Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
If you’re new to the NPFL or if you’ve been following the League since the beginning, this is for you. It’s a rundown of some of the storylines and topics of interest as we near the beginning of the 2025 season. It’s also a bit of a primer on some anglers, some venues, and some statistics of interest.
They’re back!
Through the 2024 season, four anglers had fished every NPFL regular season event plus the 2024 Championship. They are Hunter Baughman, Richard Cooper, Louis Fernandes, and Timmy Reams. All are coming back in 2025.
A different angler has won the Progressive Angler of the Year title each of the four previous seasons—Keith Carson in 2021, Gary Adkins in 2022, Todd Goade in 2023, and Kyle Welcher in 2024. Goade and Welcher return this season.
They’re coming!
Right now, the field of anglers for the 2025 season is 118 strong. Forty-four of them did not compete in the NPFL in 2024 and 41 of those are brand new to the league, including veterans like Justin Atkins, Scott Canterbury, Hank Cherry, Jason Christie, Greg Hackney, Scott Suggs, and Gerald Swindle—all of whom have held major titles in other leagues. This new-to-the-NPFL crew is extremely accomplished, with multiple BASS and FLW AOY crowns as well as Bassmaster Classic and Forrest Wood Cup championships.
The Venues
Of the six regular season tournaments, there are two in the Carolinas, one in Tennessee, one in Oklahoma, one in New York, and one in Alabama. Half have hosted NPFL events in the past, but only one (Logan Martin Lake in Alabama) was on the schedule last year. You can find the schedule here.
Three fisheries are brand new to the League—Lake Norman (North Carolina), Douglas Lake (Tennessee), and the St. Lawrence River (New York). Of the three venues that have hosted the NPFL in the past, none of those tournaments are within two months of the same time of year as the previous events. As a result, they will fish very differently.
The Championship
The second annual NPFL Championship will take place on one of the League’s favorite fisheries—Lake Hartwell out of Anderson, South Carolina, October 3-5, 2025. It will the League’s third trip to Hartwell, but the first in the fall. The two previous events were in the spring of 2022 and spring of 2024, respectively.
The 42 anglers fishing the 2025 Championship qualified during the 2024 season and will be competing under the 2024 rules, which allow the use of real-time imaging units (forward-facing sonar).
The Record Book
The NPFL may be “the new kid on the block” when it comes to history, but the League has created a robust statistics and record book to help tell the story of its anglers and events. This season promises to rewrite that record book.
Look for League records for heaviest daily catch, heaviest winning weight, and biggest bass to be challenged at the season opener on the Santee Cooper lakes in South Carolina. Other records will certainly fall as the season progresses.
And this might be the year when a talented NPFL angler limits every day of every event. No one has done that … yet.
