Bassmaster Classic Could Be a Texas Big Bass Slugfest

When the 55th Bassmaster Classic opens at the end of the week, the so-called Super Bowl of bass fishing will present a unique opportunity for some piscatorial March Madness.

That was the original plan when the Classic first visited Ray Roberts Lake in 2021, before the COVID-19 pandemic scrubbed what was supposed to be a March tournament and turned it into a mid-June derby.

Hank Cherry didn’t mind, capturing his second consecutive Class trophy and joining one of the most select clubs in professional angling history as one of only four anglers to ever win back-to-back Classics. Rick Clunn did it in 1976-77, Kevin VanDam did it in 2010-11, Jordan Lee did it in 2017-18, and Cherry got his back-to-back Classics in 2020-21.

Which angler will become a Classic champ on Ray Roberts in 2025? We know it won’t be Cherry since he isn’t in the field of 56 Classic anglers fishing this week. Nor are some of the biggest names in the sport during the 21st Century with the likes of Brandon Palanuik, Mike Iaconelli, and others sitting this one out too. 

Veteran Greg Hackney is in the field and about to fish his 19th Classic, the most by far of anyone fishing in North Texas this week. And given some of his old-school strengths, he is a pre-tournament pick to win, even if he has struggled a bit as of late.

Why the Hack Attack pick, especially with Chris Zaldain living in the host city Fort Worth and calling Ray Roberts his home water? For one reason, the spawn is coming and Hackney is a whiz in the skinny water. Next, there’s experience as Hackney's resume is loaded with everything but a Classic trophy. He's done everything else, including a B.A.S.S. Rookie of the Year award in 2004, a FLW Tour Angler of the Year award in 2005, a Forrest Wood Cup FLW Championship in 2009, the B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year award in 2014, and a Major League Fishing World Championship in 2018. 

Another reason is that Hackney is always a threat to win in Texas. He first won in the Lone Star State back in March 2006 when he captured the Elite Series Lone Star Shootout on storied Sam Rayburn Reservoir. 

Hackney also won 30 minutes up the road from Ray Roberts when the 2016 Elite Series BASSfest event visited Lake Texoma. Technically, that event was staged out of Durant, Oklahoma’s Choctaw Casino & Resort, but half of the 89,000-acre border lake lies in the state of Texas, so I’d guess Hackney’s Texoma win is close enough to count as a Texas triumph too.

The Hack Attack then won the 2018 Bass Pro Shops Elite Series event on the Sabine River near Orange, Texas for a third triumph in the vast state with 254 counties. So with all of that experience in Texas, why not the 52-year old angler from Gonzales, La.?

As an interesting side note here, Ray Roberts is hosting its second Classic to go with the event’s first appearance there in 2021. This week’s derby is also the fourth time that the Classic has visited Texas, with the Houston area’s Lake Conroe hosting the 2017 event won by Jordan Lee. Where was the other Classic that Texas has hosted? At Lake Texoma in 1979 when Hank Parker flipped his way to the first of his two Classic wins in a derby staged out of Highport Marina and Tanglewood Resort in Pottsboro, Texas.

With Texoma lying five miles outside my back door and Ray Roberts sitting just a half-hour’s drive away, I’m very familiar with this North Texas turf that has now hosted three Classics within the same county. Grayson County, where myself and the lovely Mrs. B live, has portions of Texoma and of Ray Roberts all spilling within its boundaries. As far as I can tell, that makes the local county the only venue in the U.S. to host three Classics at two separate locations.

Who are some of the other pros who might be among the favorites to win this upcoming weekend at Ray Roberts? Zaldain for one, who will fish on his home lake in his ninth Classic appearance. North Carolina’s Matt Arey will fish in his sixth Classic after he lost the 2021 derby at Ray Roberts to Cherry by 1 pound, 14 ounces. And then what about Lee, the young Alabama pro with a veteran’s resume that includes two Classic wins, and one of those in Texas?

All of that name dropping probably means that the 2025 champ will come from this year’s crop of Classic rookies, 18 anglers in all.

Whoever wins will have to discover a winning pattern that could change as the three-day event rolls along during spring’s transition from pre-spawn into the full blown spawn. Ray Roberts is a hero or a zero lake in my humble opinion, either giving you a good day of angling if you crack the code—by the way, it often takes a 30+ pound bag to win a single day weekend tournament here—or a day where you might as well have spent the afternoon mowing the lawn.

