Tennessee native Dylan Nutt has won the 2026 Bassmaster Classic on the Tennessee River in Knoxville, posting a 66-pound, 13-ounce three-day total to claim the $300,000 top prize and become only the second B.A.S.S. Nation qualifier in Classic history to win the event.
The previous Nation qualifier to take the title was Bryan Kerchal, who won in 1994. Nutt's path to Knoxville ran through the grassroots side of the B.A.S.S. organisation rather than the Elite Series — a detail that made the victory stand out in a field stacked with tour professionals.
Nutt's winning margin was 9 pounds, 5 ounces over second-place finisher Trey McKinney, built on a dominant middle day. He weighed 19 pounds, 5 ounces on day one, followed with a tournament-best 26 pounds, 11 ounces on day two, then closed with 20 pounds, 13 ounces on the final day in front of a home-state crowd.
"It was surreal out there today," Nutt said after the win. "I got off to a fast start this morning, which helped settle me down, and I was able to move around and build a solid limit."
The winning bait has drawn as much attention as the result. According to tournament coverage, Nutt leaned heavily on a Berkley Lab Series Minnow — a soft plastic developed at Berkley's Spirit Lake, Iowa facility that had not yet been released to market when the Classic was fished. The company has indicated the Lab Series line is scheduled for public release later in 2026.
Forward-facing sonar was central to Nutt's approach. He used the technology to locate pre-spawn bass stacked in pockets of the river system and to meter individual fish before committing to a cast, a pattern that has become a dividing line in modern tournament bass fishing.
Nutt's background adds another layer to the story. A former Sale Creek High School angler in Tennessee, he has spent years grinding through B.A.S.S. Nation state and regional events to earn his Classic berth. The $300,000 cheque and the sport's biggest trophy arrived on home water, in front of friends and family — a Classic narrative that rarely lines up for qualifiers from outside the Elite Series pipeline.
The result also hands Berkley one of the most valuable product-launch stories in recent memory: a still-unreleased soft plastic winning the Bassmaster Classic in the hands of an underdog angler, on the tour's biggest stage, on a fishery many of the Elite Series pros knew well. For Nutt, however, the focus in the immediate aftermath was simpler. He entered the final day with a significant cushion, managed the water carefully, and finished the job at the biggest event in his sport.