At the beginning of August, the Champions Tour wrapped up the 2025 regular season on the Le Homme Dieu Chain out of Arrowwood Resort in beautiful Alexandria, MN. The Alexandria Chain is chalk full of bass that has shown a better average size in recent years. A continued increase in the legitimacy of smallmouth here has also made a good fishery great by most accounts. A lot was on the line during this tournament for Champions Tour anglers. This was the final event to determine both 2025 Championship qualification and 2026 Tour qualification, with the field being trimmed back to 50 anglers next season.
While at the same time, guys like Nathan Nipper, Evan Blakely, Hunter Wendt, Tommy Parker, and Charlie Wright were battling to position themselves for an AOY title heading into the Championship and final AOY points event of the season.
In the first half we watched Garrett Koster jump out to a great start and maintain the lead during the first 1-2 hours of fishing. A steady dose of solid LHD largemouth had Koster on the right track. Zach Piescher was in the mix as well after a strong morning. Then “Big Time” Charlie Wright started to find his groove. Wright started on a good largemouth bite in the morning butwhen the sun came out his adjustment to go fish smallies not only made the difference in the first half but likely was the difference maker in the results of this tournament. Charlie put numerous 3–4-pound smallmouth in the boat on his way to a big first half lead that felt nearly insurmountable at the break.
But it was certainly a tale of two halves. Early in the afternoon, Wright simply maintained his position. Fishing was slow and time was running out on the rest of the field if they had hopes of catching Charlie. But with Charlie’s bite nearly dead, Evan Blakely owned the last hour. Blakely finally dialed in a school of above average Largemouth that he knew were there but had
struggled to get them to fire to this point, but as a storm front moved into the Alexandria Area, his school would fire. And when they did, it was on and the tournament got very interesting very fast. Evan was catching fish nearly every cast but his problem was that he was running out of time and he had a significant boat ride back to Arrowwood Resort with several no wake zones and boat traffic.
In the end, a few key late day catches by Charlie Wright staved off the mad dash by Evan Blakely. What had once felt like an untouchable lead ended with Wright winning the tournament with 41 fish for 95lbs 7oz, Blakely in second with 91lbs, giving us one of the more exciting final 30 minutes in Champions Tour history. 3rd Place went to Garrett Koster, 4th to Zach Piescher, and 5th to Tommy Parker.
After the conclusion of this tournament the Championship field was set. 33 anglers locked themselves in to compete on Green Lake in Spicer, MN for a brand new Skeeter/Yamaha package. The AOY race saw some flip flops as well with Charlie Wright now leading the way with 185 points. Evan Blakely with 184 points, and Nate Nipper in 3rd now with 175 points. We will see you on Green Lake where we will crown a 2025 Champion, and the infamous prize package of a BRAND NEW Skeeter ZX200.
