COLUMBIA, S.C. (Feb. 12, 2026) – The caliber of anglers competing in the Columbia PFG College Fishing Presented by Abu Garcia ranks has made major waves in recent years. It’s become common to see collegians cashing big checks at the  Toyota Series level and even qualifying for national tours while still enrolled in school.

So, when the best college teams in the country arrived at one of the premier largemouth fisheries in South Carolina’s Lake Murray for the College Fishing National Championship, competitors expected a slugfest. Yet defending champion  Peyton Sorrow of the University of Montevallo, who hails from South Carolina and regularly fishes Murray, didn’t see this coming: Five tandems topped 25 pounds on Day 1 and 23 broke the 22-pound mark.

All of them are once again looking up at Sorrow and his partner, Brody Robison, who got off to a great start in their quest to be the first back-to-back champs since the first two editions of the National Championship in 2010 and 2011. Robison and Sorrow sacked up 26 pounds, 6 ounces. They lead  Levi Thibodaux and Miles Smith  of LSU-Shreveport by just 3 ounces, while a pair of Carson-Newman University duos are tied for third with 25-12.

“Definitely expected for there to be some really big bags caught, but not the caliber that this has been,” Sorrow said. “These are probably some of the most unreal Murray weights that I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t know, actually, if I’ve ever seen them like this before.

“But what do you expect? The college guys came to town, and they smashed ‘em, per usual.”

Considering Robison and Sorrow won last year’s National Championship on Wheeler Lake, plus Sorrow’s knowledge of Murray, the Montevallo pair entered this event as one of the clear teams to beat. But after a slow practice, they didn’t take off Thursday morning with sky-high expectations.

“We were kind of unsure,” Sorrow said. “We had a very tough practice with very, very few bites. Didn’t really honestly catch any big ones until the last day of practice; we got a couple bites to kind of clue us in.”

The pair started Day 1 at the one spot where they’d gotten multiple quality bites and fared better than they anticipated. They put more than 20 pounds in the livewell during the first hour. From there, they ran new water, keying on areas that set up similarly, and made two big culls.

“We fished a lot of new water,” Robison said. “We did a lot of hunting and just using the clues we gained from our start and tried to replicate it through different parts of the lake – places that Peyton knows large fish live and places that relate to what we’re doing. So, we were able to fish some new water and caught about a 5 1/2 mid-day and a 4 1/2.”

Even on this stage, Robison and Sorrow are comfortable fishing new water during competition. During their win at Wheeler, they dedicated big portions of Days 1 and 2 to idling new areas.

“We kind of changed our whole style right before that Wheeler tournament last year – just how we practice, how we go through tournaments,” Robison said. “Our biggest thing is just not having a plan. We have a starting hole, and we let the fish tell us what to do from there.”

While Sorrow’s Murray knowledge helped the pair expand their pattern, he said the lake is fishing differently than he’s seen it in past Februarys. Robison said they leaned just as much on their experience fishing for big winter bass in Alabama, where Montevallo is located.

“We’ve spent a lot of time messing around with oversized largemouth in cold water,” Robison said. “That’s some of our favorite stuff to do. I live on Guntersville, and the fish there act pretty similar to the fish here, and we fish some other smaller lakes around the house, and we’ve spent a lot of time working on this type of fishing – maybe not a highland reservoir, but just cold water, big largemouth. So, getting to do it in a big-scale tournament is really fun.”

Sorrow has no doubt that he and Robison will be able to put baits in front of more quality fish on Day 2. The challenge will be getting them to bite. Bass in the clear waters of Murray tend to be fickle, and they could get tougher as pressure mounts from the 153-boat event.

“We’re around some really, really big fish,” Sorrow said. “We’re not worried about catching size; we’re worried about catching five. That’s our main issue. If we get five bites, we’re going to have a big bag.”

Sorrow and Robison aren’t feeling any pressure as the defending champs. Sorrow said they’re “laid back like we always are.”

However, they recognize that extending Montevallo’s stranglehold over the sport by winning the Falcons’ third National Championship in the past four years would be big for the program.

“It would be absolutely amazing to pull it off,” Robison said. “We’ve got a long ways to go, but that would just be a really good opportunity for us to showcase our abilities and show off the university and the talent that’s went through the program in the last couple years.”

