The end of the season is drawing to an end and Christmas is right around the corner, but there is still one more Bassmaster Classic spot up for grabs. With already one West Virginia native in the mix for the 2023 Classic, why not have another one in it as well? The 2022 Bassmaster Team Championship is set to take place on Lake Hartwell tomorrow and will wrap up on Saturday as one contestant will punch their ticket to the Bassmaster Classic.
Day 1 and 2 of the event the full field will fish which consists of roughly 250 boats and then it will be cut down to just the Top 3 after Day 2. Six anglers total, the weights will be zeroed and they will then compete individually in the Fish-Off on Days 3 and 4. The one competitor with the heaviest two-day total will punch their ticket to the 2023 Bassmaster Classic in Knoxville, Tennessee.
I wanted to catch up with Dion Bright and Brian Closson who are pretty familiar with the Team Championship as they are entering their third Bassmaster Team Championship this week. They fished it in 2018 at the Harris Chain of Lakes and last year in 2021 at Lake Eufaula. With a fair bit of history in this event, the duo is looking to finally get inside that Top 3 and fish for a Classic Spot.
“This lake fishes how we like to fish and I think it will be about rotating on spots and finding the bait,” said Closson. “It also helps with the newer electronics we have this year which will give us more confidence compared to the last two we fished.”
The duo qualified for the Bassmaster Team Championship via the B.A.S.S. Nation of West Virginia Buddy Trail in 2022 by winning the Team of The Year title. The team had a hotly contested battle for the Team of The Year win at the last stop of the 2022 Buddy Trail on the Monongahela River to qualify for The Bassmaster Team Championship.
“After day one of the buddy trail, we brought in a limit of smallmouth weighing 3.99 lbs after locking four times to Pennsylvania,” said Dion. “We were on some big smallmouth the week before. It took us about an hour and a half to lock up there and I lost a 4-pound smallmouth on the first couple of casts. We hit all our spots and suddenly the current stopped and the bite went away.”
The duo scrambled frantically to secure a limit which they caught while locking back up to the Fairmont pool. With flood conditions that brought muddy water down the river that was ultimately headed toward their main area that was already not producing, the duo had to make a big decision to save their hopes at The Team of the Year Title.
“The mud was coming down river so we talked the entire trip back about what to do the next day on Day 1,” said Closson.
On Day 2 the duo did not have fish in the box until the later part of the morning when they believed their shots of winning Team of The Year were going up in a blaze.
“We had an early check-in time on Day 2 and at 10:30 am, the live wells were empty,” Dion said before finding a magical stretch on Day 2. “After we came out of the creek, we sat in the boat and discussed our next move as we always do. Brian suggested a spot, and we put a keeper in the boat and discussed the next spot which were all 50-yard stretches, we went on and caught the lunker of the tournament which was 4.32 pounds.”
Those next 50-yard stretches they discussed would lead them down the path to secure a Team of the Year Title in which they boated two three-pounders and another keeper, one short of a limit.
“We were feeling a lot better since we put over 11 pounds in the boat in just two hours,” Closson said of their day. “We never could get the fifth keeper in the boat, but had lost a keeper early that morning. So ultimately our minds coming into the weigh-in was how did Mark Moran and Mike Moore fare? Both of them are in our club and we have competed against them all year long and I know they are very capable of catching big bags.”
Mark Moran and Mike Moore would have needed to catch a sizeable bag to finish above Closson and Bright after weighing in 6.07 pounds on Day 1.
They did not.
Closson and Bright would weigh in a two-day total of 15.27 and Moran and Moore would finish with a two-day total of 11.38 pounds, giving Dion and Brian the Team of The Year win.
“This is the most competitive trail in the state in my opinion and to win it not once but twice is a huge feat in itself,” said Dion. “We don’t take fishing against any of those guys and gals for granted. We just try and be consistent which paid off this year. Brian and myself don’t make a move on the water without talking it out first and the majority of the time we base it on our gut feeling. It has been great chemistry over the past few years and I think that is what it takes.”
While winning the Team of The Year put them in the 2022 Bassmaster Team Championship, B.A.S.S. Nation of West Virginia was able to send two other teams to the Championship. Those would be the 2nd and 3rd team in the Team of The Year standings which was Mark Moran and Mike Moore in 2nd and Marty McClanahan and Shane Raynes in 3rd. Shane and Marty would drop the invite to the Team Championship and so that left the invite open to the 4th place team in the standings, Ed Powell and Josh Milam who took it.
2022 Bassmaster Team Championship West Virginia Roster
- Dion Bright/Brian Closson
- Mark Moran/Mike Moore
- Ed Powell/Josh Milam
To keep up with the 2022 Bassmaster Team Championship you can follow along via Bassmaster.com as the tournament is set to take off tomorrow at 7:00 am EST and weigh-in will start at 3:00 pm EST.
