The final weigh-in is set for 3:30 p.m. ET.  

Visit Anderson and Green Pond Landing are hosting the week’s events.