The twins are on a tear. Toward the end of the 2024 season, the duo had collected multiple top-10 finishes.
On Oct. 26, 2024, Simpson University Bass Fishing sent 3 teams to the West Side Bass Tournament at New Hogan Lake.
Dylan and Aiden Grad finished in second place. They beat out 31 other teams with a weight of 11.35 pounds.
Quinn Hawkinson and Brennan Osborn finished in 8th with 8.83 pounds. Payton Lyndall and Ryan Vinci finished in 15th with a 6.88-pound bag.
"We focused a lot on main lake points and a lot of the flatter stuff, we fished some deep bank, but couldn't really catch them as good on that," Aiden Grad said, "The lake kind of fishes small for us. We didn't run up the arms very much. We kind of tried to stay main lake and kind of follow some of the bait around and get away from the stripers a little bit."
The most effective bait for them was a Carolina rig with a Strike King Ragecraw in green pumpkin.
"We were throwing a green pumpkin, and really just I think any kind of crossed-style bait worked, it just kind of had that bigger profile to where we were catching them," Aiden said, "Catching better quality fish than we were on the jig and caught less fish. But, most of our fish were, you know, the two-pounders, two and a half pounders, so that kind of put us in good standings."
In practice, the duo wanted to find a good reaction bite.
"The first couple days of practice started out with a lot of moving baits, like jerk baits, flukes, that kind of thing, and then definitely a lot of jigs mixed in there," Dylan said, "On the last day of practice, I started throwing a Carolina rig around a lot. Didn't get a ton of bites with it. The fish were moving on the moving baits a little more."
A big factor for them was the weather. It played a role for them on tournament day.
"It was a little cloudier and so I think that's why we got them to hit reaction stuff more in practice. Then tournament day was high sun, so I think that's why they stuck a little more on the bottom," Dylan said.
On tournament day the strategy was simple—adapt.
"Tournament morning, couldn't get them to move on any of our moving baits like jerk bait or top water. So I picked up the Carolina rig again and then started getting bites in the brush piles, so threw that all day pretty much," Dylan said.
The teams that Simpson sent were all running different patterns.
"We shared information throughout the day, but we were all kind of doing something different, we all kind of stuck to our own bite," Aiden said.
At the end of weigh-in, it was the twins coming out on top, cashing yet another check after their top-10 finish.
