Toyota Series Championship November 2022, Lake Guntersville, Alabama

Toyota Series Championship
 November 2022, Lake Guntersville, Alabama
 Presented by A.R.E.
 >> MLF USA

This year’s Toyota Series Championship was an all-around excellent event, with 194 boats and top anglers from across the world including the South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, USA, Mexico, Italy, Portugal, Spain and South Korea. Unfortunately, due to heavy lockdown regulations China could not attend this international event at Lake Guntersville.
 
 None the less, there were some interesting fishing storylines, excellent weather and as much fish catching as you can reasonably ask for in the Southern fall. Still, one of the most impressive things about the Top 10 was just how young most of the pros were. Winning the event (his second big win of the year), Kyle Hall was born in 1997 and is still 25. In second and third, Marshall Robinson and Drew Gill are respectively 19 and 20 years old, and 22-year-old Scout Echols was also born this side of 2000.

All told, the average age of the pros in the Top 10 at Lake Guntersville was a stunning 28.6, more than 7 years younger than the second-youngest ever Top 10, which averaged out to 35.8 years old in 2020. In the early 2000s, an average age in the 50s was the norm, and lately an average in the 40s is the ballpark. So, this year’s Top 10 was notable, everyone could feel it at weigh-in, but truly stunning in retrospect with the context of numbers.

Maybe the biggest surprise in the Top 10 is that only one of the anglers was from the Central Division. In that case, Davis set the pace with old-school Tennessee River savvy, the kind of skills that theoretically should have carried a half dozen other Alabama and Tennessee anglers into the Top 10. Instead, Wieteha and Castledine made their way with docks, the kids hammered them with forward-facing sonar, and the pre-tournament keys like punching turned into a good way for everyone but Todd Castledine and Donny Bass to crash and burn.
 
 Of course, it’s easy to just say forward-facing sonar is the sole reason for so much success from younger anglers. And while there’s no doubt that skill with a screen is a big part of it, that’s not the whole story.

Toyota Series Champion – Kyle Hall
 It was a good year to be Kyle Hall. The young Texas pro locked up the Toyota Series Championship  on Lake Guntersville for his second pro-level win of the 2022 season. Hall caught a five-fish limit of 20 pounds, 8 ounces on Day 3 to push him ahead of second-place Marshall Robinson by 5-13. With a total of 59-1, Hall pocketed $237,500 for the win with all contingencies accounted for.
 
 Hall came into Day 3 as the leader over Todd Castledine by just 5 ounces. With time winding down before he had to be back at Civitan Park in Guntersville for weigh-in, Hall had a limit, but knew it might not be enough to hold off a strong field. With only nine minutes left before the end of the day and one more cast left in the tank, Hall laid it all out on the line.

“I said to myself, ‘I need a 5-pounder,’ and then I caught a 5-pounder at 14:51” Hall recapped. “That was absolutely the difference-maker for me today.”

Hall wins with a duo of baits and electronics

Hall went with a one-two punch of a Shane’s Baits umbrella rig with 6th Sense Divine Swimbaits and a ¼-ounce Damiki Vault blade bait. Hall was the only angler to come to the scales with two 20-pound bags, showing that his combo of baits and depth was truly the winning formula.

“I was in about 20 feet of water, really targeting suspended bass,” Hall said. “I was really just roaming around and when I would get around the bait, I would get around the fish. I would go hours without seeing any and then I would just run into a whole school of them.”
 Hall now has three wins in his career including two in the 2022 season. The first was a narrow win on Lake Champlain this summer on the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit that was worth $137,500. With his Toyota Series Championship win this week, Hall pushed his total earnings on the season over $425,000!

The Garmin pro can LiveScope with the best of them, and he says he feels as though he’s at his best when he’s perfecting his fishing craft in tandem with his electronics.

“My Garmin electronics were huge for me in these wins this year,” Hall said. “When I can see them, I have a lot of fun doing it. It hurts my back a little bit doing it, but I’ll gladly deal with that if it means I can win.”

Below, you can see the Top 10 pros, with their ages at the start of the event.
 1. Kyle Hall – 25.6
 2. Marshall Robinson – 19.2
 3. Drew Gill – 20.5
 4. Matt Wieteha – 30.4
 5. Scout Echols – 22.1
 6. Matt Becker – 30.4
 7. Cole Breeden – 23.1
 8. Todd Castledine – 43.5
 9. Donny Bass – 42
 10. Seth Davis – 33

Winning strategies
 It was tough fishing on Lake Guntersville for the Toyota Series Championship , but the Top 10 were able to use a variety of techniques and targets to bring in their bags each day.
 
