EVANS, Ga. — With a Day 2 catch of 8 pounds, 7 ounces, Tennessee’s Scotts Hill High School Anglers Junior duo Parker Smith and Carson Randan claimed the 2025 Bassmaster Junior National Championship title at Clarks Hill Lake with a two-day total of 20 pounds, 7 ounces.
Parker and Smith, 14 and 13 years old, respectively, were in third place after the first day with a three-bass limit weighing 12 pounds. That had them a mere 3 ounces out of the lead. On Day 2, as the bite tightened up for just about everyone, they landed 8 pounds 7 ounces to win by 1-04 over the second-place Junior Keystone Bassmasters team of Weston Bouchikas and Luke Hoskinson.
The Scotts Hill team certainly aren’t strangers to winning: “Thirteen is supposed to be an unlucky number,” said boat captain Nick Hart. “But this is the thirteenth tournament they’ve won this year, including some big ones. They fish all the time and they do the work that it takes to be great.”
Today that involved staying patient after losing a quality fish this morning that might’ve sealed the deal.
“That kind of hurt us early,” said Smith, “But we kept culling up and culling up and eventually we caught another big one.”
Every fish that they caught came LiveScoping minnow style bait comprised of a 3/16 ounce Berkley Fusion19 Hybrid Jighead with a 1/0 hook and a 5-inch Deps Sakamata Shad in Electric Shad. They sprayed the soft plastic bait with Bang fish attractant and tied it on with a loop knot to allow it to roll better.
“My strength is scoping for big fish,” Smith continued. “Carson’s strength is fishing a jig or a worm or a shakey head, really finessing them. That’s why we work so well together.” They also capitalized on extreme patience honed through hundreds of hours on the water. Randan said that they maximized their fishing time by staying within 2 miles of the ramp and looking for bait balls that held aggressive fish.
Runners up Bouchikas and Hoskinson finished with a two-day total of 19-3, followed by Alabama’s Headland Junior High School team of Hayes Henderson and Caden Harris in third with 18-4.
Bouchikas and Hoskinson were the only team to catch a double digit bag today, with three Clarks Hill bass that totaled 10-3. No team had over 10 pounds each day.
To catch their Day 1 bag, the Oklahoma team ran a selection of the approximately 100 brush piles they’d marked in practice. Yesterday that put them in 11th place with 9 pounds even, not far out of the lead, but needing to improve their quality to make a run at the title.
Today they started off with that same pattern, but “we weren’t getting the right bites, so we starting ’Scoping bait balls with Damiki rigs,” Bouchikas reported. “We started catching decent fish right away.” Like the winners, they used a 5-inch Sakamata Shad, albeit in the Silver Shad pattern. They paired them with Queen Tackle Tungsten jigheads.
Boat captain Chris Bouchikas remains amazed by the young anglers’ maturity and talent: “There’s not a lot that they don’t do well,” he said. “I let them make their own decisions on the boat and they do a great job with it.”
They also got a special thrill late in the day when the team captained by Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series superstar Mike Iaconelli pulled up within a couple hundred yards and the pro’s son Vegas quickly caught a quality bass: “We got to witness Ike go off,” Chris recalled. “We heard him yell ‘Never give up!’ just going crazy. We all had goosebumps for at least 30 minutes.”
Despite catching 4 pounds less today than they did yesterday, Henderson and Harris saw their position in the standings rise from 6th to 3rd. Their strategy centered on running brush piles fairly close to the ramp.
Yesterday they amassed most of their damage with a Morning Dawn colored Roboworm 6-inch straight tail worm on a dropshot. Today a Chug Bug was their primary producer, as they caught only half as many fish. Despite the smaller bag, they had no regrets.
“We didn’t lose any fish,” Hayes said. “They were there, we just couldn’t catch them.”
They made no excuses, but surmised the increased fishing pressure and heavier winds made it a tougher bite.
Fifty-nine teams caught a three-bass limit today, a dozen fewer than yesterday’s count. One hundred five teams weighed in at least one bass today, and 115 of 120 had a fish at least one day.
Today’s big bass was a 5-12 largemouth brought to the scales by the team of Kendal Ward and Coleton Bradley of New Mexico, the fifth-place finishers. Memphis Johnson and Bryson Seal from Alabama’s Good Hope Fishing Team, the Day 1 leaders, caught the Big Bass of the Tournament yesterday, a 7-13 largemouth.
Visit Columbia County hosted this event.
