DECATUR, Ala. It’s easy to throw around the word “powerhouse” in college sports, but in the case of the University of Montevallo Fishing Team, the superlative is starting to stick. On a blustery championship day on Wheeler Lake at the Abu Garcia College Fishing Presented by YETI National Championship Presented by Columbia PFG, Montevallo teammates Brody Robison and Peyton Sorrow methodically worked their way to a five-fish limit of 19 pounds, 14 ounces to lay claim to Montevallo’s second national championship trophy in three years.

Fellow Montevallo angler Nicholas Dumke (fishing solo), brought 19-4 to the scale to skate into second place, giving the Falcons a 1-2 sweep of the top two spots. The Montevallo team of Brent Godwin and Hunter Odom finished seventh for good measure.
Robison and Sorrow finished the three-day event with 64-15, outdistancing Dumke (59-0), the McKendree University duo of Ethan Fields and Jaxson Freeman (56-10) and the Carson-Newman University team of Nicholas Dellaporta and Drew Pitts (55-14)

LINK TO HI-RES PHOTO: National Champions University of Montevallo’s Brody Robison & Peyton Sorrow
LINK TO HD VIDEO: Fish-Catch Highlights of Championship Friday on Wheeler Lake
LINK TO AFTERNOON PHOTO GALLERY: Anglers bring their A-game to the College National Championship finale

It was far from easy for the eventual winners, though. Shifting springtime conditions, fluctuating currents and an unproductive practice caused Robison and Sorrow to develop their patterns daily throughout the three-day event. The final day also brought a cold front and west wind that blew against the current, making for even more challenging conditions.

“I stayed pretty optimistic, even when we weren’t catching much,” Robison said. “This is my comfort zone, this TVA-style fishing. I’m familiar with the bite windows, and we’ve been doing a lot of fishing on the TVA lately. Going into the final day with a lead, it wasn’t what I expected right out of the gate, but I had optimism that it was going to happen.”

Sorrow and Robinson entered Championship Friday buoyed by a tournament-best 23-9 on Day 2. They left Ingalls Harbor with a 2-7 lead over John Berry and Blake Bullock of Blue Mountain Christian University, and a 5-5 cushion on Dumke, ready to pick up where they had left off the day before. But, as was the case on Day 2 when they caught their fish late in the day, the Montevallo pair took awhile to warm up.

They went fishless through much of the morning, catching one 12-incher before finally connecting with a keeper around 10:30 a.m.

“If you would’ve asked me at 10 a.m. if we were going to catch a bass all day, I probably would’ve answered ‘No, we’re probably not going to catch a single bass’,” Sorrow joked.

At around 11:30, they caught the fish that clued them in for the rest of the day: a 3-pounder that they plucked off of a stump in deeper water, a discovery that encouraged the Montevallo pair to shift their focus from shell beds in 3 to 5 feet of water to structure in 5 to 12 feet. They spent the rest of their time plinking a 5-inch gizzard shad-style minnow on a Queen Tackle jighead, gradually culling up to their final 19-pound bag while their fellow Falcons followed them around the lake, cheering them on.

“We’ve had some awful practices lately, but we keep pulling something off in the tournaments,” Sorrow said. “We have such a great support system with (their Montevallo teammates), and they challenge us to be better. Iron sharpens iron. We have all of these hammers on this team, and it was so cool today – we were out there in some pretty rough water, and we had five boats on us all day, cheering for us. They stuck it out all day in that rough water, that meant a lot to us.”

