GROVE, OKLA. — Noah Dickneite of Freeburg finished 24th at the Nov. 6-8 Major League Fishing (MLF) Toyota Series Plains Division National Championships at Grand Lake in Grove, Okla., as a co-angler. He caps an unforgettable season.

“This has been a year I’ll never forget,” he said. “I’ve made more money and earned more hardware from bass fishing this year than I have in any other year of fishing in my life. It’s just that my hard work is paying off. I’ve put in the work for all these years, and I’ve had bad tournaments, and I’ve had terrible days of fishing. But, even on the worst days, if you keep a positive attitude, in anything really, even if you’re going through the worst, if you can find the silver lining, look for what you did wrong, or adjustments that need to be made, you grow and become better. This is almost like my mantra, but you’ve got to have bad days to appreciate good ones.”

Dickneite caught four bass on the first day, weighing 7.5 pounds, and on the second day, his haul was three fish worth 6.3 pounds, giving him a two-day total of 13.8 pounds.

“On the third day, I ended up blanking,” said Dickneite. “I was able to catch a few fish, but they just weren’t big enough to keep.”

The minimum length at this tournament was 14 inches.

“I didn’t really have any missed opportunities all week,” said Dickneite. “But honestly, I fished really clean. The fish I hooked, for the most part, came to the boat in the tournament.”

He caught four bass on a three-quarter-ounce jig, one with a jerk bait, another on a drop shot, and the last on a Rapala shad rap, known for being a very good river crank bait. “It excels in cold water or really pressured-water situations,” said Dickneite. “It’s got a very natural swim to it, but it’s kind of a difficult bait to throw because it’s so light. It’s one of only a few mass-produced lures that’s still made out of wood.”

During the week leading into the tournament, Dickneite said he was fortunate to get on the Gasconade River to work on some finesse techniques.

“I hooked a really big smallmouth on a jerk bait that gave me confidence going into the first day of the tournament,” he added.

Dickneite later went to a private lake, where he almost exclusively threw a drop shot, and caught quite a few fish. “I really was trying to focus on a technique that I’ve not been super comfortable with, but I thought that it would be a big player in how this tournament fished,” he explained. “I was right. On the second day, I ended up catching my third keeper on it, and it was my biggest keeper. It was close to a three-pound fish, and it really did a lot to help me make the cut for the third day.”

Grand Lake provided a tough environment. “I’ve never fished an event where I was quite literally targeting bass from anywhere from zero feet of water to, on the third day, at one point, the boat was in 118 feet of water. You have to keep your mind wide open over the course of a tournament from the back of the boat. You can’t have any limits.”

That’s just the way it goes for co-anglers, who fish where the boater decides. “It’s really important to remember that the guy in the front of the boat has to catch his fish, too,” said Dickneite. “He has a higher entry fee, so he has more to win and more to lose. So, from the back of the boat, you have to do whatever you can to stay as positive as you can, and just fish with what you’re dealt. I don’t wish that I could have changed what my boater was doing. The only thing I wish I had done is maybe change how I was fishing a little bit.”

Dickneite’s 24th-place finish earned him $900.

Last weekend, Noah and his father, Andre, spent time fishing together on the Gasconade and at the Lake of the Ozarks. “It’s really important for both of us that we have such an incredible smallmouth body of water close to us,” Noah said. “I don’t think the Gasconade gets nearly the attention it deserves for the fishery that it is.”

He caught a small-mouth weighing 3.91 pounds and tipping the scales at 3.63 pounds. “Those aren’t easy numbers to come by for smallmouth in general, and just to have that 10 or 15 minutes from the house is really an unspeakable treasure to me.”

Looking ahead, he may compete in random tournaments the rest of the year, and 2026 is wide open. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Dickneite. “I don’t know what events I might fish. I don’t know if I want to do a little more traveling next year, or if I just want to kick back and save up some money so I can approach it with a little more aggressive standpoint, with less to lose.”

Regardless of his next tournament, Dickneite said he plans to fish as much as possible. “I’d fish 365 days a year and never worry about a paycheck; just fish all the time,” he said. “It’s a drug I can’t ever get enough of.”