Connell Rides CrushCity Train to Third Redcrest Win

The first rule of tournament bass fishing is that you’re not supposed to leave biting fish to find fish. Although he’s not yet 35 years old, Dustin Connell has a veteran’s savvy and knew that the 2025 iteration of the Bass Pro Tour’s Redcrest Championship on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville was the perfect time to throw that rule out the window.

“I wanted to do something off the wall,” the Alabama pro said of his decision to ride 70 miles up the river to the base of the Nickajack dam. “I literally ran past every bass in the whole lake.”

When everyone else followed the playbook – chasing bass on stump-laden spawning flats or trying to sight fish for them – Connell rewrote a newer edition of that same book, finding not just largemouths, but also spotted bass and smallmouths, and plenty of them. He amassed 87 pounds 11 ounces of scorable bass in the Championship Round, beating his nearest competitor by over 8 pounds, and nearly doubling the weight of the third-place angler.

This marks Connell’s third Redcrest win, and second in a row. It’s an enviable track record, putting him closest to Hall of Famers Rick Clunn and Kevin VanDam in terms of tour-level championships. Because of the unique manner in which he claimed the victory, it was also a signature stamp on an already-exceptional career. Connell would be an exceptional technician no matter what equipment he used. Still, he knows that at the highest level of competition nothing but the best will do, especially when you’re making long runs into current-laden waters. It’s no surprise that his career has risen so fast in concert with the introduction of the CrushCity products.

The Entire Family Delivers

The development of the CrushCity lineup has been a collaborative affair, utilizing not only the exceptional minds and talents of the Rapala crew but also the vision of Connell’s best friend, fellow superstar Jacob Wheeler.

“The whole management team and staff are so united in the goal of building these products that it feels like a family,” Connell said. Indeed, all of the Rapala® and CrushCity™ gear is purposely designed to help top echelon anglers win championships, and to give weekend warriors the tools to maximize their precious time on the water.

While Connell’s game plan involved getting away from the crowds, once in the sweet spot, he still had to perform, and a host of premium products played complementary roles in pushing him over the finish line.

The first was the Rapala® Mavrik® 110 jerkbait, which he prizes for the weight transfer system that allows for long and accurate casts in any weather.

“It also has a small bill which allows me to work it fast,” he explained. “In that clear water, fishing for spawning smallmouths, I didn’t want them to get too good a look at it. I just wanted to react, and the Mavrik in the color Bold Shad was the perfect tool for that.”

He was 12 pounds out of the cut after Day One, and on the second day, when he made the banzai run, the Mavrik produced a 4-pound smallmouth and a 2 ½ pound smallmouth. He made the cut by the weight of those two fish. That same day, he caught two critical spotted bass on the CrushCity Janitor worm in Green Pumpkin, rigged on a shaky head as well as a drop shot comprised of a 1/0 VMC Redline Finesse Neko hook and a ¼ oz VMC Tungsten B.E.T. drop shot weight.

“Every bite mattered,” he recalled. “Not only did I need them, but with each fish I got the area more dialed in.”

Ultimately, though, his two key baits were other related members of the CrushCity family, no strangers to the winner’s circle: The Freeloaded on a ½ ounce scrounger head and a Mooch Minnow on a VMC® Redline® Series Tungsten Swimbait Jighead in the 3/16 oz and 1/0 hook size.

“The Mooch Minnow in Gizzard Shad was probably my best bait, but all of my big fish on Sunday came on the Freeloader,” he said. “It was a matter of matching the hatch. I’d go down the wall of the dam and see big groups of shad. I caught one 2-pound spot that spit up some big 4- and 5-inch shad. When I saw that, I put the Mooch Minnow down and picked up the Freeloader. Then, when I needed something with more of a finesse approach, I cleaned up with the Mooch Minnow.”

His key color was Gizzard Shad, but when he ran out of Freeloaders in that pattern, he switched to Electric Shad. The important factor, he discerned, was offering up something translucent in a baitfish shade.

Redline Hooks Lead to Perfect Performance

While Connell’s strategy appears impervious to second-guessing, and his ultimate margin was large, this third Redcrest championship was also the product of perfect execution.

“I didn’t lose any fish the whole tournament,” he said. “Not a single bass. It was an 8-pound win, but if I’d lost two of those good fish, I wouldn’t have won. With the little 1/0 hook in the jig head, you’d expect to lose a few, but I never did. That was the difference maker. It was the same thing with the Mavrik. Those hooks are so sharp that I’m sometimes afraid to take them out of the fish’s mouth.”

He stressed that he took a measured approach to targeting and landing each fish, although none of the fish at the dam were the product of forward-facing sonar. That’s the same attitude he takes towards the tournaments themselves. He addresses them one at a time.

“I try not to get too high or too low,” he said. “And I don’t want to base the success of my career entirely on winning. Of course, the wins are amazing, but I want to be a positive, fun person to be around. I want to make fishing fun again and bring more people into the sport. But I will say that winning can be dangerous – my goodness, you win one or two and it’s all you want to do.”

He's committed to filling in the remaining gaps in the CrushCity lineup with products that will produce more exceptional catches and encourage other anglers to make similarly bold tournament choices.

“It helps knowing that the brand is behind you 110%,” he concluded. “Through bad times and when you win.”

Lately there’s been a lot of winning, and Dustin Connell and the CrushCity steamroller threaten to flatten everything in their path.