“Back to back like I’m Jordan ’96, ’97, whoa”

-Drake

One thing is for certain when talking to Brian and Dylan Fitzgerald is that they are on mission this year to make up for lost time. The father son duo won the Malone’s Marine Marshall Bass Super Series on Summersville Lake with a total of 14.04 pounds. Setting the record for the largest one day bag weighed in on Summersville in Marshall Fishing history. Also while doing it to the tune of back to back wins, that has only been accomplished one other time in Marshall Fishing history by Tim and Tyler Cline in 2022.

It had been since 2019 that the Fitzgerald’s had picked up their last win on the Marshall Super Series, but now have added two more wins in the matter of three weeks. 

“This is the best start we have ever had,” said Dylan. “We needed a start like this one, been a long time coming. We didn’t feel like we had fished our best the past couple years so it’s nice to get a good start and get the season kicked off in the right way.”

Getting the season kicked off in the right way has been huge, but the duo has also been getting the days kicked off right in the mornings.

“We had a smaller limit by 8:25 this morning,” said Brian. “We didn’t catch our bigger fish til later in the day, but it was nice to have that limit in the box early.”

Dylan claims most of their success came from the time spent on the water Friday morning roaming around looking for a spot they could potentially win the tournament from. And they only needed three and half hours to find it on Friday.

“We prefished (Friday) from around 8:30 to noon, just kind of spot hopping around until we found something,” said Dylan. “On the spot we won the tournament, we caught two or three there Friday. But Dad and I decided last night we was going to start there and so we did.”

That spot yielded a keeper there early for them right off the bat, but it wasn’t til a little later that morning they hit a flurry to fill their limit. 

“We ended up filling our limit and culled up a few times in the morning and then hit a lull for about two hours later in the morning. We kinda bounced around, Dad caught a 2.67 smallmouth and then we went back to the spot we found on Friday and caught the two big largemouth we had in our bag late in the day.”

Accrediting their win again to a jig they spent most of the time throwing. And if you know the Fitzgerald’s well enough you’ll know the exact jig that nor I or them are willing to share on the web. Maybe one day they’ll spill the beans but for now they are going to keep the success rolling on it.

With back to back wins the duo now have 200 points to their name in the Marshall Super Series Team of the Year race with a 9 point cushion over second place Mike Samples and Luke Stewart who nearly won it last year.

“It’s all about survival at this point now,” Dylan said of his points lead. “We feel good about the Kanawha, but getting through both of the Stonewall tournaments are going to be the challenge.”

But if you consider the math from last years Team of the Year standings excluding the Clines extraordinary 2022 season, Samples and Stewart scored 474 points in five tournaments. Meaning that if they could score 475 points and still win Team of the Year but they would need an average of 91.7 points per tournament or an average 9th place finish in the next three tournaments to seal the deal. With only one tournament on Stonewall last year where the Fitzgerald’s finish 23rd they’ll have to make some improvements to keep the dream alive. 

“If we can come out of Stonewall with a five or six point lead, we feel good about the river and then just hope for the best in September at Stonewall again,” said Dylan.

Finishing up in second place was the local team of Steve Groves and Bart Backus who wheeled in a 10.52 pound limit which in most circumstances would be a Summersville winning bag. 

But the ten pound bags don’t stop there.

Third place was Ben and Sam Nowalk who weighed 10.48 pounds.

Fourth place was Charlie and Jeffrey Hanshaw who weighed the last 10 pound bag that weighed 10.41 pounds to land in fourth.

Big fish was caught by the duo of Austin Brown and Nick Stone who had a 3.31 pound lunker.

The next tournament is at Stonewall Jackson Lake on May 13th where there could be a possibility of a new Marshall Super Series weight record. Stay tuned and keep up with the Marshall Fishing Team on Facebook!