Quilatan Wins Toyota Series Tournament at Harris Chain

LEESBURG, Fla. (March 30, 2025) – Dylan Quilatan of Windermere, Florida, didn’t miss a beat this week in the Toyota Series Southern Division tournament at the Harris Chain. At just 17 years old, Quilatan weighed 83 pounds, 8 ounces over three days of fishing, punctuating the event with 33-6 on Day 2, which he sandwiched with bags in the mid-20s. With the win, the high school senior becomes the second youngest angler to win a Toyota Series event as a pro, pocketing $39,055 for his efforts.

From a weight perspective, Quilatan’s total is the heaviest three-day Toyota Series winning weight ever for a Florida event and the fifth heaviest three-day Toyota Series weight overall. Oddly enough, there have been three 80-pound winning totals this year, all weighed by folks named Dylan, as Dylan Nutt has accomplished the feat twice already this year on the Tennessee River. Notably, Quilatan stopped fishing around 11 o’clock Saturday to help his co-angler Benton Peoples  get a limit, which could have cost him a shot at some even higher heights.

Fishing second, pro Bobby Bakewell of Orlando, Florida, hammered out  70-10 – ordinarily a phenomenal week on the Harris Chain. In third, Montgomery, Texas’ Chad Mrazek averaged over 20 pounds a day with a 62-5 total.

Fishing a large flat in Lake Beauclair, Quilatan mined the area for three days, as well as in the two Bass Fishing League events he fished over the previous weekend, one of which he won. No two days of fishing were the same, and according to the young angler, putting the odds in his favor was key – every day necessitated slight adjustments.

“There were postspawn fish coming out, new fish every day, but there wasn’t that many,” Quilatan detailed. “There were two different things going on, or two different size grades. There was 1- to 3-pounders chasing threadfin, and I could catch those on a Neko rig pretty easily. Just drop it on their head. They’d either be singles or they’d be schooled up on a shell bed or a grass patch or they’d just be a single fish in a bait ball. It was different every day. Today, it was single fish in a bait ball.”

The larger grade of fish were perhaps more interesting.

“There were 4- to 10-pounders that were doing something different every day too,” Quilatan said. “Those fish key in on gizzard shad, and some of them I could get to bite the Neko. Probably 20% of them. And I tried on every fish because I have a 100% hookup ratio on a Neko. And if I couldn’t get them to bite that, then I’d throw a swimbait, and that would really get their attention. But every day was different, whether they were set up on isolated patches of grass, or they were set up on a grass edge. Whether they were just sitting on silt, or if it was sand, if it was 10 feet or if it was 7 feet.”

To put the odds in his favor, Quilatan made a real effort to stay in areas that were rich with baitfish. His reasoning being that the fish there would bite a little better and be in more of a feeding mood.

“I fished around boats the whole time, but I don’t think anybody was as analytical as I was about all the baitfish and how fish were setting up,” he said. “I think they were just putting their trolling motor down and going, which works, but it was better for me to find a little pattern inside the pattern every day. And I caught them in every single corner of that lake and keyed in on something a little different every day.”

For baits, Quilatan used an X Zone Deception Worm with a 1/16-ounce nail weight and a Ryugi Talisman hook. He also used a 7-inch No Live Bait Needed K-Tail with a ¾-ounce head to tempt the bigger fish. He threw everything on rods he built with components from Get Bit Outdoors.

The worm did a lot of Quilatan’s damage, but it wasn’t easy to catch the bigger ones.

“The key with that for the big ones was to leave it sitting there for, like, sometimes, three or four minutes,” he said. “They would swim off and come back. And it was all about presenting the bait without it going straight on their head. All the dumb fish in that lake are relocated to Harris or Eustace in a tournament. So, all the big fish in there are super smart. They’re super educated. So, I’m constantly taking my time.

“Whenever I get an opportunity at a big one, I’ll throw the worm in first, cast a little bit past it, whatever direction it’s going. And if it bites it, that’s great. If it doesn’t, I’ll hit it with the swimbait. And I could kind of just tell from their body posture, if they almost bite it, I’ll cast a few more times. I caught a lot of big ones doing that. I something just triggers them after a while and some of them just swim off and maybe you catch them the next day.”

