Zack Birge has 2 wins, has already qualified for the championships
Zack Birge is having a good year. In fact, looking from the outside he appears to be living his best life as a family man and fishing professionally.
Zack is a professional fisherman and has already won between $350,000 to $400,000 in prize money this year. Two of his wins were worth a total of $225,000. One of those was held at Lake Whitney and Lake Waco in Texas, and the second was in Leesburg, Florida.
B irge, and his wife Kristina, are residents of Blanchard and were graduates at Bridge Creek High School with the class of 2009.
The Birges travel the country with their children, Emma, 8 (almost 9), and Reed, 4, sharing their love of the outdoors and making a living. Both Emma and Reed go to school at Bridge Creek. Zack and Kristina are also passionate about raising their children to love the outdoors, and living a healthy lifestyle. Zack and Kristina train in CrossFit together several times a week.
Birge has had five firstplace finishes since 2014. He has had 43 top-10 finishes out of a total of 160 tournaments. Additionally, he has placed in the money by finishing high enough in 118 of those. He earned the title of Rookie of the Year in 2014, the year he won his first big event. The event was at Wheeler Lake in Alabama.
Birge has had a quick start in 2026 with the two wins previously described, and the year has barely gotten underway.
The West Texas tournament was a Bass Pro event held March 8 at Champion Teamwear Stage 3. He caught 27 bass within tournament guidelines weighing 75 pounds, one ounce, to win the tournament. He outscored the next competitor by a 30-pound, 5-ounce margin.
A story distributed through Business Wire, states the following: “When he launched his boat onto Lake Waco for Saturday’s Knockout Round at Champion Teamwear Stage 3 Presented by MillerTech, pro Zack Birge of Blanchard, Oklahoma, knew next to nothing about the fishery. He’d never competed there before, and he spent all three days of official practice prior to the event on Lake Whitney, which hosted the two-day Qualifying Round.
“All Birge knew was that he’d spotted a juicy-looking backwater pond on the north end of the lake on Google Earth. His game plan in a nutshell: head there and hope for the best.
“‘I didn’t even come over here and practice; I just looked at Google Earth and thought this looked good,’ Birge said following Sunday’s Championship Round.
“‘I literally told my official yesterday. I showed it to him on Google Earth, and I said, ‘Man, this pond back here looks good. Little did I know. I know now, though.’
“Birge used the area not only to qualify for the Championship Round but to win it in dominant fashion. He spent all day Sunday in the spot known to locals as the ‘Atkinson Hole.’
“Birge’s second career Bass Pro Tour victory earned him $125,000. He also took over the lead in the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year (AOY) standings. Four points behind him, four-time AOY winner Jacob Wheeler, and Spencer Shuffield are tied for second.”
Birge said while growing up he always wanted to fish. He fished smaller tournaments as he could and while in college at Okahoma State University in 2012, he and his partner, fishing for the unviersity, won a College BASS National Championship.
“Fishing is what kept me in college,” Birge said. “Here I am 15-16 years later, and I’m not using my degree, but fishing is what kept me there to earn that degree.”
Birge said he always has his education and former work life to fall back on if needed. This helps keep the pressure off of him from having to be successful at fishing.
At OSU, Birge earned an A.A.S. in Wind Turbine Technology. After graduation, he went to work for Weatherford International in Elk City, and then on the wind farm for NextEra Energy Resources at Minco.
In looking back, Birge said he wouldn’t suggest any young person make the same move he did, “because chances are it won’t work,” he said.
“I had the job at NextEra and then qualified in 2014 to fish at the Wheeler Lake event,” Birge said. He said he had two weeks of vacation that he could take, and his boss gave him a third week of vacation with no pay. Birge said fortunately he had a good boss who understood the dream and allowed him to come back to work after the tournament.
Birge said, “It only gave me enough time to fish the event and then come back to work. There was no time to go practice and learn the lake.”
He said he went out with a good mindset and won the event, earning $50,000, which he used to fund his rookie season.
Fast-forward to the present, and now Birge has a variety of sponsors he contracts with from year-to-year. His ti- tle sponsor is Monster Marine Lithium Batteries, and his presenting sponsor is Yo-Zuri Lures. Birge said the sponsorships are guaranteed earnings and are a substantial part of his salary, so their family yearly salary is based on the contracts, and any winning is considered to be bonuses.
BIRGE: He’s already qualified for the Championships
Birge does consider fishing tournaments professionally to be much like everyone else’s workday in the office.
“My mindset is similar but a lot of success lies in how many fish you catch,” he said. “My thought processes through the day are how can I generate another bite. The more fish I catch, the higher percentage of success I feel I will do in an event.”
Birge explained, “If I go through enough bites, I’ll catch bigger fish throughout the day.”
Birge exlained that some events he fishes are cumulative weight of all fish caught within the guidelines of the tournament, while other events are best five fish of the day.
“I feel the same way for both of them — bite generation,” Birge said. “You just have to figure out how to produce the most amount of bites throughout the day.”
Fishing is not the only love for Birge. He is also passionate about waterfowl and turkey hunting during the offseason. Birge had, in the past, traveled and filmed a YouTube series known as Fowl Militia. Now during the offseason, the Birges own land south of Blanchard where they run an outfitting type of business and host waterfowl hunts.
Birge said, “This lets me take my mind off fishing for awhile, and then when it is time, I’m fired up and ready to go back to work.”
Back to work is where he is now as its mid-April. Birge has already fished in six events, and there are several fishing events scheduled for the remainder of this year.
He plans to fish in at least five more events in 2026 with the National Professional League, and three more with Major League Fishing (Bass Pro). Additionally, he has also already qualified to fish in the season-concluding Championship events in both leagues.
Birge said, “We are on a good path. We are having some success and everything is great at the moment.”
