Big Bass Bash Winner Braves Hailstorms And A Nearly Sunken Boat To Win $100,000 Prize

On his very first cast at his very first tournament, Brock Boyher won the 2023 Spring Big Bass Bash with a 7.27lb giant! Fighting torrential rain, hail and a brief boat breakdown, Boyher's victory was hard won.

“It feels crazy. It feels amazing. After going through everything that we went through, not really having the best boat out there, with it being my first tournament ever and the weather... The outcome was just absolutely unbelievable. I mean, probably statistically impossible. So it is quite an incredible thing. I still can't even wrap my mind around what just happened, but it feels great,” Boyher said.

31-year-old Boyher hadn’t even planned on entering the Bash until his friend 19-year-old George Guerra, a member of the Mizzou Bass Fishing team, asked if he could borrow Boyher's boat just two days before the tournament was scheduled to start. Formerly a biologist for the Missouri Conservation fisheries department, Boyher had always enjoyed fishing but had never been in a fishing tournament. Figuring it might be fun, he agreed, and the pair signed up for the Bash.

They strategized beforehand for the best place to fish during the Bash; in the end they settled on a familiar favorite of Boyher’s: his grandpa's honey hole on the Little Niangua Arm.

“I grew up you know, as a young kid probably 20 years ago, going down there to see my grandparents, and I would go to this one spot. And I remember catching a big fish there and I was telling George about it. And I was like 'Man, I don't really know the Lake that well but I have gone there before and I've caught a big fish and, who knows, maybe it would be a good spot!'”

They saw the overnight weather forecast was calling for storms, high winds and possible hail, but there would be a break in the rain around 6:30 a.m. So the two planned to leave at the crack of dawn.

“The boat that I have is a pretty old Bass Tracker. It's basically a glorified jon boat with a 25 horsepower motor. So it goes about 15 miles an hour and the spot was 10 miles from where we were staying. So we had to wake up super early in the morning just to get there by 6:30 a.m.,” Boyher said. “We thought we would maybe have enough time to get a few casts in and just try and haul it back there before that terrible storm hit. So we woke up early, busted out there.”

After a long, early morning ride, the pair arrived at the spot and begin baiting their rods with a Ned Rig, a type of small finesse bait.

“You wouldn’t think that’d be the bait that would catch giant fish, but I was like, you know what, let's start small. Let's think about this from a biological standpoint, the easiest fish to eat is a small one,” Boyher said.

They threw out the first cast, and immediately Boyher felt something tug on his line. Initially, he thought it was a snag and tried to get his line unhooked from it.

“And then all of a sudden, it just started screaming, dragging and like the fish started to run out and I’m like 'George, I got a fish!' And it felt huge,” Boyer said. “It came right up to the surface and I saw it. It was a largemouth bass and it was the biggest bass I've ever seen in my life.”

They netted the fish and there it was, a 7.27-pound lunker that would be the eventual winner of the Big Bass Bash. It was the first fish Boyher caught at his first tournament, pulled in at 6:35 a.m., possibly the first fish caught of the entire tournament. They knew they had a big one, but they still had to make it to the weigh-in, and the storm was building again.

Boyher recalled, “We look up as the storm of the century is rolling in with lightning strikes and everything. I mean, it's right on the horizon and we can see it coming, and we’re like 'Dude, we have to get out of here.'”

The weigh-in station was 20 miles away. With the boat's little 25-horsepower motor, they had almost no chance of outrunning the coming storm.

“We just started hauling and going about 10 miles an hour trying to get back to the weigh-in,” Boyher said. “And I mean the weather just flipped. Big whitecap waves. I thought to myself there's no way we're gonna make it. And we come around the bend and I’m just flooring it, saying 'Hold on George!' But when we come around the bend, there was a rainbow in the sky, and I was like, 'God is with us.'”

The pair managed to pull into a random boat slip before the storm began, but misunderstanding the Big Bass Bash rules, Boyher stayed on the boat.

“George told me beforehand, he's like you can't get off the boat or you're disqualified. He didn't tell me about you know, you can get off the boat if it's an emergency!” Boyher said. “Well, I stayed on the boat, we pulled into this dock. I kid you not, it was like a tornado rolled in. Quarter-sized hail that’s flying straight sideways. I have a picture of me standing on the boat, holding on for dear life with this giant fish in the live well, this $100,000 fish in the live well. And we survived.”

When the storm finally subsided, they continued the long trip back to the weigh-in, but their troubles weren't over yet. Just six miles from the weigh-in, the boat began to struggle.

“The boat just stops going fast. I mean, it wasn't going fast to start with, but it started to look like the boat was sinking,” Boyher said. What they didn't realize: the boat was sinking.

The men checked the bilge pump and discovered that when the live well was pumping water in, the bilge pump had stopped pumping water out, and the boat had been taking on water. Guerra bailed with a bucket, and in a final crawl to the finish line, the two made it to the weigh-in station.

When they arrived, the men pulled in beside another boat that was also participating in the Bash.

“He’s in like a $400,000 brand-new boat with graphs and fish finders and all that stuff and he's carrying a fish up there to weigh in,” Boyher said. “And I’ve never fished a tournament in my life so I was like, 'Hey, mind if I borrow your bag? I don't really know how to get the fish over there without just carrying it.' He just kind of laughs and is like, 'You gotta go get your own bag.'”

Boyher and Guerra went inside and found Charlie Terrell, tournament director of the Big Bass Bash. They asked Terrell for a fish bag.

“He's like, 'Oh, yeah, just grab one right here.' And I looked at the bag. I was like, 'Man, I don't know if this if it's gonna fit in that bag,'” Boyher said.

That got Terrell's attention. He went with the pair to look at the fish in their live well.

“And he walks to the boat with me and we go by the guy that was in the boat with all the graphs and all this stuff. And you can see my fish finder, which actually broke off when we initially put it in. My fish finder was dangling by a wire... He [Terrell] sees me open the live well and pull out this fish. And Charlie's face, his jaw just dropped and the other guy was just like, 'Oh my gosh.' And Charlie goes, 'You’re going to win the tournament.'”

But there was plenty of time left in the two-day tournament, and the men worried their lunker wouldn't be big enough.

“The guy who did the lie detector test told me — after I passed and I'm like, 'You think I'm gonna win?' And he's like, 'You're gonna at least have to catch an eight-pounder.'... So we fished trying to catch an eight-pounder, an even bigger one,” Boyher said.

Boyher and Guerra continued to fish for the rest of the tournament, enduring two more storms out on the water, battling high winds and more hail. But in the end, the first fish won it all: a $100,000 prize.

Boyher split the money with Guerra, who is working to become a tournament fisherman. Boyher plans on using his half to invest in land.

“Seeing George jumpstart his career was definitely the coolest part of all that,” Boyher said.

His advice for anyone looking to win the Big Bass Bash next year is to not overthink it.

“Don't try and overthink it. The perfect example is the fish finders. They’re literally just sitting out in the middle of the Lake watching their screen, trying to watch fish eat their lure on the screen. It's like they're playing video games out there. It's not even fishing,” Boyher said. “So my advice is to just go out there and fish. Do what brought you to the passion in the beginning. I loved fishing growing up, and I didn't use a fish finder. I would just look at a spot and just say, 'Oh man that looks fishy,' and I’d go catch fish! I loved it and that's what made it fun. And that's why I kept fishing. It's not about how nice your boat is or how much you spend on a fish finder.”

“It was amazing,” Boyher said of the whole experience. “We ended up holding on to seal the deal and it was just an incredible experience. We almost died in the storm and our boat almost sank, but it was a story of perseverance and pushing through.”