Though the margin makes it look easy, Quilatan fished his heart out every day, and at times on Day 3, he thought he was tapped out.

“I didn’t get to sleep last night at all,” he said. “I slept, like, 2 hours. I woke up at 2 a.m., and I was like, ‘is this real?’ This morning, I got out there, I started fishing, and, I couldn’t even make a straight cast. I was like ‘Dylan, you’ve got to get it together.’”

Considering he stopped fishing seriously with 25 pounds in the ‘well before noon, Quilatan evidently got it together.

“Coming into today, you know, I knew however it shaped out, I didn’t have anything to prove,” he said. “I already know that I can hang with these guys, and I just wanted to know I could give it my best three days in a row. And I did. And all the glory goes to God.”

The top 10 pros at the Toyota Series at the Harris Chain of Lakes finished:

1st:        Dylan Quilatan, Windermere, Fla., 15 bass, 83-8, $39,055
2nd:       Robert Bakewell, Orlando, Fla., 15 bass, 70-10, $15,634
3rd:       Chad Mrazek, Montgomery, Texas, 15 bass, 62-5, $12,717 (includes $1,000 Phoenix Bonus)
4th:        Justin Barnes, Ellaville, Ga., 15 bass, 56-6, $9,764
5th:        Kyle Cortiana, Broken Arrow, Okla., 15 bass, 54-3, $8,787
6th:        John Kremer, Orange City, Fla., 15 bass, 53-8, $7,811
7th:        Flint Davis, Leesburg, Ga., 15 bass, 53-1, $6,835
8th:        Brody Campbell, Oxford, Ohio, 15 bass, 52-5, $5,858
9th:        Parker Knudsen, Minnetonka, Minn., 15 bass, 50-12, $4,882
10th:     Tracen Phillips, Lake Placid, Fla., 15 bass, 50-1, $3,906

Pro Steve Lopez of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, earned Thursday’s Day 1 $500 Big Bass Award with a bass weighing 7 pounds, 9 ounces, while tournament-runner-up Robert Bakewell earned the $500 Big Bass on Friday with a 9-pound, 11-ounce bass to earn the $500 prize. Inyokern, California’s Elijah Soto, won the co-angler division Saturday with a three-day total of 14 bass weighing 43 pounds, 5 ounces. Soto earned the top co-angler prize package worth $33,500, including a new Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower outboard motor.

The top 10 co-anglers at the Toyota Series tournament at the Harris Chain of Lakes finished:

1st:        Elijah Soto, Inyokern, Calif., 14 bass, 43-5, Phoenix 518 Pro boat w/115-hp Mercury outboard
2nd:       Benton Peoples, Bardstown, Ky., 15 bass, 41-6, $4,900
3rd:       Jason Wiley, Swainsboro, Ga., 15 bass, 40-9, $3,920
4th:        Myles Tallada, Peru, N.Y., 15 bass, 36-4, $3,430
5th:        John Stahl, Land O’ Lakes, Fla., 12 bass, 35-5, $2,940
6th:        James Cobbs, Vinemont, Ala., 15 bass, 34-10, $2,450
7th:        Jeremy Bouldin, Kings Mountain, N.C., 15 bass, 34-6, $1,960
8th:        Evrett Hunter, Nokomis, Fla., 15 bass, 34-5, $1,715
9th:        Brady Lunsmann, Citrus Springs, Fla., 15 bass, 33-14, $1,470
10th:     Cameron Debity, Boca Raton, Fla., 15 bass, 33-4, $1,225

Co-angler Jack Taft of Winter Garden, Florida, earned Thursday’s Day 1 Berkley Big Bass co-angler award after bringing a 5-pound, 11-ounce bass to the scale to win the $150 prize, while Friday’s $150 co-angler award on Day 2 went to David White of Winter Garden, Florida, who weighed in a 9-pound, 7-ounce largemouth.