Lander duo captures MLF College Fishing national title

Matthew Knopp and Logan Russell team up for 70-10 over three days at Lake Murray

February 15, 2026 By Staff Report

Sometimes, subtle adjustments can lead to sizeable outcomes.

In the case of Matthew Knopp and Logan Russell, teammates on the Lander University bass fishing team, it wasn’t about changing skirt colors on a jig or upsizing a dropshot weight. It was about fishing as fast as possible on as many spot as possible.

The strategy on the final day at Lake Murray paid as the tandem weighed 23-10 to finish with 70-10 over three days to claim the 2026 Major League Fishing College Fishing national title.

Their total was 1-3 better than the University of Montevallo team of James DuBose and Daylon Milam, who finished with 69-7. The Carson-Newman team of Nolan Gray and Riley Brown took third with 67-12.

Knopp and Russell employed a run-and-run approach on the final day to exhaust their database of waypoints gathered during pre-practice visits to the sprawling reservoir near Columbia, S.C., about 55 miles from the Lander campus in Greenwood, S.C. They made one-cast-and-go stops on countless spots around the lower end of the lake, presenting various sizes of the Hideup Coike creature bait to fish holding around brush piles and cane piles as well as rocks, docks and grass.

“We knew that it was going to be hard to get the stump fish to go, because all of the stumps down there had been run though,” Knopp said in a MLF release. “We started hitting cane and brushpiles and some spots we hadn’t fished before. One cast and go. One cast and go. One cast and go. We’d pull a 4-pounder off of a spot and go to the next one. The trick is just getting these fish to bite. Your boat has to be in the perfect position, and you have to make a perfect cast, because they’re so smart. You get one cast at them and they’re gone.

“We really didn’t know what to expect this week,” Russell added. “(Days 1 and 3) are the two biggest bags I’ve ever weighed in my life. When we qualified at Lake Hartwell (in 2025) to fish this event, knowing that Lake Murray was so close to home, I thought, ‘We really need to try hard’. We’ve spent so many hours out on that lake, almost every weekend. It finally paid off.”

Knopp and Russell caught 25-10 on day 1, good enough for fifth place in a field of 151 teams. They followed it up with 21-6 to move up to third, just over a pound out of the lead.

“Day 2 was a struggle,” Knopp said. “We just couldn’t make it work like we had on Day 1. It was a roller coaster of emotions. I cast to a brushpile and hooked one that we knew was a good one with about 15 minutes left. That fish came out of the water and did a flip – it was nerve wracking. It turned out to be almost a 6-pounder that gave us a 3-pound cull. That fish probably saved our tournament.”

Both Knopp and Russell, along with DuBose and Milam earned spots in the 2026 Toyota Series Championship, where they’ll compete as pros for a top prize of up to $235,000. In addition, the highest finishing team member between Knopp and Russell at the Toyota Series Championship will advance to REDCREST 2027. Gray and Brown from Carson-Newman will compete as co-anglers at the 2026 Toyota Series Championship for a shot at winning a Phoenix 518 pro with a 115-horsepower Mercury or Suzuki outboard, a package valued at $33,500.

Here's how the top 10 team finished up:

1. Lander Universisty (Matthew Knopp/Logan Russell): 15, 70-10