The top 10 teams at the Abu Garcia College Fishing 2025 National Championship Presented by Columbia PFG on Wheeler Lake finished:

1st: University of Montevallo – Brody Robison, Dawson, Ala., and Peyton Sorrow, Abbeville, S.C., 15 bass, 64-15, Phoenix 518 Pro boat with 115-hp outboard + $10,000
2nd: University of Montevallo – Nicholas Dumke, Grand Rapids, Minn., 15 bass, 59-0, Phoenix 519 Pro with 115-hp outboard
3rd: McKendree University – Ethan Fields, Breese, Ill., and Jaxson Freeman, Loda, Ill., 15 bass, 56-10, $4,000
4th: Carson-Newman University – Szymon Piton, Orland Park, Ill., and Riley Faulkner, Jacksboro, Tenn., 15 bass, 55-14, $3,000
5th: University of North Alabama – Tripp Berlinsky, Florence, Ala., and Bryce DiMauro, Longwood, Fla., 15 bass, 55-6, $2,000
6th: University of Alabama – Cooper Gilroy, Middlebury, Ct., and Hayden O’Barr, Scottsboro, Ala., 15 bass, 53-6, $1,000
7th: University of Montevallo – Brenton Godwin, Stapleton, Ala., and Hunter Odom, Chunchula, Ala., 15 bass, 53-5, $1,000
8th: Northwestern State University – Drake Wadsworth, Frierson, La., and Stone Smith, Shreveport, La., 15 bass, 53-1, $1,000
9th: Blue Mountain Christian University – John Berry, Mount Olive, Miss., and Blake Bullock, Seminary, Miss., 13 bass, 49-11, $1,000
10th: Carson-Newman University – Nicholas Dellaporta, Pequannock, N.J., and Drew Pitts, Lutz, Fla., 14 bass, 46-11, $1,000

Complete results for the entire event can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Overall, there were 47 bass weighing 164 pounds, 7 ounces caught by the final 10 teams on Friday. The catch included eight five-bass limits.

In addition to the boat package, both members of the winning Montevallo team and runner-up Nicholas Dumke now advance to the 2025 Toyota Series Championship, where they’ll compete as pros for a top prize of up to $235,000. In addition, the highest finishing team member between Robison and Sorrow at the Toyota Series Championship will advance to REDCREST 2026 to compete against the world’s best pros for the sport’s top prize of $300,000.

Both members of the third-place McKendree University team now advance to the 2025 Toyota Series Championship to compete as co-anglers for a shot at winning a $33,500 Phoenix 518 Pro boat with a 115-horsepower Mercury or Suzuki outboard.

Hosted by Decatur Morgan County Tourism, the 16th annual College Fishing National Championship featured 135 teams of the nation’s best collegiate anglers competing for a $43,500 prize package, including a new Phoenix 518 pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower Mercury or Suzuki outboard, an additional $10,000 and the opportunity to advance to the 2025 Toyota Series Championship and REDCREST 2026 – MLF’s most prestigious championship – to fish for top prizes of $235,000 and $300,000, respectively.

The MLF Abu Garcia College Fishing Presented by YETI 2024 season featured college teams from across the country competing in nine regular-season tournaments. The top 12 percent of teams from each regular-season tournament qualified to compete in this event, the 2025 Abu Garcia College Fishing Presented by YETI National Championship

Proud sponsors of the 2025 MLF Abu Garcia College Fishing Presented by YETI include: 7Brew Coffee, Abu Garcia, B&W Trailer Hitches, Berkley, BUBBA, Columbia PFG, Deep Dive App, E3 Sports Apparel, Epic Baits, Fishing Clash, Humminbird, Lew’s, Mercury, Minn Kota, Mossy Oak, Onyx, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Phoenix Boats, Polaris, Power-Pole, Precision Sonar, Strike King, Suzuki Marine, Tackle Warehouse, T-H Marine, Toyota , WIX Filters and YETI.

For complete details and updated tournament information, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular College Fishing updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF5’s social media outlets at Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

About Major League Fishing
Major League Fishing (MLF) is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, producing more than 250 events annually at some of the most prestigious fisheries in the world, while broadcasting to America’s living rooms on CBS, Discovery Channel, Outdoor Channel, CBS Sports Network, World Fishing Network and on demand on MyOutdoorTV (MOTV). Headquartered in Benton, Kentucky, the MLF roster of bass anglers includes the world’s top pros and more than 30,000 competitors in all 50 states and 20 countries. Since its founding in 2011, MLF has advanced the sport of competitive fishing through its premier television broadcasts and livestreams and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for bass through research, education, fisheries enhancement and fish care.