Wheeler Claims Qualifying Round Win, Earns Bye to Finals

Scene shifts to Lake Brownwood for Knockout and Championship rounds

March 27, 2026 By Staff Report

EARLY, Texas – When Jacob Wheeler launched on Lake O.H. Ivie for the second day of the Qualifying Round he was unsure whether he wanted to try to win the round and earn the automatic trip to the Championship Round.

Eight hours later, after lines out, Wheeler joked that he was “still unsure.” But while he never fully committed to holding the top spot on the leaderboard, the bass made the decision for him.

Wheeler added 13 scorable bass for 24 pounds, 12 ounces on Friday to win the Qualifying Round with a two-day total of 78-12. That cleared second-place Wesley Strader by more than 12 pounds.

“I was just like, the hell with it,” Wheeler said. “When you can get a good finish, take a guaranteed good finish.”

As a result, Wheeler will skip Saturday’s Knockout Round, which will pit the rest of the Top 25 finishers on a new fishery in Lake Brownwood. Wheeler will join the top nine anglers from that round in Sunday’s Championship Round, where he’ll try to extend his Bass Pro Tour-best win total to 11.

Wheeler may have wrestled with the decision, but said he ultimately caught enough fish to keep himself atop the leaderboard all day Friday because he doesn’t know Lake Brownwood well enough to guarantee he’d make the Top 10 via the Knockout Round. He thinks spending Saturday on the fishery, which is about 75 miles northwest of O.H. Ivie, would help his chances of winning the event.

“If I was super dialed in on Brownwood, I probably would have just laid up today, because I would have caught them (Saturday morning), and then I would have been able to go practice,” Wheeler said. “But I’m not super dialed.”

He won’t be entering the Championship Round blind, though. Wheeler fished two days at Brownwood during the 2024 Patriot Cup, a Team Series event in which he competed alongside Dustin Connell. He also spent about seven hours of the three-day official practice window on the lake.

“I have enough stuff there that I feel like I’ll catch some bass, and I know the lake well enough because I fished two days of a Team Series event there,” he said. “So, I know how it sets up. I'll be able to go run around a little bit, which will be important.”

Wheeler also said he won the round because he couldn’t resist the topwater frog bite he found Friday morning.

Late on Day 1, Wheeler spied a school of bass busting on shad, and he quickly caught four scorable bass on a frog and a swim jig. He returned to that spot Friday morning and was able to generate some explosive blowups as he stacked nine scorable bass for 23-11 in the first 70 minutes.

“I’m a topwater addict,” Wheeler said. “I love throwing topwater baits. If I could only have one bait to throw the rest of my life, it would have to be a topwater. So, when I get the opportunity to throw a frog in heavy cover, and they’re blowing it out of the water and eating it and coming 4 foot out of the water with it, you can’t ask for anything more. It was a lot of fun.”

“Those fish were spawning a little bit deeper on those bushes, and that was definitely the best deal,” he said. “Really taking your time and fishing around slowly – trying to pitch to the outside of the bush first, then fish the center of it. Because the center of it, you’re going to get the bite, but typically you’re going to lose them. So, being methodical, being smart about the entry and the exit helped me throughout the week.”

That bite faded as the tournament progressed. Wheeler attributed that to the fish being in between spawning waves, so more were leaving the beds than arriving. He adjusted by targeting schools feeding on shad with the aforementioned reaction baits – a pattern several anglers exploited for hot starts on Day 2.

Taking advantage of the morning bite proved pivotal, as the action slowed for everyone as the sun got higher and the wind gained steam. Wheeler amassed 48-11 of his 78-12 total during the opening periods on Thursday and Friday.

“You had a little bit of a shad spawn in the morning, and also you just were able to fish those bushes so much more efficiently without the wind,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler will spend Saturday strategizing for his 41st Championship Round in 63 career Bass Pro Tour events. But that’s not all he has on the docket. He’s also hoping to pull off a last-minute turkey hunt, followed by a hunt for his first win of 2026 on Sunday.

Weights were stacked tight around the cut line throughout the two Qualifying Round days, and for the second event in a row, the final spot in the Knockout Round field (and the last $15,000 check) was decided by tiebreaker.

Mitchell Robinson and Colby Miller both finished with 33-2, but Robinson won the tiebreaker thanks to his 7-1 big bass. He also caught a 6-14 on Friday, and those two big bites accounted for more than 40 percent of his total. Anthony Gagliardi and Nick LeBrun also finished one scorable bass shy of making the cut.

None of the double-digit giants that O.H. Ivie has been known to produce made an appearance at this event, but two 8-pounders showed up Friday. Jacob Walker earned Berkley Big Bass honors for an 8-7 brute.

The top 25 pros that now advance in competition are: