Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
If you watched Strike King NPFL Stop One at Santee Cooper Lakes hosted by Clarendon County Tourism, you know it was a full-on assault on the National Professional Fishing League record book, especially the section on big bass and big bags.
What you may not know is just how thorough that assault played out. Here are some details.
Let’s start with the winner—Oklahoma’s Jason Christie. Over three days, he totaled 15 bass weighing 82 pounds, 12 ounces, the heaviest three-day catch in NPFL history, besting the previous top mark (71-8) by more than 10 pounds. Second (Corey Casey), third (Caleb Kuphall) and fourth (Bill Lowen) also beat the previous record which was set at the 2024 NPFL Championship by Brandon Perkins.
Not only were the top four tournament weights established last week at Santee Cooper, but six of the League’s best 10 ever came from Santee. Here’s the list:
# Weight | Angler | Year | Event
1. 82-12 Jason Christie 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
2. 73-00 Corey Casey 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
73-00 Caleb Cuphall 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
4. 71-12 Bill Lowen 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
5. 71-08 Brandon Perkins 2024 Lake Amistad, TX
6. 71-03 Hank Cherry 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
7. 71-00 Patrick Walters 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
8. 70-02 Patrick Walters 2024 Pickwick Lake, TN
9. 69-14 Taylor Watkins 2022 Kissimmee Chain, FL
10. 68-12 Keith Bardolf 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
The NPFL’s previous record for heaviest daily catch was 30-0 by Quentin Cappo at the same venue in 2023. The mark lasted just a few minutes into the Day 1 weigh-in, until Michigan’s Buck Mallory came to the stage with 31-1. It was a big moment. The League is just five years old, but records like that don’t fall very often.
Unfortunately for Mallory, his record held up for only an hour, when Jason Christie clipped it by five ounces with 31-6. Christie’s time atop the heavyweight catch list lasted only minutes, until Texas’s Jordan Osborne weighed in 33-1—a mark that narrowly survived the rest of the tournament (Christie posted 32-5 on Day 3) but could take years to beat.
Here are the 10 heaviest daily catches in NPFL history:
# Weight | Angler | Year | Event (Day)
1. 33-01 Jordan Osborne 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
2. 32-05 Jason Christie 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
3. 31-06 Jason Christie 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
4. 31-01 Buck Mallory 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
5. 30-00 Quentin Cappo 2023 Santee Cooper, SC
6. 29-09 Brandon Perkins 2024 Lake Amistad, TX
7. 29-00 Skeeter Crosby 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
29-00 Kyle Welcher 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
9. 28-13 Matt Massey 2022 Kissimmee Chain, FL
28-13 Patrick Walters 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
The League record for biggest individual bass was challenged, too, but not bested … not quite.
On Day 1 at Santee, Harmon Davis of Oklahoma managed to catch just two keepers, but one of them weighed 10-9, which was good enough to tie the big bass mark set by North Carolina’s Jesse Wise at the 2024 Championship on Lake Amistad out of Texas. Davis flipped the lunker out of a small mat of vegetation. It was the only double-digit bass of a lunker-laden tournament.
Here are the 10 biggest largemouths ever caught in NPFL competition. As you can see, five of the top eight came from Santee Cooper last week.
# Weight | Angler | Year | Event (Day)
1. 10-09 Jesse Wise 2024 Lake Amistad, TX
10-09 Harmon Davis 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
3. 10-06 Brandon Perkins 2024 Lake Amistad, TX
4. 9-12 Todd Goade 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
5. 9-10 Corey Casey 2024 Pickwick Lake, TN
6. 9-08 Jason Wilson 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
7. 9-03 Brad Staley 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
8. 9-01 Patrick Walters 2025 Santee Cooper, SC
9. 8-15 Jason Wilson 2023 Wright Patman, TX
10. 8-13 Matt Massey 2022 Kissimmee Chain, FL
8-13 Nick Brown 2024 Lake Amistad, TX
In a lot of ways, the Santee Cooper tournament was feast or famine for the anglers. Few were able to duplicate or triplicate solid limit catches. Although 18 anglers exceeded the 60-pound mark for three days, just Kuphall, Lowen, and Hank Cherry had 20-plus each round. Both of the top two finishers—Christie and Casey—had one day with less than 20 pounds, but each also had at least one day over 30 (Christie had two).
It was a barn burner! And the record book will need some time to recover.
