Bass fishing as a potential career? Believe it!
EAST BRADY, Armstrong County — Fishing from a kayak already allows an angler to access more bodies of water, but entering the competitive scene for kayak fishing gives an angler even more opportunity to fish out and about.
This is the story of Colton Hutchison, a Karns City man who started his competitive fishing career around 2020 and now competes around the United States. On Oct. 11 and 12, he competed in the PA BASS Nation Kayak Series Championship in the Upper Allegheny River and took first place by catching the largest combination of fish of the weekend — 22 fish at more than 176 pounds.
Hutchison’s next challenge will be in the spring, when he attends the 2026 Bassmaster Kayak Series Championship in Knoxville, Tenn. His winning the Pennsylvania series championship is what punched his ticket to the national championship event, although he said he has attended 20 tournaments in 2025 and fishes regularly to hone his skills.
“Over the summer I usually end up fishing a few days a week,” Hutchison said. “When I travel to tournaments, I'll take five, six days off work, go out three or four days a week and then fish the tournament Saturday or Sunday.”
On Oct. 24, Hutchison was getting ready to wind down his fishing excursions for the year — he does not prefer to fish in the cold. However, he said he still has irons in the fire throughout the year, working to obtain sponsorships from organizations such as Old Town, which has become common in competitive angling.
“There's a couple people in kayak fishing around the country that pretty much do it for a living,” Hutchison said. “It can be a career, depending on how much time you put in. Still building up to going around the country full time — I think (2026) is going to be the year that I do that a lot.”
The 2026 Bassmaster Classic will feature 58 of the world’s top bass anglers, who will earn their spots through events sanctioned by the Bassmaster organization, according to its website. Competitors will battle for a $300,000 first-place prize and a total purse of more than $850,000, the site says.
Hutchison commented that Knoxville is a hub for bass fishing, and he might move there one day. His fishing career has already taken him around the nation, because of the potential of kayak fishing.
“This year I went to Vermont, Oklahoma, Tennessee. The PA championship was kind of the qualifier for the Bassmasters Classic,” Hutchison said. “You're able to fish more places, so just the access to all types of water.”
At the Pennsylvania tournament, Hutchison caught seven fish on the first day, weighing in at more than 90 pounds, and 15 fish on day two, weighing in at more than 86 pounds. Each day of the tournament saw Hutchison and his competitors spend eight hours on the water, vying to reel in the most fish.
The competition is heavily monitored, too. Hutchison explained that the judges for these competitions check the participants’ measuring boards to make sure they are regulation, and the anglers submit their catches through a sanctioned Bassmaster phone application.
To accomplish his own angling feats, Hutchison used an array of fishing lures, each each meant for different catching situations. He said lure choice can play a big part in the success of a fishing trip, but he has equipment he usually sticks with.
“There's some guys that end up saying I use three lures and find out where the fish are eating those three and then there are guys who try to learn every technique and find a specific area you can use those,” Hutchison said. “I'm more in between — sticking with the confident stuff and then knowing when to switch to the stuff I don't normally use.”
And no matter how much preparation an angler puts into their craft, sometimes the fish just don’t bite. Hutchison said that just like fishing casually, there is luck involved in competitive fishing.
“Some people say there's no luck involved, but I think there's a lot,” Hutchison said. “There's a lot of times where I end up winning a tournament because I was going from one spot to the other and I happen to make a cast and that was the pattern, the way I caught the rest of the day.
“The first one I won, that was a lot of luck, I thought I was just really good at first. Then I went to the championships and didn't catch a single fish,” he said.
Hutchison regularly goes out onto the water of the Allegheny River from the Bradys Bend Boat Ramp, which is only about five minutes from his house.
He said he fished casually as a child, but it wasn’t until he went to college that he began to take the sport more seriously.
“Where I went to college, we would fish every day out of a canoe, so when I came back here I saw some YouTube videos of kayak fishing tournaments and went from there,” Hutchison said.
The 2026 tournament will be the third Bassmaster Classic to take place in Knoxville, according to the Bassmaster website. The 2023 Bassmaster Classic set an attendance record with 163,914 fans, and organizers of next year’s tournament predict the coming event will break that record.
Hutchison is looking forward to competing in Knoxville, seeing that it is a premier spot for kayak anglers.
“Knoxville, that's kind of the bass fishing hub of the country,” Hutchison said. “It will be cool to get down there and check it out.”
