Every trail I fish, in one place.

KatYakers tried something new this year: every Big Fish winner from the season's 11 events got dropped into a fan-voted, bracket-style showdown at Hoover for the league's first-ever title. I made it in as the #10 seed off the 44.25″ blue from Ohio River. A handful of no-shows reshuffled the bracket before it actually got fished (full story below) — but I made it through, and won the whole thing.

Lunch Saturday, dinner Sunday. Top fan bracket wins the cash + a signed card from the champ — voting details TBA.

This was the Round 1 seeding going in. It’s not how fight night actually played out — see “What Actually Got Fished” below for the real bracket.

The plan: Saturday night M1 winner vs. M2 (Match 6), M3 winner vs. M4 (Match 7 — mine), M5 winner vs. the bye (Match 8), then the three round-2 winners fishing head-to-head Sunday for the title. That’s not how it went — see below.

Two of the ten locked-in qualifiers — Kyle Harman and Aaron Grubb — can't make it, so their spots rolled to the next eligible Big Fish: Robert Shively (Sandusky Co-Event) and Tyler Neptune (All-Ohio).

Full details & fan bracket: katyakersohio.com/#showdown

Corey Jeffers never made it to Hoover — not for his original Round 1 slot, and not for a reschedule either. With him a no-show, Cameron Marriott’s (Rogue Lines) first-round bye got reassigned to Robert Shively, which meant Cameron had to fish an opening match after all. A few other seeded qualifiers didn’t make it either, so the bracket condensed down to three matches on fight night.

Opening-round scores from this bracket weren’t published — the final standings above come from Fishing Chaos’s official two-biggest-fish leaderboard, updated Oct 18, 2026.

These live on their own platforms and update in real time, so they're linked out below instead of copied here — that way the numbers you see are always current.