MASSENA, N.Y. (Aug. 17, 2025) – It’s always good to get out of the blocks fast with a win in your first tournament of the year. It’s also pretty terrific to earn another trophy, a big paycheck and some major momentum as you head into “championship season.”

Seven months after kicking off his 2025 campaign in late January with a win at the Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats season opener at Sam Rayburn,  Brody Campbell of Oxford, Ohio , added another win to his résumé thanks to a 26-pound bag of smallmouth on the final day of the Toyota Series Northern Division tournament on the St. Lawrence River Presented by Suzuki Marine. The Ohio pro finished the three-day event with 79-1 to outdistance Alex Korol (78-1) and Erik Luzak (74-11) and earn a $72,402 paycheck (including a $35,000 Phoenix MLF Bonus). He also moved into the lead in the division’s Fishing Clash Angler of the Year  race.

Campbell’s win came three weeks to the day after a disappointing 47th-place finish in the final Tackle Warehouse Invitationals tournament of the year – also on the St. Lawrence – cost him an invitation to the 2026 Bass Pro Tour by 1 point.

“This place is special, but I was really mad at ‘em this week,” Campbell joked as he accepted the trophy. “I went out there every day, daylight ‘til dark, and tried to learn as much about this fishery as possible. I think I learned some key new areas and put all of that time and energy to work this week.”

Korol made a fierce run at Campbell with 25-15, 25-10 and 26-8, competing in his first-ever Toyota Series tournament. Luzak, who electrified the Day 2 weigh-in with an MLF-record 31-5, earned his first MLF Top 10 and big-fish honors with a 7-14.

Campbell has invested a hearty portion of his past two summers fishing the St. Lawrence every day from sunup to sundown, and it paid off handsomely this week – he was the model of consistency on the big river, weighing in 26-2 on Day 1 and 26-15 on Day 2 to set the stage for his 26-0 winning bag on Saturday, all on spots that he’s identified recently.

He landed on a school of big smallmouth early on Day 1, loading up nearly 27 pounds in 45 minutes with a Deps Sakamata Shad on a 1/4-ounce jighead and a Megabass Hazedong Shad on a 3/8-ounce drop-shot. For the drop-shot, he used a  7-foot, 2-inch medium Bird Dog BDR-862S spinning rod.

He returned to the same spot to start Day 2 and found “almost nothing” (one bite) before hopping to a handful of other places, eventually settling onto a choice spot where he dragged a drop-shot and loaded up another 26-pound bag.

“I had a couple of key places that I ended up bouncing around on Day 2,” Campbell said. “Knowing other places to go that day was a key for me. I started running new stuff after that first spot didn’t pan out, found a subtle little vein of rock and caught 26 again. I couldn’t see any of those fish – I just knew that’s where they should be.”

He entered the final morning with 4-4 to make up on Luzak, but the Canadian pro couldn’t match his big-fish mojo from the previous two days, faltering Saturday with 17-6 and opening the door for a Campbell comeback. Campbell repeated his pattern on the final day, moving around between a handful of spots with the drop-shot, eventually “scrounging up” another 26-pound bag to claim the win.

“Spending as much time here as I have and just knowing where big fish are was big for me this week,” Campbell said. “I didn’t waste my time on anything I didn’t think had big fish, I knew that, if I was catching fish on those spots, they were going to be big. Going all-in like that can work out really good or really bad – it turned out to be good this week.”

The top 10 pros at the Toyota Series at the St. Lawrence River finished:

1st:        Brody Campbell, Oxford, Ohio, 15 bass, 79-1, $72,402 (includes $35,000 Phoenix MLF Bonus)
2nd:      Alex Korol, Fairport, N.Y., 15 bass, 78-1, $14,300
3rd:       Erik Luzak, Fenelon Falls, Ontario, 15 bass, 74-11, $12,571
4th:       Tommy Dickerson, Orange, Texas, 15 bass,  73-0, $9,226
5th:       Logan Dyar, Cleveland, Ala., 15 bass, 71-5, $8,303
6th:       Jeremy Gordon, Rutledge, Tenn., 15 bass, 70-0, $7,380
7th:       Dante Piraino, Baldwinsville, N.Y., 15 bass, 69-15, $6,458
8th:       Hayden O’Barr, Scottsboro, Ala., 15 bass, 69-10, $5,535
9th:       Lee Stephens, Columbia, Ky., 15 bass, 69-5, $4,613
10th:     Spike Stoker, Cisco, Texas, 15 bass, 69-3, $3,690

Complete results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Campbell won Thursday’s $500 Berkley Big Bass Award, catching a bass weighing 6 pounds, 13 ounces, while Luzak brought a bass weighing 7 pounds, 14 ounces to the scale Friday to take home the $500 Berkley Big Bass Award for Day 2.

