On a normal Saturday, Sanders Ferry Park looks like what it has looked like for years: kids chasing discs across the 18-hole course, families claiming picnic shelters before noon, a line of trucks and trailers backing boats down the ramp toward Old Hickory Lake. It is 70 acres of what used to be shoreline farmland, and it draws more than 135,000 visits a year, according to figures the city's parks department shared ahead of a June 2025 ribbon-cutting. Nothing about that Saturday hints at what is coming.
In twelve weeks, that same boat ramp will host the richest tournament in the history of professional bass fishing. From October 28 through November 1, the top 25 anglers from the Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series and the top 25 from Major League Fishing's Bass Pro Tour will launch from Sanders Ferry Park to compete for a $3.25 million purse, the largest in the sport's history, according to World Bass Enterprises. It is called The Champions, and it is the first time these two rival tours have ever fished head to head for a single title.
Most of the coverage of this event has focused on the money and the names attached to it. Locals deserve the fuller story: why a city park in Hendersonville, and why now.
The Purse That Rewrote the Sport's Math
Start with the numbers, because they are genuinely out of scale for this sport. The winner of The Champions takes home $1.25 million, the largest single payout ever awarded in bass fishing. Second place earns $500,000. Third place earns $300,000. For comparison, the Bassmaster Classic, long considered the sport's marquee event, paid its 2025 winner $300,000, according to reporting in Outdoor Life. MLF's own season-ending championship, the REDCREST, pays its winner $125,000. Third place at The Champions this fall pays more than first place at either of those events.
The tournament is the brainchild of Brian Bird, a Texas businessman who sold his electrical construction company in 2023 and has never competed professionally in the sport himself. According to Sportico, Bird is putting roughly $12 million of his own money into the event, covering the purse, comped accommodations for every angler, and preloaded debit cards for competitors. His logic, in his own words to Sportico, was that a tournament claiming to crown a world champion should pay like one.
The Docks Were Already Built for This
Here is the part that gets lost in the national coverage. Sanders Ferry Park was not chosen at random, and it was not a last-minute pitch. The park's boat ramp went through a full renovation that reopened in June 2025, well before The Champions was ever announced. Funded through Governor Bill Lee's Bill Dance Signature Lake Initiative and built with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, the project replaced the aging ramp with three new tournament-grade courtesy docks, extended out further than the old structure, according to coverage from WKRN.
Hendersonville Parks Director Andy Gilley described what happened next in that same report.
"So before it was even open, we already had calls from out-of-state people wanting to bring fishing tournaments here."
That is the mechanism behind this fall's headline. The city upgraded its infrastructure for its own residents first, anglers, boaters, families using the park every weekend, and the byproduct was a launch site capable of handling a world championship before anyone outside Sumner County had heard of The Champions. Gilley told WKRN the city expected to see high school state tournaments and eventually professional ones. He did not know he was describing an event that would pay its winner more than ten times what the sport's oldest championship pays.
Five Days, Two Rival Tours, One Winner
The format itself is new to the sport. Bassmaster and MLF have operated as separate, competing tours for years, with fans arguing endlessly over which produces the better angler. The Champions settles that argument on the water instead of in comment sections. All 50 anglers fish the first two rounds, and the top 15 advance to a championship round that decides the $1.25 million prize, according to details posted on World Bass Enterprises' own site.
Two-time Bassmaster Elite Series Angler of the Year Brandon Palaniuk called it a chance to finally determine a true champion rather than trade friendly arguments between tours, a sentiment echoed by four-time MLF Angler of the Year Jacob Wheeler in coverage from Wired2Fish.
Across the five days, residents can expect:
- A Friday night concert headlined by country star Riley Green, part of what organizers are calling the WBE Concert 250, announced in late June
- A fireworks show and a ceremonial flyover over the lake
- NFL Hall of Famer Randy Moss on site as a tournament ambassador, tied to a new fishing series he is producing with WBE
- Interactive games and fishing activities aimed at kids and families, not just spectators of the competition
- Food and beverage vendors set up throughout the park for the full run of the event
A separate pro-am competition on Sunday, November 1, will send the top 15 finishers from The Champions to Percy Priest Lake to fish alongside celebrities and other well-known anglers. The Gaylord Opryland Resort will host the tournament's media day, opening ceremonies, and a 70,000-square-foot expo featuring outdoor and fishing brands, giving the event a footprint that stretches well beyond Hendersonville's city limits even though the competition itself stays on Old Hickory Lake.
What This Actually Looks Like If You Live Nearby
For residents who use Sanders Ferry Park regularly, the practical picture is worth knowing now rather than in late October. The park's usual amenities, the disc golf course, the model airplane field, the basketball court, will be sharing space with tournament operations for the better part of a week. Anyone with a standing Saturday routine at the park should expect a different scene than usual, especially around the boat ramp and the newer courtesy docks that made this whole event possible in the first place.
If the crowds at the park itself feel like too much, Hendersonville has other places along the water that will likely see the overflow. Anchor High Marina, tucked into the same stretch of shoreline near Rockland Recreational Park, has been a fixture on Old Hickory Lake since 1965 and offers 150 covered slips alongside The Rudder, its dockside restaurant known for lakeside dining and live music. It is an easy alternative for anyone who wants lake views and dinner without fighting tournament traffic. Further inland, The Local Hendersonville at The Streets of Indian Lake has built a reputation since opening in 2024 as the city's dedicated live music venue, run by longtime Hendersonville songwriter Geoff Reid, and offers a quieter evening option that same week.
The City by the Lake Just Got a Bigger Stage
Hendersonville has always described itself as the City by the Lake, and for most of its history that identity meant Sunday afternoons at Drakes Creek Park or a slow evening at Anchor High. This fall adds something the city has never hosted before: a genuine world championship, built on infrastructure the city funded for its own residents long before anyone from World Bass Enterprises picked up the phone.
That is the part worth remembering when the fireworks go off over Old Hickory Lake at the end of October. The docks were not built for a $3.25 million tournament. They were built for the people who use that ramp every weekend. The tournament just happened to notice.
If you already call the shores of Old Hickory Lake home and want your property to catch the same spotlight this fall is bringing to Hendersonville, Nashville Luxury Homes would love to help you show it off. Get Your Home Featured.
