Kirk Falls of Shavan, Louisiana weighed a 10.76 in the 9 a.m. hour to win the 2026 Mega Bass at Lake Fork, collecting a new Skeeter ZX200 powered by Yamaha, $15,000 in prize money and his biggest bass ever on a tournament day the Bass Champs Doc Talk podcast described as the world's richest one-day big-bass event.
More than 1,450 anglers fished the tournament, which pays $15,000 for the hourly big bass and distributes $25,000 every hour down to 15th place. Falls, who sat out of a planned starting spot in the dark with his brother as co-pilot, nearly missed the fish altogether. A boat cut in front of them 10 minutes before lines-in, forcing him to reposition further along the bank than he had intended.
"I'm kind of thankful at this point that he did that," Falls told host John McCalmont on the podcast. "We went back on the bank a little bit further than I would have probably not gotten there at the time I did, obviously. If that would not have happened, I wouldn't have caught the fish."
The bite came on a ChatterBait fired at a tree in three feet of water. Falls had lost a fish he estimated at three pounds earlier, and the kicker did not announce itself. "He hit it like any other fish would hit it," Falls said. "I started reeling, I got him about 10 feet from where I hooked him. He blew the water up pretty good. I'm like, that's probably in the slot." The fish came straight to the boat before his brother slid the net under it.
"Holy crap," Falls said on deck. "I knew it was a money fish, for sure. I knew it was going to be over." It was the second double-digit bass Falls's brother had netted for him, joining a 10-and-a-half pounder from 15 years ago. The prize-money waiting game played out across a long afternoon of weigh-ins.
"At first, I really wasn't even concerned. I was just happy that I won the $15,000," Falls said. "As far as it being the biggest fish of the tournament, that was just extra. I wasn't nervous about it until that last hour." He refused to count his winnings until the scales officially confirmed it, telling friends who pushed him on his plans for the boat: "Dude, I ain't won this boat yet."
Second place produced a very different story. Justin Williams of Temple, Texas nearly left a 15.5-inch fish in the livewell rather than weigh it in. On the scales, it registered 2.94 pounds — an under-slot kicker that beat the 2.30-pound weight required to cash. Williams walked away with $2,000 and a new Kubota Sidekick.
"She weighed a lot more than I was expecting," Williams said. "The lakes that I fish back at my home lakes, we don't have chunks like that. We got some small fish like that, but they don't have bellies on them." Williams caught the fish in roughly 10 feet of water on a paused jerkbait, a sight-fished reaction bite off forward-facing sonar after his partner had already landed one from the same tree.