For years the two big leagues of American bass fishing have circled each other without ever settling anything. The Bass Pro Tour and the Bassmaster Elite Series run separate seasons, crown separate champions, and their anglers trade needle without ever lining up on the same lake. This autumn that changes — and the stakes could hardly be higher.
The Champions, a new event staged by World Bass Enterprises, will run from 28 October to 1 November 2026 on Old Hickory Lake near Nashville, Tennessee. It carries a purse north of $3 million, with $1.25 million to the winner — the largest single payday in the sport's history — plus $500,000 for second and $300,000 for third.
The field is built to be a genuine cross-tour test: the top 25 anglers in 2026 Angler of the Year points from each of the Bass Pro Tour and the Elite Series, plus the winners of each league's regular-season events, for a 50-angler bracket. Competition runs as a five-fish weigh-in, with the use of forward-facing sonar deliberately restricted — anglers can run live sonar on only one of the first two days, and for just half the fishing time once the top 15 reach the final day. In a sport arguing loudly about how much technology is too much, that is a pointed choice.
The man behind it is not a broadcaster or a sanctioning body but a self-funding enthusiast. "As a longtime bass fishing enthusiast, I have always marveled at the incredible skill of the world's top anglers and believed they deserved a marquee platform to showcase their talents to the world," said Brian Bird, founder and chief executive of World Bass Enterprises. He has been blunt about who is underwriting the prize money: "The money will be guaranteed — no investors. It's WBE and it's funded by me."
For the anglers, the appeal is as much about bragging rights as the cheque. "There has always been friendly competition and banter between the anglers on each tour, but no way to actually settle the score on the water," said Jacob Wheeler, the reigning Bass Pro Tour champion and one of the first names locked into the field.
He has company. As of mid-year, qualifiers included Bass Pro Tour winners such as Zack Birge, Drew Gill, Cole Floyd and Takahiro Omori, alongside Elite Series winners including Jason Christie, Chris Johnston and Hank Cherry Jr. — with more spots still to be decided by season-ending points races.
The timing dovetails with a bumper stretch for the sport on television, with the Bass Pro Tour's eighth season landing on Discovery. Whether The Champions becomes an annual fixture will depend on how this first edition lands. But for one week on Old Hickory, the long-running argument over which tour holds the better anglers finally gets an answer on the water — with $1.25 million riding on it.
