Hayden Marbut's most recent win, the Toyota Series National Championship, earned him some $235,000. (Major League Fishing)
Not many 21-year-olds need an accountant.
Hayden Marbut does.
He’s won so much cash from bass fishing that he has to keep an eye on his bank account, and on his tax exposures.
Marbut, of Grant, Alabama, just up the mountain from his home lake of Guntersville, has had an astounding rise in professional bass fishing, capped recently by winning $235,000 in the MLF Toyota Series National Championship at Wheeler Lake. He earlier won national high school and two collegiate national championships.
The win at Wheeler also puts him in the field for the MLF Redcrest national championship, with a $300,000 first prize.
Marbut has now banked $345,555 on the year in Toyota Series winnings alone – more than many pros win in several years.
Bass like this one from Guntersville come easy for the 21-year-old tournament pro, who is a master of forward scan sonar. (Frank Sargeant)
But Hayden is a different kind of pro, not heavily linked to sponsorships and company lines, at least thus far. He has been so successful he has had less need for sponsorships, and happily admits he has bought all of the $15,000 worth of electronics including a 16” Garmin FFS scan setup on his boat out of his own pocket. Even his rods and reels are bought with his own money—he prefers Shimano reels, Loomis rods.
He took a break from practice on Guntersville this past week to spend a few hours with The Outdoor Wire on the lake, and revealed a bit of what has brought him so much success so quickly.
“I rarely played video games growing up but I never missed an opportunity to go fishing,” says Marbut. “I got into forward scan fishing about four years ago, and after a few months of practicing five days a week (while still going to classes at Auburn on his way to a degree in Business Administration, take note) I got pretty good at it.”
(Marbut is a modest guy—saying he is “pretty good” at FFS is like Patrick Mahomes saying he is pretty good at playing quarterback.)
Amazingly, for fall fish-hunting, Marbut largely ignores “hot spot” type fishing and simply gets on a channel edge, puts his Minn Kota on high and starts rolling. He constantly sweeps right and left with the troller, which has the FFS transducer mounted on the bottom, to scan for fish cruising the open water ahead.
Marbut scores many of his catches by spotting free roaming bass on sonar and putting a jig in front of them. (Frank Sargeant)
He relies on a couple of Impulse Lithium 36-volt batteries to keep his trolling motor and all five big screens running despite the monster current draw, he says.
Where the mastery comes in is with his connection to what he sees on screen. He can not only immediately pick out a bass from a carp, buffalo or catfish, but can often estimate the approximate size of the fish as well.
And his casts go out to the fish as if magnetized, with the quarter-ounce tungsten jig with a 5” soft plastic shad dart landing just beyond the fish nearly every time.
Surprisingly, many of the fish are simply cruising along at depths of 5 to 10 feet over channel edges 15 to 30’ deep. (This is during a period when the water temperature is still about 65.) He lets the bait sink to just above the fish, then works it across their path. When the two gold/orange blips intersect, his rod bounces and he sets the hook.
Ho-hum, another 5 pounder.
To be sure, not every fish he spots cooperates—maybe one in 15 or 20. But he’s a casting machine, with the shots going out in the exact direction and at the right range almost every time.
Like all bass pro's, Marbut handles his fish carefully and puts them back to fight again except on tournament day, when the big ones go to weigh-in before release. (Frank Sargeant)
“The amazing thing to me, when I first learned FFS, is that there are so many bass just cruising around in midwater, not relating to anything,” says Marbut. “They’re not on structure, they’re not on drops, they’re just cruising. Without forward scan, we never knew these fish were there.”
Though his boat is totally loaded with electronics, his gear is surprisingly simple—he has only one rod on deck, not the 10 or more bass pro’s often prefer, and he never changes lures. He throws 15-pound-test braid with a leader of 10-pound-test fluorocarbon tied in with an FG knot.
“If I put this one in front of them just right, they will eat it almost every time,” he notes, sticking another one to prove it.
Despite his amazing success, Marbut appears to be a modest guy, not at all impressed with his own success. He’s totally eaten up with tournament fishing—it’s all he’s ever wanted to do, he says—and now he appears poised for a long, successful run at being among the best in the business.
The MLF Redcrest Championship is—perhaps fortuitously for Marbut--slated for Guntersville, with weigh-ins at Huntsville daily, April 3-6, 2025. See details at https://majorleaguefishing.com/events/2025-04-03-redcrest-lake-guntersville.
