Lane's Year (Almost) Couldn't Have Started Better

By John Johnson
BassFan Senior Editor

Bobby Lane had been looking forward to the early part the 2025 season for quite some time, with both a Bass Pro Tour event and an Invitational scheduled for his home state of Florida in February. His performance in those outings certainly wasn't a disappointment – well, not much of one, anyway.

Competing in highly familiar surroundings, the 2022 REDCREST champion won the BPT event at the Harris Chain, then followed it up the next the week with a 14th-place showing in the Invitational at Lake Okeechobee. The only downer (and it's a slight one) was that he expected to fare a bit better at the Big O, but he admitted that dealing with everything that goes on in the immediate aftermath of a tour-level victory cut into his ability to focus on that lower-level outing.

"My confidence has been sky-high ever since they announced those two tournaments (last fall)," he said. "I'd just been itching for those days to get here."

The Harris Chain win was Lane's third career triumph at the sport's top level and his first since REDCREST three years ago. It was extra-meaningful to him for a couple of reasons.

First, he did it in his home state and in the style of fishing that he most enjoys – old-school flipping. His top offering was a 6-inch Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General. His gear consisted of a 7 1/2-foot Abu Garcia Fantasista X heavy flipping stick, an Abu Garcia REVO Premier reel, 50-pound Durabraid line, a 5/16- or 3/8-ounce Epic Tungsten weight and a 5/0 Berkley Fusion19 hook.

With MLF's trailering policy in place, which meant that he wouldn't have to go through locks to get to Lake Apopka and back, he spent all of his time on that body of water. He'd fished Apopka a lot in past tournaments, but said he'd never gotten even as much as two hours with a rod in his hand due to the logistical hassles of traversing the system when starting and ending each round at the ramp in Leesburg.

"Knowing I'd get almost six hours to flip was like a dream come true," he said.

He'd found the area he fished, on the north end of Apopka, years ago. He said it's not a well-known locale, even among hardcore tournament anglers.

"The whole key is finding harder bottom – when your Power-Poles drop down and hit rock, you're in an area where bass should live," he said. "The bottom of 80 percent of that lake is covered by a foot of muck."

The fish were relating to reeds, cattails and lily pads in 2 1/2 to 3 feet of water.

"One thing that was really special to me was that it shows kids there's another avenue (other than forward-facing sonar)," he said. "You can love using that screen, but there are times when you don't need to use it. It's nice to see that it can still go both ways and my career doesn't have to be over because of that machine."

Another factor that added spice to the win was that his wife Madeline, daughter Alexis and his new son-in-law Kenny got to watch him pile up much of his 56-5 total in the Championship Round. They had to check out of the house they were renting by 11 a.m. and, accompanied by multiple dogs, they needed someplace to spend the day prior to lines-out.

One of them had heard of a "nature drive" near Apopka, only about 30 minutes away, so they decided to give that a try. Upon arrival, lo and behold, they spied Lane fishing in proximity to the trail. It was the first time Madeline had ever seen her husband compete when the action wasn't delivered via a camera lens.

Lane said he'd heard people yelling on several occasions after he'd caught a fish, but didn't realize who they were until late in the day.

"I didn't have a clue they were there until the last 30 minutes," he said.

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