Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
NPFL Stop 2 at Lake Norman is in the books, and it was everything we thought and hoped it might be.
No, there were no 30-pound bags—there weren’t even any 20-pound bags— but a lot of bass were caught, and the tournament was a nail biter that went right down to the wire. If you enjoy bass fishing competition, you can’t ask for much more than that.
This is the story that the numbers tell us.
First, the Lake Norman event came extremely close to breaking the NPFL record for most bass weighed in. Over three days, 1,651 bass measuring 14 inches or longer came across the scales. The league record is 1,681 from Lake Hartwell in 2022.
It shows just how strong Norman and Hartwell are in terms of their bass populations. At Norman, the average angler brought 4.70 bass to the scales each day. At Hartwell, it was 4.83. Those are the best catch rates in league history. If you’re looking for lots of bass, it’s hard to beat the highland and midland impoundments of the Carolinas.
But large numbers of bass usually mean small fish (or great timing), and that was certainly true at Lake Norman where the average bass that came to the scales weighed just 2.21 pounds—the third smallest average in NPFL history behind Lake Hartwell and Logan Martin Lake in Alabama, both in 2024.
Even though they were small, the bass at Norman were so plentiful—most anglers reported catching 40 or more each day—they totaled 3,645 pounds, 11 ounces, which is the eighth best total weight in NPFL history.
Believe it or not, the Lake Norman event was one of the coldest in NPFL history. On each of the first two days, the field launched with air temps below 40 degrees. Was it bone-chilling? No—it warmed up nicely during the day—but few would have predicted such low temperatures in mid-April.
On the individual angler front, you already know who the standouts were (or you can easily check the standings). Greg Hackney almost went wire-to-wire for the win. Kyle Welcher is perhaps the hottest stick on the planet after a BASS win earlier in the week. K.J. Queen announced his NPFL presence with authority. Patrick Walters was among the leaders—as usual—and Seth Ellis posted the best finish of his NPFL career.
More specifically, Hackney now leads the Progressive Angler of the Year race by just one point over Walters, who posted his third straight top six finish and is now just $2,500 short of becoming the first angler in NPFL history to earn half a million dollars in prize money.
Hackney’s win was impressive, but far from easy. His winning weight (47-11) was the ninth lightest in league history and his margin of victory (10 ounces) was the ninth slimmest.
Drew Cook and Kyle Welcher also earned checks … for the eighth straight time. Sixteen anglers have finished in the money in each of the two tournaments so far this season.
At 51 years, 7 months, and 17 days, Greg Hackney is the fourth oldest angler ever to win an NPFL event. The oldest was Gary Adkins—nearly 58 when he won at Saginaw Bay, Michigan, last year.
Speaking of Drew Cook—which I was just a couple of paragraphs back—he limited all three days at Norman, bringing his streak of consecutive limits to 22 tournament days. The league record is 23 by Todd Goade and Jesse Millsaps. Cook can break the record at Stop 3 on Douglas Lake in Tennessee. Is he a lock to do it? Well, I’d put a hefty bet on him, but Douglas has been tough since hurricanes tore up the region last fall. Locals tell me that limits could be tough to come by and that it might take less than 50 pounds to win.
Two tournaments and six competition days into the 2025 season, there are 25 anglers who have limited every day. It’s worth mentioning because no angler in NPFL history has limited every day for an entire season. Will it finally happen this year? We’ll keep you posted, but the danger zones are likely to be Lake Eufaula (Oklahoma) in June and Logan Martin in September.
One angler who already has an NPFL record will likely reach a milestone next month at Douglas Lake. I’m talking about Timmy Reams, who has fished every NPFL event and holds the record for most bass weighed in and career weight. With 973-06, he’s just 26 pounds, 10 ounces from an even 1,000 pounds. A good performance at Douglas probably puts him over the edge on Day 2. I hope his sponsors and fans will get behind the achievement and make it something special.
There’s no formal rookie of the year award in the NPFL—not yet anyway—but among the dozen anglers with no previous NPFL experience or time at the highest levels of B.A.S.S., MLF or FLW, Keith Bardolf leads the way. He’s currently 27th in the Progressive AOY standings. Derek Lehtonen is 34th, Sean Alvarez is 52nd, and the others are hoping for a major boost at Lake Douglas.
