The 2023 Bradley Roy High School Open, presented by Covercraft, was one of the most closely contested chapters in the tournament’s eleven-year history. The winning team on Sunday was Blake Marcum and Reese Hughes of Louisa Bass Club HS. Marcrum, a senior, had qualified for the Top 5 Sunday Fish Off as a freshman four years earlier.

155 high school teams and 45 junior teams (6-8th grade) competed on October 7th at Lake Cumberland and the top five fished the following day at Cedar Creek Lake in Stanford, Kentucky.

The tournament is an officially sanctioned high school event by the Kentucky Bass Nation. Two spots in the 2024 Bassmaster High School National Championship were awarded to Saturday’s top finishers: Andrew Worrall and Will Melching of Central KY Bassmasters (1 st ) and Cole Richerson and Kayden Bickett of Taylor County HS (2 nd ).

The winning team weighed a bag of five fish totaling 9.75 pounds. The runners-up weighed in five fish for 9.31 pounds.

3rd place – Bryce McDonald/Ethan Elliott – Paintsville HS: 8.01
4th place – Landon Pierce/Korbin Neat – Casey County HS: 7.85
5th place – Blake Marcum/Reece Hughes – Louisa Bass Club HS: 7.51

Worrall and Melching caught the Railblaza Big Bass, a largemouth weighing 4.38 pounds.  Following the Saturday weigh-in, Roy gathered the top five teams and prepared them for a fish-off on Sunday at a mystery destination.

The Bass Pro Tour angler convened the group at the Riverside Inn in Jamestown at 4:00 CDT on Sunday morning and led a convoy east on the Cumberland Parkway. The teams didn’t know their destination until they arrived at Cedar Creek Lake.  “I picked Cedar Creek Lake again this year as our mystery lake; it’s a lake I grew up fishing and thinks it’s one of the best lakes in Kentucky,” said Roy. “It was fun watching these high school anglers approach this body of water because it has so much cover, structure, and fish to target.”

Each team was assigned boat officials trained by Roy and provided two sets of MLF-supplied scales. Teams were given fifteen minutes to ride around on the designated section of the 784-acre fishery.

Roy streamed commentary on his social media pages as he covered the action. The teams fished two 2.5-hour sessions, with a thirty-minute break in between.  The conditions on Cedar Creek were cold to begin the morning, with temperatures in the high 30s warming up as the day progressed. Roy noted during the live stream that the weather conditions played a significant factor in the difficulty of the fishing and would make every catch even more crucial to the outcome. As temperatures warmed, the frequency of catches from the teams increased.  Marcum and Hughes landed a solid two-pound fish with 12 minutes to go to take the victory over the Casey County HS team of Pierce and Neat.

On Sunday, both team members from the top two teams were offered four-year scholarships to attend Campbellsville University. Kentucky Christian also offered four-year scholarships to teams in the Top Five. In all, potential scholarships were over $400,000. In addition, Drury University will award scholarships to the Kentucky Bass Nation Angler of the Year team.

On Sunday, Marcum/Hughes and Pierce/Neat earned berths in the 2024 Major League Fishing High School National Championship.  Significant general scholarships and prizes for all teams were made possible by Covercraft, First
Southern National Bank, The Cain Pole, A Few Good Men Fishing Tournament, City of Jamestown, State Dock, Angler’s Outpost & Marine, BC Lures, Land Big Fish, Lexington Ice Center, Gumm Concrete, Whitaker Bank, Neat Companies, Ark Fishing, Bass Pro Shops, Railblaza, Grundens, Solar Bat, Triton, Mercury, and D&L Tackle.

“I want to thank everyone who helped us pull this tournament off for the eleventh consecutive year. If you have ever run a tournament, you know the work involved; I have an awesome staff, family, and sponsors. Even though this tournament has my name on it, I am just a small part, and none of this happens without them.”

For a video of the event, visit — https://youtu.be/bPF5U5ATzEg

Media contact: J.D. Blackburn | [email protected] | (615) 479-7991

For complete tournament results, visit www.kybassnation.org.

For more information on Bradley Roy, visit www.BradleyRoy.com.