Ott DeFoe and Drew Gill were the dominant pairing at the 2025 Black Bass World Championship as Team USA captured the gold medal over Italy with a final-day rally. It’s no surprise that they’ll again be in the same boat for this year’s edition at Lake Hamilton in Arkansas.

“They weren’t having anything to do with being split up and I certainly wasn’t considering it,” said Team USA coach/competitor Kevin VanDam in announcing the pairings for the six-angler team that’ll compete Oct. 1-3. “They really hit it off and they created a chemistry that’s hard to argue with.”

VanDam will be paired with Dustin Connell. Scott Martin, Team USA’s longest-tenured member, will fish with Dakota Ebare.

Ebare is replacing Jacob Wheeler, the longtime top-ranked angler in the world who bowed out of this event to focus on family matters as wife Alicia continues to undergo treatment for cancer.

The three MLF Bass Pro Tour anglers on the squad all finished among the top quarter of the 51-man field in this year’s Angler of the Year points standings. Connell was 4th with two Top-3 finishes, Gill was 7th (actually the lowest of his three BPT final placements to date) with a win at Guntersville and three other finishes among the Top 7, and DeFoe was 13th with two Top-10s.

Ebare was 33rd in the Bassmaster Elite Series points – good enough for his second Classic qualification in as many years on the circuit. His best finish was 7th at the Pasquotank River/Albemarle Sound.

A Texas native, Ebare might have the most experience at Hamilton of any of the Team USA members.

DeFoe and Gill caught the biggest bag in the 45-boat field in last year’s South Africa event, which was contested at Arabie Dam. They captured the duos gold medal as they outpaced a pair of Italian boats.

Besides those two, Martin is the only member of the team who competed last year (Connell was originally selected, but he stayed home due to the impending birth of his child). Martin teamed with Logan Parks to capture 8th place in the duos standings.

“I haven’t done anything like this (as a competitor) for a long time,” said VanDam, “but Scott’s been doing it all along and his experience will be valuable.

“Scott and Dakota both have the same electronics sponsor (Garmin), so there’s a comfort aspect with that and pairing them kind of made sense.”

VanDam, the winningest professional bass angler of all-time, and Connell, a guy who’s known for closing out victories when he gets himself in contention, are both high-adrenalin competitors who make on-the-water decisions with conviction.

“I really couldn’t make a bad choice,” VanDam said. “Collectively, we’re all on the same page and everybody feels good about the direction we’re headed.”

He said all team members have been immersed in doing homework on Hamilton, a 7,400-acre impoundment of the Ouachita River.

“It’s very manageable; it’s not like going to Toledo Bend or some other giant body of water,” he said. “The smaller size makes that part a little easier.

“Still, it’s a challenging fishery in and of itself. It doesn’t hold a lot of secrets and you’re not going to run off somewhere all by yourself and catch a huge bag.”

The other 22 nations slated to compete are (in alphabetical order): Australia, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, England, France, Guatemala, Italy, Latvia, Mexico, Namibia, the Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, First Nations – Turtle Island and Venezuela