Georgia’s Slaton Tops Co-Angler Division

GADSDEN, Ala. (June 9, 2025) – Boater Austin Shields of Lake View, Alabama, caught a five-bass limit weighing 15 pounds, 4 ounces, Saturday to win the MLF Phoenix Bass Fishing League (BFL) Presented by T-H Marine on Neely Henry. The tournament was the fourth event of the season for the BFL Bama Division. Shields earned $3,553 for his victory.

Shields is on a roll. Last season, he secured top-10 finishes in BFL events held in back-to-back weekends on Neely Henry. He then opened this season’s Choo Choo Division on Lake Guntersville with a win. Last weekend, Shields and his team partner won a team championship and divisional team-of-the-year title in a trail they fish together. The weekend before that, Shields won another local tournament. To cap it all off, he got the W in the Bama Division event on Neely Henry.

“Winning that BFL at the beginning of the year gave me a lot of confidence this year,” he said. “I just fished free. It felt good. I don’t think it’s really set in that I won yet.”

Neely Henry sets up well for Shields’ strengths as a shallow-water fisherman. He says it’s a place where he can focus on grass and docks. With a late boat draw, he started down the lake first thing in the morning just hunting for an available spot to get started. He came across a stretch where he has some history, pulled up and caught a 3 1/2-pound bass on the first cast. Shields worked the rest of the stretch with no luck, then bounced around for a while, eventually bagging a small limit – mostly 1-pound fish to go with that early kicker. His co-angler also sacked up a small limit.

“I decided to run back up the lake just a little bit, bouncing my way back up toward Gadsden, fishing small pockets,” he recalled. “I had a big fish come off at the boat in one of those pockets. That gave me the confidence to keep doing what I was doing – keep grinding shallow. I knew it was what I needed to do to get the big bites.”

On his next stop – a place Shields had never fished before – he tossed his swim jig up to a mat and caught a 4.8-pound bass, culling out a fish that weighed just shy of a pound. Shields fished around some more but made sure to leave himself about 90 minutes to check some spots near the takeoff area, where he knows a lot of bass are released in local tournaments.

“I get to my good stretch, my favorite stretch, where literally last year in my two top 10s I caught a fish over 4 pounds in back-to-back weekends,” he said. “And I don’t know why but they like to eat late in the day. Sure enough, like clockwork, I get to my grass and I fish this stretch and I’m working my frog. I see a little piece of grass twitch. I’m like, ‘Oh, one’s coming for it.’ I gave it a nice little pause and she ate it, and it was like a 4 1/2.”

That closing kicker sealed the deal for Shields, giving him the win by just 2 ounces over Hunter Hayes.

“Man, it feels awesome,” he added. “It just really hasn’t set in yet because I wasn’t thinking I had a shot to win. I was thinking I might have a top 10 or top 20. I was feeling pumped about that. And I had a great co-angler, too, a guy by the name of Jeffrey Ford. He was really cool. Really positive. He kept me kind of level throughout the day and had a great attitude. That along with having my family here cheering me on for the whole thing. We made a vacation out of it this whole week, staying up in Gadsden. We love Gadsden. It’s a really cool place.”

The top 10 boaters finished the tournament:

1st:        Austin Shields, Lake View, Ala., five bass, 15-4, $3,553
2nd:      Hunter Hayes, Gadsden, Ala., five bass, 15-2, $1,777
3rd:       Bobby McCaa, Selma, Ala., five bass, 14-13, $1,685 (includes $500 Phoenix MLF Contingency Bonus)
4th:        Dusty Robinson, Eclectic, Ala., five bass, 14-6, $829
5th:        Manning Larkins, Hueytown, Ala., five bass, 14-5, $711
6th:        Jason Gator Howard, Oxford, Ala., five bass, 13-7, $1,106
7th:        Kris Colley, Ragland, Ala., five bass, 13-6, $592
8th:        Todd Newchurch, Livonia, La., five bass, 13-2, $503
8th:        Allan Glasgow, Foley, Ala., five bass, 13-2, $503
10th:     David Wesson, Southside, Ala., five bass, 12-15, $415

Complete results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Jason Gator Howard caught a bass that weighed 6 pounds, 3 ounces, and earned the Berkley Big Bass Boater award of $455.

Robert Slaton of Marietta, Georgia, won the co-angler division and $1,777 Saturday, after bringing three bass to the scale that totaled 12 pounds, 10 ounces.

The top 10 co-anglers finished:

1st:        Robert Slaton, Marietta, Ga., three bass, 12-10, $1,777
2nd:      James Ramsey, Boaz, Ala., three bass, 8-8, $888
3th:        Brad Mahan, Clanton, Ala., three bass, 8-3, $819
4th:        Chris Allen, Bremen, Ga., three bass, 7-12, $415
5th:        Sam Fish, Alexander City, Ala., three bass, 7-10, $355
6th:        Don Griffin, Roswell, Ga., three bass, 7-9, $326
7th:        Elijah Clark, Alabaster, Ala., three bass, 7-6, $296
8th:        Matt Adcock, Somerville, Ala., three bass, 7-4, $267
9th:        Michael Petras, Biloxi, Miss., three bass, 7-3, $387
10th:     Larry Chastain, Laurel, Miss., three bass, 7-2, $207

Brad Mahan of Clanton, Alabama, earned the Berkley Big Bass co-angler award of $227, catching a bass that weighed in at 5 pounds, 7 ounces – the largest co-angler catch of the day.

After four events, Kris Colley of Ragland, Alabama, now leads the Fishing Clash Bama Division Angler of the Year (AOY) race with 964 points, while Larry Chastain of Laurel, Mississippi, leads the Fishing Clash Bama Division Co-Angler of the Year race with 963 points.

The fifth and final regular-season event for BFL Bama Division anglers will be held Aug. 16-17, at the Alabama River out of Prattville, Alabama. To register for the event as a boater or a co-angler, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com or call (270)-252-1000.

The top 60 boaters and co-anglers in the division based on point standings, along with the five tournament winners of each qualifying event, will qualify for the Oct. 10-11 BFL Regional tournament on Logan Martin Lake out of Lincoln, Alabama. Boaters will fish for a top award of a new Phoenix 819 Pro with a 200-horsepower Mercury or Suzuki outboard worth $50,000, while co-anglers will compete for a top award of $20,000.

The 2025 Phoenix BFL Presented by T-H Marine is 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, will 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 BFL All-American. The 2025 BFL All-American will take place May 29-31, 2025, at Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and is hosted by hosted by Visit Hot Springs and the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism.

Proud sponsors of the 2025 MLF Phoenix Bass Fishing League Presented by T-H Marine 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, Li Time Batteries, Mercury, Minn Kota, Mossy Oak, Mystik Lubricants, Onyx, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Phoenix Boats, 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 Bass Fishing League 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 Channel, Outdoor Channel, CBS Sports Network, World Fishing Network 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.