Florida’s Pike Tops Co-Angler Division

BAINBRIDGE, Ga. (Oct. 20, 2025) – Boater Christopher Wilder of Macon, Georgia, caught a two-day total of 10 bass weighing 37 pounds, 13 ounces, to win the MLF Phoenix Bass Fishing League (BFL) Presented by T-H Marine Regional on Lake Seminole Presented by Mando Deodorant . The tournament, which was hosted by Visit Bainbridge, concluded Saturday. For his win, Wilder earned a prize package valued at $50,000, including a new Phoenix 819 Pro bass boat with a 200hp Mercury or Suzuki outboard.

The Lake Seminole event served as the Regional championship for the BFL Gator and Bulldog divisions. The field included the top 60 boaters and co-anglers based on point standings, plus each division’s tournament winners. The top three boaters and co-anglers have also now qualified for the 2026 BFL All-American.

Wilder prefers to fish shallow, especially around grass, so he focused his efforts in the Spring Creek area of Seminole during practice. However, he ended up catching only one or two bass during one of his practice days and decided he needed to pivot. He turned to forward-facing sonar to locate fish around timber and on grass edges but wasn’t confident in the idea of fishing deeper water during the tournament.

“That’s not what I really wanted to do,” Wilder said. “I don’t really have a lot of experience of finding where fish are in the timber without them coming up and busting the surface. So, I tried to focus on the grass. But after a whole day of not catching them like that, I saw a school off of the edge of some grass, and I picked up an A-rig and caught small fish every cast for 50 or 60 casts. I ended up catching 200 to 300 fish during practice.”

Wilder decided to change his approach to searching for schools of bass on the grass edges, and ended up marking 34 schools of fish with quality bass.

On the first day of competition, Wilder ran to a spot that he knew held multiple schools of fish. Within 15 minutes of beginning his day, Wilder had 16 pounds in the livewell. That early success settled his jitters, and he spent the rest of the day culling to improve his weight.

“Everywhere I went there were five or six boats at a minimum, and I found people were sitting on the schools that I had marked,” Wilder said. “I ended up pulling up on one that nobody was on, and I caught more than 20 fish out of that school. I had around 19 pounds, and the bite shut off in the afternoon. I ended up culling a few more times and ended up just over 20 pounds, but it wasn’t anything like what was going on in the mornings.”

Wilder started out Saturday on the same school of fish he began fishing Friday, but he found the pressured fish reluctant to bite. He ended up catching five bass that weighed 6 pounds there.

“At that point, I could tell it was going to be a hard day,” Wilder said. “So, instead of mixing in with everybody on the water, I got out of the boat traffic fishing through the timber and went as fast as I could with the trolling motor to the other schools and just fished them as hard as I could.”

Wilder’s tactics paid off, although the bites were few and far between. He estimated he had somewhere around 17 pounds, but didn’t think that was going to be enough to achieve his goal of a Top-3 finish and a berth to the 2026 BFL All-American.

Wilder’s weight, however, proved to be enough, and he eclipsed his brother, Michael, by 2 ounces to secure his second BFL Regional win. His first came in 2023 on Lake Norman.

“Both of my Regional wins have just felt unreal,” Wilder said. “I certainly didn’t expect to win another one this soon.”

The top three boaters who qualified for the 2026 Phoenix BFL All-American finished:

1st:        Christopher Wilder, Macon, Ga., 10 bass, 37-13, $53,100 (includes $3,000 Phoenix Bonus)
2nd:       Michael Wilder, Lizella, Ga., 10 bass, 37-11, $7,776
3rd:       Brooks Anderson, Marietta, Ga., 10 bass, 37-6, $3,968

Rounding out the top 10 boaters were:

4th:        Buddy Benson, Dahlonega, Ga., 10 bass, 35-4, $2,445
5th:        Kennie Steverson, Umatilla, Fla., 10 bass, 34-0, $1,684
6th:        Brad Stalanaker, Eatonton, Ga., nine bass, 33-11, $1,531
7th:        Dylan Quilatan, Windermere, Fla., 10 bass, 31-11, $1,379
8th:        Steve Phillips, Douglas, Ga., seven bass, 31-8, $2,225
9th:        Richard Dunham, Palm Harbor, Fla., 10 bass, 30-9, $1,068
10th:     Tanner Seabolt, Okeechobee, Fla., 10 bass, 30-2, $990

Complete results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Steve Phillips of Douglas, Georgia, won the Berkley Big Bass Boater award and $1,000 for landing a bass that weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces – the biggest of the tournament.

Shannon Pike of Sarasota, Florida, won the co-angler division Saturday after bringing a two-day total of six bass weighing 20 pounds, 9 ounces, to the scale. Pike earned the top co-angler award of $15,307 for his victory.

The top three co-anglers who qualified for the 2026 Phoenix BFL All-American finished:

1st:        Shannon Pike, Sarasota, Fla., six bass, 20-9, $15,307
2nd:       Preston Williams, Tallahassee, Fla., six bass, 18-7, $3,884
3rd:       Mike Tucker, Yalaha, Fla., six bass, 15-3, $2,030

Rounding out the top 10 co-anglers were:

4th:        Nathan Haystead, St. Cloud, Fla., five bass, 14-4, $1,218
5th:        Demond Jenkins, Plant City, Fla., six bass, 14-1, $1,338
6th:        Nick Singleton, Crawfordville, Fla., six bass, 14-0, $762
7th:        Jacob Chandler, Covington, Ga., six bass, 14-0, $685
8th:        Ben Lovain, Calhoun, Ga., five bass, 12-13, $609
9th:        Jordan Elmore, St. Petersburg, Fla., six bass, 12-6, $531
10th:     Adrian Davies, Cocoa, Fla., six bass, 12-2, $492

Demond Jenkins of Plant City, Florida, caught a bass that weighed 5 pounds, 14 ounces, to win the Berkley Big Bass co-angler award worth $500.

The 2025 Phoenix BFL Presented by T-H Marine was a 24-division circuit devoted to weekend anglers, with 134 events throughout the season – five qualifying tournaments in each division. The top 60 boaters and co-anglers from each division, along with the five qualifying tournament winners, now advance to one of 12 BFL Regional tournaments where they are competing to finish in the top three, which then qualifies them for one of the longest-running championships in all of competitive bass fishing – the 43rd annual BFL All-American. The BFL All-American will take place May 28-30, 2026, at Lake Murray in Columbia, South Carolina, and is hosted by the Capital City Lake Murray Country Regional Tourism Board.

Proud sponsors of the 2025 MLF Phoenix Bass Fishing League Presented by T-H Marine include: 7Brew Coffee, Abu Garcia, Athletic Brewing, B&W Trailer Hitches, Berkley, BUBBA, Deep Dive App, E3 Sport Apparel, Epic Baits, Fishing Clash, Grizzly, Humminbird, Lew’s, Li Time Batteries, Mercury, Minn Kota, Mossy Oak, Mystik Lubricants, Onyx, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Phoenix Boats, PirahnO2, Polaris, Power-Pole, Precision Sonar, Strike King, Suzuki Marine, Tackle Warehouse, T-H Marine, Toyota, WIX Filters and YETI.

For complete details and updated tournament information, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular BFL updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF5’s 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, 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.