Daun Nicholson of Normalville, Pennsylvania, won the Co-angler Division Saturday with a three-day total of 15 bass weighing 58 pounds, 1 ounce. Nicholson earned the top co-angler prize package worth $33,500, including a new Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower outboard motor.

The top 10 co-anglers at the Toyota Series at the St. Lawrence River finished:

1st:         Daun Nicholson, Normalville, Penn., 15 bass, 58-1, Phoenix 518 Pro boat w/115-hp outboard
2nd:        Carter Lanclos, Sulphur, La., 15 bass, 57-0, $4,656
3rd:        Hunter Navari, Colchester, Vt., 14 bass, 56-9, $3,725
4th:         Jakob Labelle, Hinesburg, Vt., 15 bass, 54-12, $3,259
5th:         Lavon Raber, Wolcottville, Ind., 15 bass, 53-12, $2,794
6th:         Todd Lee, Jasper, Ala., 15 bass, 52-0, $2,328
7th:         Chad Dorney, Slatington, Pa., 15 bass, 52-0, $1,963
8th:         D. Scott Gibson, Hattiesburg, Miss., 15 bass, 51-15, $1,630
9th:         Ted Kephart, Philipsburg, Pa., 15 bass, 50-10, $1,397
10th:       Chris Hurley, Carlisle, Pa., 14 bass, 48-14, $1,164

Co-angler Jimmy Schaffer of Oak Ridge, New Jersey, earned Thursday’s $150 Berkley Big Bass co-angler award with a 6-pound, 15-ounce bass, while Friday’s Day 2 $150 co-angler award went to Takaaki Kojima of Temecula, California, who weighed in a 5-pound, 12-ounce bass.

The Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats at the St. Lawrence River Presented by Suzuki Marine was hosted by the Town of Massena. It was the second of three regular-season tournaments for the Toyota Series Northern Division. The next event for Toyota Series anglers will be Sept. 11-13 on the Potomac River in Marbury, Maryland. For a complete schedule of events, visit  MajorLeagueFishing.com.

The 2025 Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats consists of five divisions – Central, Northern, Plains, Southern and the Southwestern – each holding three regular-season events, along with the International and Wild Card divisions. Anglers who fish in any of the five divisions or the Wild Card division and finish in the top 25 will qualify for the no-entry-fee Toyota Series Championship for a shot at winning up to $235,000 and a qualification to REDCREST 2026. The winning co-angler at the championship earns a new Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower outboard. The 2025 Toyota Series Championship will be held Nov. 6-8 on Grand Lake in Grove, Oklahoma, and is hosted by the City of Grove Convention & Tourism Bureau.

Proud sponsors of the 2025 MLF Toyota Series include: 7Brew, Abu Garcia, Athletic Brewing, B&W Trailer Hitches, Berkley, BUBBA, Deep Dive App, E3 Sport Apparel, Epic Baits, Fishing Clash, Grizzly, Humminbird, Lew’s, Mercury, Minn Kota, Mossy Oak, Onyx, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Phoenix Boats, PiranhO2, Polaris, Power-Pole, Precision Sonar, Strike King, Suzuki Marine, Tackle Warehouse, T-H Marine, Toyota, WIX Filters and YETI.

For complete details and updated information visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular Toyota Series updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow the MLF5 social media outlets at Facebook,  Instagram and YouTube.

About Major League Fishing
Major League Fishing (MLF) is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, producing more than 250 events annually at some of the most prestigious fisheries in the world, while broadcasting to America’s living rooms on CBS, Discovery, Discovery+, Discovery GO, Animal Planet, Outdoor Channel, VICE, CBS Sports Network, World Fishing Network. RFD-TV and Game & Fish TV, and on demand on MyOutdoorTV (MOTV). Headquartered in Benton, Kentucky, the MLF roster of bass anglers includes the world’s top pros and more than 30,000 competitors in all 50 states and 20 countries. Since its founding in 2011, MLF has advanced the sport of competitive fishing through its premier television broadcasts and livestreams and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for bass through research, education, fisheries enhancement and fish care.