Weighing in on Championship Sunday with a five-fish limit of 27.26, Bryant Smith of Roseville, Calif. was crowned the newest BAM Super 60 champion this weekend as the Pro Tour made its fourth and final stop of the 2025 regular season on the California Delta in a three-day event presented by the City of Oakley, Tackle Warehouse, and conservation sponsor Fisherman’s Warehouse.
Smith earned his way into the top-10 field cut in 6th place with a keeper count of 25 bass, and a two-day total of 35.18. He bested the rest on the final day of fishing to claim the grand prize of $50,000 cash prize.
“To get this trophy on the California Delta – it’s probably one of the hardest places to win a tournament – especially against the top-10 we had – a group of absolute killers – and to come away with the trophy means a lot,” he said.
Qualifying by numbers of scorable bass, Smith’s final day meant an adjustment of focusing on catching numbers of bass to finding five big bites. When going for quantity, he covered a lot of water throwing a Strike King Thunder Cricket around grass.
“With the tide and the weather (changes on Day Three), I knew today if I was going to have a shot at it, I would have to pick up a flippin’ stick so that is what I did,” he said.
His final day adjustment led him to a Strike King Rage Bug rigged on a 3/O hook, which he flipped with a 1½-ounce weight, using an Alpha Angler Mag Hitter 2.0 with a Lews Custom Pro reel, spooled with 50-pound braid.
Smith ran seven or eight different areas and ended the day in Frank’s Tract, where he found a big one, just short of nine-pounds.
“I flipped into this little mat, and it sank about halfway down and stopped, I set the hook, and she came out like a bat of hell. It was incredible,” he said. “It (Frank’s) is an area that is pretty special to me. It’s an area that me and my dad would fish – a lot – when I was growing up here – so super special way to have that play out like that.”
Smith was appreciative of his sponsors.
“These don’t happen when everything doesn’t work and all my equipment was flawless – Yamaha, Skeeter, Lowrance – all the equipment on the boat ran flawlessly and all my gear,” he said. “I didn’t have any mishaps losing fish – Alpha Angler rods, Lews reels and a bunch of Strike King Rage Bugs got it done.
“This was one of those magical days on the Delta where everything just went right. I made decisions – I couldn’t tell you if they were going to be good or bad – and they all ended up working out. To win – the cool thing is you just never know when that is going to happen; but with this format – weights zeroing, it adds a lot of excitement to it and I was just super, super blessed.”
Ken Mah Flipped for Runner-Up
Ken Mah of Elk Grove, Calif. made his way into Championship Sunday by securing 5th place for the field cut, weighing 39.78 for his combined Day One and Two total, in which time he recorded 18 scorable bass.
He ended the event by claiming runner-up position as the only other angler besides Smith to break the twenty-pound mark. Mah’s full limit went 22.88. He banked $9,415 in event earnings, which included an additional $500 in contingency dollars from both Bass Boat Technologies and Costa Sunglasses.
“On the first two days, I was starting in an area, and the morning was pretty lackluster; so, after Day Two, when I knew I was in the cut, I started exploring the Delta to look at some other things,” he stated. “I made a decision to run a totally opposite direction (for Day Three). It panned out really well.”
Mah’s morning move netted him two bites that he felt were tournament-winning fish. With those in the box, he went to his primary area, roughly 15 miles away.
“I had a tide window where I was catching ‘em really good – basically currented grass along riprap banks,” he shared. “I figured (for Day Three) they would start biting around 10 to 10:30 am and that freed me up to go do what I did in the morning.”
He targeted his area using a Big Bite Baits Yo Mama in a special pour PB&J color but the 1099 is a close 2nd on a 4/O Owner Jungle HD hookwith an ounce weight.
“I made that key (color note) on the first day,” he said. “When it was overcast, they ate green pumpkin really well and then, I felt like with the sunup, they wanted something with a little bit of color and the peanut butter and jelly looks very crawdaddy.”
Mah caught all his day one fish put to work was the Fighting Craw in green pumpkin also by Big Bite Baits in green pumpkin and he sprinkled in a Missile Craw.
Mah flipped most of the weekend and shared what he felt was his critical factor.
“When my bait hit the bottom, it had to be in that 6½- to 7½-foot range,” he said. “That’s where the fish were sitting. There wasn’t grass that was better than the other as long as it was in that depth. That one-foot range was where all the fish were sitting.”
Over the course of the event, the Delta showed out for Mah as he estimated his bites at nearly 60 on Day One, 45 on Day Two, and over 50 on the final day.
Randy McAbee Jr Locks Down Third
Randy McAbee from Bakersfield, Calif. rounded out the top-three of the Super 60 with 19.70, after qualifying to fish the final day by placing 7th in the Day Two top-10 field cut with a weight of 38.21 – his heaviest five-fish limits of a combined 24 scorable bass. McAbee managed $7,405 for his effort.
When launching on Championship Sunday, he immediately noticed a morning lull that he was not expecting.
“The first two days, I had a limit in the first 45 minutes,” he said. “Today (Day Three) it was concerning for me, because I didn’t even catch a fish until like 9:30 am. But, once I caught my first one, it was like a light switch wen
t on and I caught six in a row and started culling. Probably by 1:30, I had punched close to 50 fish. It was a phenomenal day.”
Unlike other anglers, McAbee didn’t come to the Delta with a plan of keepers or weight. He came with what he said was his Delta three-rod arsenal and was ready to take what the Delta would give.
“You can throw in a fourth, if you’re looking for a topwater bite; but I’m a squarebill, a ChatterBait, and a punch rod – pretty much religiously when I go to the Delta,” he said.
McAbee chose a starting location that he felt had a better population of fish, but he didn’t consider a big fish area.
“You don’t weigh many 20-pound bags up there,” he added. “And to weigh almost 20 every day was unreal.”
After a few casts, McAbee settled in on his technique.
“I seen how this line of grass laid out once the sun came out and decided it looked like a punchin’ deal,” he said. “There are a lot of times – when you get on a punch bite and your weight hits the mat and as soon as it goes through, you’re bit, seems like just inches underneath the surface – but then there is the punch bite like this week.”
He described the bite as being focused on the bottom six-inches of the water column, while targeting mats in the five- to seven-foot range.
“I quickly realized I wouldn’t be catching something winding because they’re glued in the grass and they’re on the bottom,” he said.
He focused on a four- or five-mile radius and had about six or seven grass lines he cycled through.
“It would take me 15 or 20 minutes to get down this line,” he said. “They were anywhere from two boat lengths long to two football fields long. Once I figured these little areas out, I kept cycling through no matter what the tide was. When the tide came up, I was literally flippin’ where you couldn’t see grass; but I was following my contour line from my graph from when I could see and I was just blind flipping.”
McAbee’s punch setup included ¾-ounce, 1¼-ounce, and 1-ounce weights with a 3/O punch hook. He punched with a 7’10” Stealth Stixx Peg Leg, with a 7:1 reel using 55-pound P-Line EndurX No Fade Braid.
Although he said they weren’t a factor, the rest of the go-to’s he came to the Delta with were a ½-ounce JackHammer and an old-school Lucky Craft LC DRS 1.5 but shared neither of them were used after the first hour of the tournament.
McAbee noted that he hadn’t seen the Delta fish this good in over a decade and was pleased with the quality of fish that it was spitting out.
“Glad to see the Delta is getting healthy and I am looking forward to going back,” he said