 #1. Figuring out suspended bass key for Hall
 Kyle Hall is a young man of few words, but the words he did say were quite enlightening as to how he was able to beat the rest of the 194-boat field.

“I was fishing in about 20 feet of water chasing suspended bass that were around bait,” Hall said. “I had two areas that I was mainly fishing that were just 5 miles from takeoff. One area dried up on the final day, so that really left me with one spot where I caught them all on Day 3.”

Hall said he relied on a Shane’s Baits umbrella rig with 6th Sense Divine Swimbaits and a Damiki Vault blade bait.

#2. 19-year-old Robinson charges hard

Marshall Robinson notched a second-place finish to Hall after catching a limit each of his three days of competition, totalling 53 pounds, 4 ounces, including two 19-pound bags on days two and three. Robinson steered away from punching grass mats or throwing a frog over the top of them. Instead, he stayed off in deeper water scanning for fish with his electronics.

“My main focus was finding the bait and staying out off the top of underwater humps in about 3 to 4 feet,” Robinson said. “I backed off to about 10 to 14 feet, really staying out past the edge cranking and throwing a jerkbait. I found a different area every day and got five good bites each day. I can’t complain.”

His main jerkbait was a Megabass Vision 110+1 in French pearl. The South Carolina angler also caught fish with a Damiki DC300, a crankbait he hadn’t really used before this tournament.

“I think my dad gave it to me a while back and I just kind of found it randomly in one of my boxes,” Robinson said. “I thought it mimicked the bait pretty well and it worked out for me.”

#3. Gill shines with suspended fish

A third-place finish at 52-6 for Drew Gill came via a duo of baits – a Strike King Sexy Dawg Hard Knock and a 4.5-inch Strike King Shadalicious Swimbait. Those two baits, and three main areas he was fishing, were what netted him a Top 10 finish on Guntersville.

“Most of my weight came off a bunch of suspended fish,” Gill said. “I found three areas that had a lot of bait and a lot of suspended bass with my electronics. I basically just chased them down with a swimbait and a topwater. If they were shallower than 6 feet, I could call them up to a topwater. If they were deeper, then I would burn a swimbait over their heads.”

 Division leaders take home an extra $10,000

One of the perks of making the Toyota Series Championship is to fish the entire tournament, plus an additional event against the pro-anglers from each specific division. Though the winner can’t take home a division bonus, the highest finisher from each of the other divisions can, which means that a few of the best-performing pro-anglers went home extra happy.

MLF Southern Africa
 In total eight anglers from MLF Southern Africa qualified to compete at the Toyota Series Championship.
 MLF RSA – Pieter Khourie (pro-angler)
 MLF RSA – Shaun John (pro-angler)
 MLF Namibia – Jürgen Geiger (pro-angler)
 MLF Zimbabwe – Stephen Lea (pro-angler)
 MLF RSA – André Pretorius (co-angler)
 MLF RSA – Nigel Potgieter (co-angler)
 MLF Namibia – Neil Engelbrecht (co-angler)
 MLF Zimbabwe – Ian Rae (co-angler)
 
 On day one of the championship MLF South Africa took the lead on the International Pro-angler and Co-angler division but unfortunately fell out on day two. Neil Engelbrecht of Namibia fished consistently and finished 11th overall and won the International Co-angler Division.
 It seems that many MLF South Africa anglers are not aware that they are allowed to fuse the umbrella rig. This benefit was included in our local MLF rules so that when our anglers compete in the USA, they are already familiar with it and use it with confidence.
 
 About MLF Cast-for-Cash

The Cast-for-Cash Bass Angling Tournament Trail has been running since 2001. 

For the 2022/2023 season, there are nine (9) tournaments and a season final in September 2023 at Loskop Dam.

All fishing is conducted from boats only with a minimum length of 4.6m. Unfortunately, no jet skis, barges, or similarly cumbersome craft are permitted.

The emphasis is on team competition and only one team per boat is allowed. A team consists of a maximum of two people on one boat. There is no need for club affiliation because Cast-for-Cash is open to anybody and offers a great platform for anglers who would like to fish for bass competitively. Registration opens sixty minutes before the start of the tournaments at the particular venue. 

Each team is allowed to weigh five fish per day. There is no size limit, and only life fish are weighed. The top three heaviest bags for the day are declared winners at the prize-giving. The prize money is based on the number of paid entries for each tournament and prize giving follows immediately after the results are known. 

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