Bradley Roy made a name for himself in the Major League Fishing Bass Pro Stage One event that held it’s championship round on Bussey Brake the second week in February, 2022. Roy, a pro angler from Lancaster, Kentucky, caught five bass weighing 26 pounds, two ounces to claim the first prize of $100,000 at the Bussey Brake Boat Dock in front of a fairly large crowd of spectators. That’s some serious GREEN!
Roy, the Kentucky-based pro, who was the youngest angler to fish a Bassmaster Elite Series event; was 19 years old when he qualified to fish the Major League Fishing Elites and had collected 11 Top 10s and 22 Top 20s in his professional career heading to Bussey Brake, just nailed the high point of his young pro fishing career. The winner caught his bass flipping a beaver style bait up into thick, thick brush.
Randy Howell from Guntersville, Ala. again made the big bass splash of the day. After setting a new record for big bass in an MLF Bass Pro event on Caney Wednesday, Howell did it again. Howell landed a 12 pound, 14 ounce lunker for the big bass of the day. It’s unofficially a new lake record. You can get out your calculator and double check me, but here goes. Tyler Stewart held the lake record for bass at 12.74 pounds, weighed on a digital scale using hundredths. MLF scales weighs bass in pounds and ounces. So a 12 pound, 14 ounce bass would convert in that previous format to a 12.88 pound largemouth. Both were weighed on certified scales.
Bussey’s big bass laid in wait almost all day before some of them decided to start showing up. As one of the MLF Live commentators said, “These guys fishing Bussey today is kind of like Major League Baseball having a Home Run Derby with the wind blowing in”. Yes, it was. As the afternoon wore on, it didn’t even look like enough of the ten anglers would even catch a scoreable bass to be able to decide how to hand out the top ten paychecks without a coin flip. But that changed.
Roy’s biggest bass was 8 pounds, 14 ounces. Alton Jones of Lorena, Texas finished second and nailed a nine pounder and had five bass weighing 24-15. Jordan Lee of Cullman, Ala. was third with 24-9 and Bryan Thrift of Shelby, N.C. finished fourth with 23-15.
The first four qualifying days were held at Lake D’Arbonne in Farmerville; the knockout round to bring it to ten anglers was held at Caney in Chatham and the finals at Bussey in Bastrop. It’s a first-time event for MLF in this area. You can learn lots more and see lots more photos from the event here:
