Wilder Triumphs at Lake Seminole BFL Regional

The Regional championships in the Bass Fishing League continued over the weekend with the Gator and Bulldog divisions converging on Lake Seminole for a two-day event. Two more regionals are left on the schedule – Dale Hollow Lake and Lake Eufaula – with both scheduled for Oct. 24-25 followed by the BFL Wild Card on Nov. 14 at a site yet to be announced.

Here's the recap of how things unfolded at Seminole: 

Divisions: Gator, Bulldog

Field Size: 99 boats

Winner: Christopher Wilder (Macon, Ga.)

Winning Weight: 37 pounds, 13 ounces

Breakdown: Wilder prefers to fish shallow, especially around grass, so he focused his efforts in the Spring Creek area of Seminole during practice. However, he ended up catching only one or two bass during one of his practice days and decided he needed to pivot. He turned to forward-facing sonar to locate fish around timber and on grass edges but wasn’t confident in the idea of fishing deeper water during the tournament.

“That’s not what I really wanted to do,” Wilder said. “I don’t really have a lot of experience of finding where fish are in the timber without them coming up and busting the surface. So, I tried to focus on the grass. But after a whole day of not catching them like that, I saw a school off of the edge of some grass, and I picked up an A-rig and caught small fish every cast for 50 or 60 casts. I ended up catching 200 to 300 fish during practice.”

Wilder decided to change his approach to searching for schools of bass on the grass edges, and ended up marking 34 schools of fish with quality bass.

On the first day of competition, Wilder ran to a spot that he knew held multiple schools of fish. Within 15 minutes of beginning his day, Wilder had 16 pounds in the livewell. That early success settled his jitters, and he spent the rest of the day culling to improve his weight.

“Everywhere I went there were five or six boats at a minimum, and I found people were sitting on the schools that I had marked,” Wilder said. “I ended up pulling up on one that nobody was on, and I caught more than 20 fish out of that school. I had around 19 pounds, and the bite shut off in the afternoon. I ended up culling a few more times and ended up just over 20 pounds, but it wasn’t anything like what was going on in the mornings.”

Wilder started out Saturday on the same school of fish he began fishing Friday, but he found the pressured fish reluctant to bite. He ended up catching five bass that weighed 6 pounds there.

“At that point, I could tell it was going to be a hard day,” Wilder said. “So, instead of mixing in with everybody on the water, I got out of the boat traffic fishing through the timber and went as fast as I could with the trolling motor to the other schools and just fished them as hard as I could.”

Wilder’s tactics paid off, although the bites were few and far between. He estimated he had somewhere around 17 pounds, but didn’t think that was going to be enough to achieve his goal of a Top-3 finish and a berth to the 2026 BFL All-American.

Wilder’s weight, however, proved to be enough, and he eclipsed his brother, Michael, by 2 ounces to secure his second BFL Regional win. His first came in 2023 on Lake Norman.

“Both of my Regional wins have just felt unreal,” Wilder said. “I certainly didn’t expect to win another one this soon.”

Moving on: Wilder, runner-up Michael Wilder and Brooks Anderson are all headed to the 2026 BFL All-American.

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