By MLF Communications Staff
The 39th annual BFL All-American Championship gets under way this week on Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, Ark. The three-day tournament (Thursday through Saturday), hosted by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism and Visit Hot Springs, will showcase some the nation’s best weekend anglers and awards the winning boater a top prize of up to $120,000.
The no-entry-fee-event is the sixth All-American to be held in Hot Springs – a record for the most times a city has hosted the tournament.
The event was previously held on Lake Hamilton in 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2008 and on DeGray Lake, also in the region, in 2010. The event often serves as a steppingstone for anglers who wish to advance to the Toyota Series, Pro Circuit and ultimately the Bass Pro Tour. Former All-American champions who currently compete on the Bass Pro Tour or the Pro Circuit include Shaw Grigsby (1984), Stephen Browning (1996), Jacob Wheeler (2011), Kerry Milner (2013), Jeremy Lawyer (2016) and Nick LeBrun (2018).
“The All-American absolutely jump-started my career, and it jump-started the careers of several great anglers – (Rick) Clunn, Clark Wendlandt, Joe Thomas – the list is long,” said Browning of Hot Springs, who won the 1996 All-American Championship on the Arkansas River. “It was a bucket list event to even make the All-American. To win it was certainly a bonus and gave me the opportunity to be financially comfortable starting my career.
“I live on the banks of Lake Hamilton and fish it quite often,” Browning said. “In early June, the fishery can be kind of tricky. A lot of the kids are out of school and there is a lot more boat traffic. But, with that said, Lake Hamilton has a tremendous population of fish. It’s not a big-fish factory, but there are some really good fish here and the BFL anglers are going to catch a bunch.”
Browning said that if he was competing in the event, he would be start by fishing shallow and move deeper as the day progressed.
“I’d be throwing a buzzbait or a Jack Hammer (ChatterBait), fishing shallow around water willow and boat docks in the early morning,” Browning said. “Then, from mid-morning through the rest of the day, I would be out in that 12- to 15-feet range fishing brush piles and drop-offs throwing a crankbait – a No. 4 or No. 5 Jackall Digle.
“The key is going to be not getting spun out,” Browning continued. “Don’t get frustrated if you don’t catch fish in a certain area where you thought you were going to. This is a pattern lake, and after a good spawn I think the bite will move around and get better as the week goes on. So, revisit areas, and don’t lose confidence in a technique even though it didn’t work to perfection the day before.”
Browning went on to predict that the three-day winner would have a cumulative weight from 38 to 42 pounds.
Anglers will launch each day at 6:30 a.m. CT from the Andrew Hulsey Fish Hatchery, located at 350 Fish Hatchery Road in Hot Springs. Weigh-ins each day will be held at the launch location and will begin at 2:30 p.m. Fans are welcome to attend all launch and weigh-in events and encouraged to follow the event’s online coverage at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
The full field of 42 boaters and 42 co-anglers will compete on Days 1 (Thursday) and 2 (Friday) of the event. After two days of competition, the field is cut to just the Top 10 boaters and co-anglers, based on two-day total cumulative weight, and the final 10 anglers compete on Saturday. The boater and co-angler who catch the heaviest three-day total weight will be crowned champions.
The 2021 BFLs were a 24-division circuit devoted to weekend anglers, with 128 tournaments throughout the season, five qualifying events in each division. The Top 45 boaters and co-anglers from each division, along with the five winners of the qualifying events, advanced to one of six Regional Championships where they competed to finish in the Top 6, which then advanced them to compete in the All-American.