As legendary B.A.S.S. angling writer Craig Lamb—who will be inducted into the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame this fall—noted in a recent story entitled "The Science of Ray Roberts," there is certainly trophy bass, if not Texas Parks and Wildlife Department ShareLunker bass potential as the three-day event starts this Friday, March 21, 2025.

Lamb interviewed Dan Bennett, the supervising biologist at TPWD’s Lake Texoma Inland Fisheries Station and the man responsible for fine tuning the fishing at Ray Roberts, about the local water body's big bass potential. The TPWD biologist, who is also responsible for the up and coming Bois d’Arc Lake about an hour’s drive northeast from Ray Roberts—a lake we previewed as it was filling up—was enthusiastic to say the least.

“Ray Roberts sets up really well in March for catching big bass, with the bass moving into shallower water to spawn,” said Bennett to Lamb. “Generally, when we get higher water, it provides more cover and habitat for bass as they get pushed into the button bush shorelines.”

As Lamb noted, Ray Roberts' big bass potential knows no bounds with six total ShareLunker Legacy class fish weighing over 13-pounds entered from 1997 until now. That includes Shannon Lee Elvington's lake record, a behemoth caught in March 2015 and a bass that weighed 15.18 pounds.

If Ray Roberts does indeed live up to its big fish potential next week, the Classic record book could get rewritten since the event's heaviest winning catch—so far, that is—was a three-day total of 75-pounds, 9-ounces from Rick Clunn back in 1984 during the Aug. 16-18 event staged on the Arkansas River near Pine Bluff.

Another Classic record could be in play this weekend as Ray Robert’s big sowbelly track record suggests, and that’s the heaviest largemouth to ever be weighed in a Classic event. 

For the record, pun intended, that benchmark currently belongs to Preston Clark after he weighed in a Florida bass pulled from the Sunshine State's Kissimmee Chain near Orlando back in 2006, a behemoth weighing some 11-pounds, 10-ounces. Rick Clunn nearly put the same Classic record on his resume at the same event on the same day, weighing in a bass at 10-10. And what's number three on the Classic's all-time big bass list? Brent Ehrler's 9-12 caught in the Lake Conroe, Texas Classic back in 2017.

Despite that big fish potential, the 25,600 acre reservoir that sits in three counties--the dam is in Denton County, the northwestern arm spills into Cooke County, and the northeastern arm edges up into Grayson County—the spring’s changeable weather might make these fish a bit unpredictable and on the move in a lake that was once thought to be the second coming of Lake Fork after it was impounded back in 1987.

Lamb pointed out that TPWD worked with other agencies to make Ray Roberts resemble Fork in terms of habitat and appearance. They were able to agree on leaving approximately 3,000 acres of standing timber in the lake upon impoundment. Over time, weather and many moons passing by have reduced that to about 2,000 acres of remaining timber.

As a local resident, I’d note that in my humble opinion, the lake doesn't look anything visually as it did back in the 1990s. But there’s plenty of timber that remains lurking just below the normal level waterline. 

After fishing the lake a lot myself, and covering a Major League Fishing Challenge Cup event there back in 2013, one that Kelly Jordon won by primarily fishing some timber, expect the motor repair expert to potentially play a key role this week.

While the spawn will be a clear focus as anglers look for double-digit sowbellies finning in skinny water, the pre-spawn bite will also produce, and potentially near some of the nearly four dozen plus brush piles that exist out in the lake. Some of that set up nicely in the 2021 Classic when anglers were fishing the remains of the shad spawn and early post-spawn patterns early that summer, and that resulted in some of the lake’s 44 brush piles, created from cleared timber, could have been in play on any given day.

There’s also some aquatic vegetation at the lake named after a late local congressman—incidentally, if I didn’t already have enough of a connection to this lake, Rep. Ray Roberts was the stepfather of my good friend Joe Barns—although it’s a far cry from the glory days in the 1990s when lush stands of hydrilla existed. That was prior to the lake being lowered significantly due to repair work on the dam, and it took away some of the lake’s best fishing potential. Even so, the vegetation is better now than it was a few years ago.

"Aquatic vegetation has increased somewhat since the last Classic in 2021,” said Bennett. “That’s due to natural causes with the stability of the lake level and rainfall supporting vegetation growth.”

Around the marina and at Ray Roberts Lake State Park boat launch locations, there is some limited chance to find bass around docks. But timber, grass, rocks, and underwater topography changes are what makes Ray Roberts tick and somewhere in all of that, a winning pattern will emerge this weekend.

It should be an intriguing and exciting springtime derby, with the Super Bowl of Bass Fishing welcoming the world back to Ray Roberts to see who will capture the 2025 Classic title in North Texas.

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