When the Newport Bassmaster Kayak Series rolled back onto Clear Lake for the first time in five years, the 44,000-acre California giant did what it always does: it humbled some anglers and rewarded the one who read it best. That angler was Matthew Brannon, a 49-year-old from Santa Rosa who turned a forgettable Saturday into one of the most lopsided wins the series has ever seen.
Brannon's two-day haul of 10 bass measuring 207.75 inches stands as the second-largest winning total in the history of the Bassmaster Kayak Series. Out of a 76-angler field, nobody else came within 14 inches of him. It was also Brannon's first Bassmaster title, and good for $4,500.
Day 1: Surviving the Wind
Brannon had every reason to like his chances heading in. Practice up here, on home water just over an hour from his front door, had been spectacular. Then Saturday's weather fell apart on him.
The south end of the lake, where he'd planned to fish, was getting hammered by gusts pushing past 30 mph, kicking up swells that looked more like saltwater surf than a freshwater ramp. So Brannon adjusted, launching out of Lakeport to tuck behind the wind. A cold, overcast daybreak around 48 degrees made the bite stubborn, and he scratched out fish slowly, hunting shade lines along docks until the sun finally broke and the lake came alive. He weighed in roughly 99 inches and watched Day 1 leader Simon Her put on a show, wondering if he'd already let the tournament slip away.
He hadn't. That 99-inch grind was good enough for second place heading into day 2, and it set up the gamble that won it.
Day 2: Local Knowledge Pays Off
Sunday is where Brannon's decades on this fishery turned into a winning move. Calm, sunny conditions opened a window the rest of the field couldn't have predicted, and Brannon knew exactly what to do with it: point his kayak across the lake to water that had been unreachable in Saturday's wind. He understood the layout, the bait, and the timing, and he trusted that fish on the far shore would be fresh and less pressured because no one had been able to get to them the day before.
The read was perfect. His first bass taped out at 22.5 inches, and the run only got better from there. Brannon worked a string of five docks along Clear Lake's east shoreline, each one stacked with bass, on a Hag's Prickly Pear 19mm urchin bait in Hag Pumpkin. His rig was almost defiantly simple. Only two rods in the kayak all week, a deliberate choice that let him slide under dock walkways and keep moving down the bank without busying up his deck.
That local read produced a five-fish Sunday limit of 108.5 inches. Two of those bass topped 8 pounds; his keepers stacked up to somewhere between 36 and 37 pounds total. Fat, shad-gorged largemouth in a lake holding more baitfish than longtime locals say they can remember. By his read, the bass simply hadn't seen his presentation before, and they couldn't leave it alone: show it, pop it away from them, and let them react.
For the record, Brannon isn't a full-time tournament pro. He's a U.S. Coast Guard veteran, currently a Senior Chief Electronics Technician, and a guy who's arranged much of his career around staying near coastal California, where, as he puts it, the bass fishing and the duck hunting are both hard to beat.
Her Lands the Lunker
Simon Her didn't fade quietly. After a rough start to his final morning, he boated the biggest bass of the event — a 23.5-inch largemouth — to claw back onto the podium and tack on a $500 big-fish bonus.
Final Standings
- 1. Matthew Brannon (CA) — 207.75″ — $4,500
- 2. Simon Her — 197.5″ — plus $500 big bass (23.5″)
- 3. Brandon Hua (OR) — 193″ — $1,800
- 4. Aaron Hart (CA) — 182.25″ — $1,500
- 5. Caymen Rasmussen (UT) — 182″ — $1,200
- 6. Solwazi Allah (CA) — 181.5″ — $1,000
- 7. Dang Xiong (CA) — 174.25″ — $800
Follow Newport Bassmaster Kayak Series: https://www.bassmaster.com/kayak/
The top five finishers punched their tickets to the Newport Bassmaster Kayak Series Championship presented by Native Watercraft, set for Oct. 14–16 on Lake Murray in South Carolina.
The Clear Lake event was hosted by Jackson Family Wines and Trimyc Mechanical, Inc. Newport serves as title sponsor of the 2026 Bassmaster Kayak Series, with Native Watercraft as presenting sponsor and Pro-Guide Batteries backing Angler of the Year.