While the anglers insist it isn’t particularly easy to catch bass this week at the St. Croix Rods Bassmaster Open at St. Lawrence River, the weights were impressive as ever on the powerhouse smallmouth factory.
Thirty one bags weighing over 20 pounds hit the scale, with Elite Series pro Cory Johnston leading the way with 26 pounds, 14 ounces. If it were a one-day event, it would take 19-7 to earn the last check.
In total, boaters caught 181 limits weighing 3284-11 while co-anglers landed 140 limits measuring 1420-12 and only five boaters failed to catch a bass. The majority of the bass brought back to Whitaker Park were smallmouth, predictably, but several big largemouth were shown off as well.
“I caught a 4-4 largemouth where a smallmouth is supposed to be,” Cody Stahl remarked after catching 22-1 for a 15th-place showing.
Here is what we learned after Day 1
The run is worth it
For the large majority of the Top 20, making 60, 70 and 80 miles runs west towards Clayton and the mouth of the St. Lawrence River paid big dividends, with only a few anglers mentioning they were staying towards the Waddington area.
For a lot of anglers, making the run past Clayton had a lot to do with current, or lack thereof. While there is still moving water, it doesn’t race quite as much as it does in the Waddington area, where the current can be moving 7 to 8 mph.
“I’m not a huge fan of how strong the current is (around Waddington),” local pro Zach Goutremout said. “Down there, it is a little more like lake fishing and I feel more comfortable.”
With less current, the smallmouth are more likely to suspend which makes forward-facing sonar a more useful tool.
“When you get to where the river opens up, it’s not nearly as strong and you can sit there and meander around and see them,” Kentucky pro Chris Beaudrie said. “They will come up off the bottom more because of that too.”
Once they finished their run, many of the top performers, including JT Thompkins who landed 23-8, tried to fish areas they had to themselves.
“I’m in an area where I am off by myself,” the 2023 Classic qualifier said. “That is what I focused on. I wanted to go find something not many other people would find. I am catching a lot of fish and catching a lot of good ones. I just need to get down there and get back.”
After spending a lot of practice close to Waddington, a couple hours close to the boundary towards the end of the warmup period showed Jamie Bruce he needed to run west to have the best chance to win. The Canadian pro caught 23-5 and is in 9th.
“It was a slow grind for me today. I lost the first two I hooked,” he said. “I fished 30 pieces of offshore structure and found three of them with fish. I really didn’t spend much time in practice down there. I expanded on it and found a couple new zones today.”
Brent Anderson stayed closer to Waddington because of the current, however. His time on the Tennessee River has carried over to the St. Lawrence River and while he had to weed through some smaller bass to get to the bigger ones, it paid off with 24-10 and a third-place showing on Day 1.
“I ran about 20 miles this morning and caught 22 pounds pretty quick,” he said. “Not only do I enjoy the river more, it is a personal goal right now to beat the lake guys and the guys who run 90 something miles.
“I basically treat this place like the Tennessee River,” Anderson continued. “Obviously the technique is different. But as far as finding areas, it is super similar.”
Smallies are in every depth range
Throughout the field, there isn’t necessarily one depth range that has held the most amount of smallmouth. Several anglers reported catching bass as shallow as 2 feet and as deep as 50 feet of water.
“It is more location based,” Thompkins said. “I can catch them in any depth as long as it is near spawning areas.”
Focusing on ledges, Bo Thomas secured 23-7 of smallmouth down near the boundary. During his practice period, he focused on finding the right quality of bass and less on how many total he was catching per day.
“I figured out a little deal with some ledges where the contours got real tight and it panned out. It was a lot of fun,” the Michigan pro said. “I caught some today in 10 feet, another in 15 and another in 35. I feel like the fish are trying to figure out what they really want to do coming out of the spawn. I don’t see a lot of boats around me, which is good.”
Second-place angler Jody White stayed out deep, catching smallies from 30 to 50 feet of water and caught most of his weight by 9 a.m. But he found more questions than answers once he filled his limit.
“I feel like I understand and flow with this place pretty well right now, or at least the deep side,” White said. “I caught pretty much all my weight off of one spot. I spent most of the day running other stuff and didn’t catch a 4-pounder, which kind of worries me. You have to have more than one spot.”
While his range was pretty wide, 20 to 55 feet of water, Goutremont also stayed out deep exclusively and landed in 12th with 22-13 on that isolated cover.
“I am getting my key bites within the first 5 to 10 casts on each spot,” Goutremont said. “So I need to cover a lot of water, hit a lot of areas and switch up baits. I have a few schools of fish, but there are a lot of 5 to 10 fish groups. A lot of the stuff I want to get to are more individual fish.”
Kyle Monti, on the other hand, stayed in water that was less than 4 feet deep and caught 21-4, which has him in 21st-place.
“This is the first time that I have stayed pretty much shallow the whole time,” the Florida pro said. “I think they just came off the bed. A lot of them are fry guarders and a few may be spawning, but most of them are done I think.”
Earlier in the day seemed to be best for Thompkins and Beaudrie, who caught 23-12 to land in 5th for the day.
“I caught them pretty good right off the bat,” Beaudrie said. “It seemed like at around 10 o’clock it died down a little bit and I tried to relocate them. I had some that I could see and not get to bite whereas earlier in the day they would bite every time I saw one. I made a couple bait changes at the end of the day and I caught a 5 ¼.”
Big Weather Change
The talk of the Day 1 weigh-in was the change in weather for Day 2. Rain, thunderstorms and some wind is forecasted to impact the area for large portions of the day on Friday. The forecast called for rain to begin sometime overnight with more storms developing throughout the tournament hours.
A Flood Watch has been issued already by the National Weather Service for Friday afternoon.
The overcast and stormy conditions could make things much different for anglers, who enjoyed sunny and calm conditions the entirety of Thursday.
“Hopefully the waves won’t mess me up,” Thompkins said. “I have a lot of spots to run. I am doing a lot of running and gunning. We should be able to have a good bag, but you never know with the wind and time.”
Beaudrie said they had two days of practice where the weather was suboptimal, but he said that didn’t affect his bite all that much.
“The weather forecast last weekend said it was going to rain on Friday and it hasn’t changed,” he said. “So I was happy that when I was practicing I could get those bites in the clouds.”
Although he caught a great bag of fish on Day 1, White is hoping a weather change will improve his bite.
“I feel like they didn’t bite very well today, at least not for me,” he explained. “It sounds crazy to say that, but I have seen days where they respond better. So maybe with a weather change they will bite better.”
