On Thursday, B.A.S.S. conducted a series of five coin flips to determine which Elite Series tournaments in 2026 will include usage of live sonar and which will not. The move stems from an announcement made earlier this week indicating the trail's plan to limit usage of live sonar in roughly half of the tournaments next season.
The nine-event schedule was broken into four segments of two events each with the season finale at the St. Lawrence River acting as a stand-alone segment. Seated around a table with host Tommy Sanders and analyst Davy Hite in the Bassmaster studios in Little Rock, Ark., Bassmaster analyst Mark Zona flipped a custom coin to determine which event in each two-event segment would allow live sonar in practice and competition. Live sonar will be permitted in the 2026 Bassmaster Classic since the anglers who qualified competed under the 2025 rules. A determination about live sonar use in future Classics has not been made.
Here is the 2026 schedule updated with the results of the coin flips, with red indicating live sonar not allowed and green indicating live sonar will be allowed:
> Feb. 5-8: Lake Guntersville (Scottsboro, Ala.)
> Feb. 12-15: Lake Martin (Alexander City, Ala.)
> March 13-15: Bassmaster Classic – Tennessee River (Knoxville, Tenn.)
> March 26-29: Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (Columbus, Miss.)
> April 16-19: Arkansas River (Muskogee, Okla.)
> May 7-10: Lake Murray (Columbia, S.C.)
> May 14-17: Santee Cooper Lakes (Clarendon County, S.C.)
> June 11-14: Pasquotank River/Albemarle Sound (Elizabeth City, N.C.)
> August 13-16: Lake Champlain (Plattsburgh, N.Y.)
> August 27-30: St. Lawrence River (Clayton, N.Y.)
