Arkadelphia Angler Wins First Legacy Lunker Grand Prize Drawing

Justin Rogers hauled in the next-to-last Arkanssas Legacy Lunker during the 2026 contest period, but that didn’t matter when it came to the winning draw for a $75,000 21-foot Xpress bass boat. Rogers possessed the winning cup with the key to the boat on Oct. 29 to come away with the grand prize after being one of 18 anglers to catch and donate lunkers to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Black Bass Program.

All the anglers who donated their fish to the Legacy Lunker program’s 2026 donation season were honored Oct. 29 at the End of Year Legacy Lunker awards banquet, organized in coordination with the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation at the new North Little Rock Event Center in the Argenta Arts District. Every table was filled; a raffle benefiting the Arkansas Outdoors Hall of Fame with several outdoors packages, guns and fishing rods and reels kept attendees focused to the very end; and two of the state’s avid professional anglers, Stephen Browning and Fred “Boom Boom” Roumbanis, professed their admiration for the AGFC’s fledgling trophy bass program during a presentation with the AGFC’s Trey Reid, Black Bass Program Coordinator Jeremy Risley and Xpress Boats President Rory Herndon.

The program, designed to boost the potential of Arkansas’s home-grown trophy bass combined with cutting-edge research and technology, unveiled some drama in the run-up to drawing the grand-prize winner of the initial Legacy Lunker donation season, which ran from Jan. 1 to March 31. 

The 18 anglers who donated fish of more than 10 pounds and were eligible (one, Bryer Pennington caught two lunkers out of Lower White Oak Lake just six days apart in February, earning him two chances; meanwhile, AGFC employee Ethan Stokes donated a 10.55-pound fish from DeGray Lake but was ineligible to win the boat) each put their numbered ping-pong balls into a cage; three were selected from that group as “finalists” and chose a seat with a sealed cup in front of them. Those three unwrapped their cups to see which one contained the boat’s key. 

A stunned Rogers hoisted the key and its kill-switch cord high.

“It’s still unreal. It’s a blessing,” Rogers said, a few days later, after having time to soak it all in as the program’s inaugural winner. “Nobody enjoys that part of the story more than me, I promise. I can always say I won the first one.”

Before winning, he said, he was planning on putting a new motor on his current boat. Turns out, the Xpress boat has the same motor he was seeking and, with all the other features, will suit him nicely and he can sell his old boat.

“I’m excited about the Xpress,” Rogers said. “(Legacy Lunker) is a real good program. I can’t say that enough. It’s been ran very well. The communications have been great. Will (Lancett, the program coordinator) has been on top of everything. Any questions I’ve had or anything I’ve needed to know, he’s been great with that. I’m just excited about the program that we’re finally establishing something like that so we can try to keep up with Texas with how many big bass we catch around here.”

Rogers, from Arkadelphia, describes himself more as a homebody when it comes to fishing. He’s a self-taught angler who used high school graduation money to buy his first boat. Rogers says he can look out from his land in Clark County and see the dam at DeGray Lake. He fishes events such as the Trader Bill’s series, and he’ll head up to lakes Ouachita and Hamilton quite a bit. “I do like going to the shallower, stumpier Columbias, White Oaks and Millwoods … I would love to go down to Texas more but life is pretty chaotic when you have two teenagers.”

He was with his teenage son last March when he landed the lunker, though he was not seeking a qualifying Legacy Lunker bass. He caught a 13-pounder at Millwood in 2018, and last year caught a 12.5-pounder in DeGray.

“Every spring break, I take off Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and me and my son will do our little fishing bonanza: We’ll go to DeGray one day, White Oak one day and Millwood one day. It was during that that I caught the one down at Millwood. I’ve never really been able to bed fish at Millwood because it stays too murky and you can’t see them. But this one, I could see her fins sticking out of the water, she was so shallow. And I knew it was a good one, but I didn’t know it was a 10-pounder. I knew it was over 6 probably.”

Rogers had tried flipping Senkos, Little Craws and jigs at her before giving a full-size Texas Brush Hog a try. She spit out a first bite, but two casts later, she was hooked.

“It took me about 30 minutes to catch it, too,” Rogers said. “It was a fun catch. I had my son in the boat, and he netted it, so he thinks he’s entitled to half of this boat.”

Like the other donations to the Legacy Lunker program, Legacy Lunker No. 18 was delivered to Joe Hogan State Fish Hatchery in Lonoke to for treatment, holding and eventually spawning with male Florida bass provided by Red Hills Fishery, a private hatchery in Georgia that specializes in the advancement of genetics linked to trophy growth.

Brady Smith, who hauled in a 10.56-pounder from Lake Ouachita March 28 as the 19th and final bass entered, also made the final three of the draw at the banquet, alongside Mickey Glover, who caught Legacy Lunker No. 13 at Lake Atkins (10.07 pounds) March 6.

All anglers received a reproduction mount of their bass from Harper’s Pure Country Taxidermy in Mountain Home and a prize package that included multiple apparel items from AFTCO, lures from PRADCO and KGB Baits, gift pack from Chevrolet, and $100 in Bass Pro Shops gift cards.

Next year’s first prize of a fully loaded Xpress bass boat was sitting stage right at the event. The next contest begins Jan. 1, 2027, and runs until March 31. Program rules can be found on the program’s website https://www.agfc.com/fishing/black-bass/arkansas-legacy-lunker-program/ 

Rogers assures “for sure, now” that he’ll be seeking another lunker in 2027. “It wasn’t even just the boat; everybody left there a winner” at the banquet, he said. “It just started raining here, so I got my new AFTCO rain jacket out that was part of the prize package we all got, to wear the rest of the day. The little gift package was very nice, very nice, a lot of good stuff in there.”

Another prize in the anglers’ packages was a glide bait from KGB Baits, which typically retails for about $150, in a color exclusive to Legacy Lunker program, Rogers said. “It’s 9 inches long and for big fish,” he said. “It mimics a big shad in the water. It suspends, twitches; you can dart it here and there. It’s a big bait to use for bass. I’ll try that on some heavy-duty line so I don’t lose it and actually use it.”

CUTLINES

THE WINNER
Arkadelphia’s Justin Rogers reacts to winning the drawing for the first Legacy Lunker grand prize for the 2026 donation season.

ANGLERS AND MOUNTS
All 18 anglers who donated 10-pound-or-more black bass catches to the Legacy Lunker program during the 2026 season were on hand to show off their reproduction mounts created by Harper’s Pure Country Taxidermy.

BOOMING PROGRAM
Fred “Boom Boom” Roumbanis (center), an Arkansas professional angler, joined fellow Arkansan and pro Stephen Browning (right) to talk about the state of bass fishing and possible benefits from the Legacy Lunker program with AGFC Black Bass Program Coordinator Jeremy Risley.

BEHIND THE WHEEL
As his wife looks on, Arkadelphia’s Justin Rogers gets behind the wheel of his new Xpress bass boat after winning the grand prize at the 2026 End of Year Legacy Lunker Banquet in North Little Rock.