The top 10 teams after Day 1 of the MLF Columbia PFG College Fishing Presented by Abu Garcia National Championship on Lake Murray are:

1st:        University of Montevallo – Brody Robison, Dawson, Ala., and Peyton Sorrow, Abbeville, S.C., five bass, 26-6
2nd:      Louisiana State University-Shreveport – Levi Thibodaux, Thibodaux, La., and Miles Smith, Houma, La., five bass, 26-3
3rd:       Carson-Newman University – Nolan Gray, Russellville, Tenn., and Riley Brown, Whitefish, Mont., five bass, 25-12
4th:       Carson-Newman University – Zach Wolfe, Mokena, Ill., and Brayden Ruckman, Freeland, Mich., five bass, 25-12
5th:       Lander University – Matthew Knopp, Mercer, Pa., and Logan Russell, Clyde, N.C., five bass, 25-10
6th:       Kentucky Christian University – Ethan Burnette, Monticello, Ky., and Cameron Dials, Lovely, Ky., five bass, 24-3
7th:       Adrian College – Nick Owens, Eau Claire, Wis., and Mitchell Straffon, Fenton, Mich., five bass, 24-0
8th:       Murray State University – Levi Kohl, Edinburg, Ill., and Grant Meisenhelter, Decatur, Ill., five bass, 23-15
9th:       University of Tennessee – Matthew Dettling, El Macero, Calif., and Cody Domingos, Knoxville, Tenn., five bass, 23-12
10th:     University of Montevallo – Cole Edwards, Grant, Ala., and Brody Mitchell, Huntsville, Ala., five bass, 23-8

For a full list of results, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Overall, there were 669 bass weighing 2,412 pounds, 7 ounces caught by 147 teams Thursday. The catch included 118 five-bass limits.

Anglers will take off from Dreher Island State Park, located at 3677 State Park Road, in Prosperity, South Carolina, at 7:30 a.m. ET each day of competition. Weigh-ins will be held at the State Park starting at 3:45 p.m. and will be livestreamed daily. Fans are welcome to attend the event or tune in to the weigh-in and follow the online coverage at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

The MLFNOW! broadcast team of Chad McKee and Rob Newell will break down the extended action live on Championship Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. ET. MLFNOW! will be live streamed on MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app and Rumble.

Hosted by the Capital City Lake Murray Country Regional Tourism Board , the 17th annual College Fishing National Championship features 151 teams of the nation’s top collegiate anglers competing for a $43,500 top prize package that includes a new Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower Mercury or Suzuki outboard and an additional $10,000. The second-place team will also earn a new Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower Mercury or Suzuki outboard, meaning two boats are up for grabs in the biggest MLF College Fishing event of the season. Every team that finishes in the top 10 will take home at least $1,000 in the no-entry-fee Championship.

In addition to the new boats, both members of the winning team and the runners-up will advance to the 2026 Toyota Series Championship where they will compete as boaters for a top prize of up to $235,000. The winning team’s highest finishing team member at the Toyota Series Championship will also advance to REDCREST 2027 to compete against the world’s best pros for the sport’s top prize of $300,000.

Both members of the third-place team at the College Fishing National Championship will advance to the 2026 Toyota Series Championship to compete as co-anglers for a shot at winning a $33,500 Phoenix 518 pro with a 115-horsepower Mercury or Suzuki outboard.

The 2025 MLF Abu Garcia College Fishing Presented by YETI season featured college teams from across the country competing in six regular-season tournaments. The top 15 percent of teams from each regular-season tournament qualified to compete in the 2026 Columbia PFG College Fishing Presented by Abu Garcia National Championship

Proud sponsors of the 2026 MLF Columbia PFG College Fishing Presented by Abu Garcia include: 7 Brew, Abu Garcia, B&W Trailer Hitches, Berkley, BUBBA, Columbia PFG, Epic Baits, Mercury, MillerTech, OFF! Deep Woods, Onyx, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Phoenix Boats, PirahnO2, Power-Pole, Precision Sonar, Suzuki Marine, Tackle Warehouse, T-H Marine, Toyota, VOSKER and YETI.

For complete details and updated tournament information, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular College Fishing 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.