USAngling Communications
A USA Bass team with plenty of tour-level accolades and a lot of experience in international competition is in Italy this week for the 18th edition of the Bass World Championship. Competition among 15 nations gets under way on Thursday at Lake Bolsena, about 75 miles outside Rome.
The American squad is seeking its fourth straight title in the event. Five of the six team members were on last year's gold medal-winning team at Lake Sabor in Portugal.
Scott Martin, who's served as the USA Bass captain for the past several international competitions (including the recent Pan-American Championship in Canada), will again lead the American contingent. The Bassmaster Elite Series competitor and former FLW Tour Angler of the Year and FLW Championship winner will share a boat with ex-B.A.S.S. AOY Scott Canterbury.
MLF Bass Pro Tour stars Jacob Wheeler (the top-ranked angler in the world for five years running) and Dustin Connell will again form a powerhouse pairing. Wheeler captured his third BPT points title in the past four seasons in 2024 and won two regular-season events, and Connell claimed his second REDCREST Championship at Lay Lake and triumphed in the season opener at Toledo Bend Reservoir.
BPT veteran Fred Roumbanis and Elite Series angler Joey Cifuentes will be in the other American boat. Cifuentes, who replaces Hall-of-Famer David Fritts, is the only U.S. angler who wasn't in Portugal in 2023, but earlier last year he'd teamed with Larry Nixon (another Hall-of-Famer) to take top honors in the Pan-American Championship in their home state of Arkansas.
"Having Joey on the team this year is a good call," Martin said. "From what we can tell, it's going to be an offshore bite and an electronics-based event for the most part, and Joey's good with that.
"I think we've got a really strong team this year. Jacob and Dustin can do everything and if there's a bite with a big swimbait or something off the wall like that, Fred can unlock that big-time. Myself and Canterbury both have a lot of experience fishing grass, so we've got a lot of bases covered."
Other countries slated to compete are the host Italians, along with Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Mexico, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Serbia, Spain, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Lake Bolsena, an ancient body of water formed by a volcano, is in Veterbo Province. It covers 28,000 acres with a maximum depth of nearly 500 feet. Largemouth were introduced in the 1970s and the population has thrived ever since, growing both in terms of numbers and size of the individual specimens.
It has clear water, lots of grass and a myriad of depth changes.
"It's not going to be a shoreline deal – there's grass and some other vegetation, and out past that it's suspended fish," Martin said. "This might be the hardest one for us to win just because we don't have any experience there. The Italians, of course, have spent a lot of time there, and so have other teams like Spain and Germany.
"There are subtle depth changes in that grass that aren't going to show up on a map and it takes time to find those really good sweet spots. It's difficult to do that in two days of practice."
Last year, the Americans won a tiebreaker over Germany for the gold after both countries finished with 67 points. The points total is the sum of the finishes among the field of each of the country's three pairs – the lower the number, the better.
The tiebreaker was total weight for the event (higher is better for that) and the three American duos compiled 73.57 pounds. Germany had 69.09.
Italy, led by the gold medal-winning tandem of Luca Vittorio Della Ciana and Jimmy Ashlock, claimed the team bronze with 98 points.
This year's event includes an opening ceremony following Tuesday's initial practice day. After another practice round on Wednesday, competition will take place from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.
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