Tournament-Winning Lures for the St. Lawrence River
This week the 2023 Bassmaster Elite Series season will conclude on New York’s St. Lawrence River. It’s a familiar venue for most of the anglers, as this will be the seventh straight season that the Elites will compete there, and the ninth time in the last 11. That’s not a recent phenomenon. The Senior Circuit has been going there for decade – indeed, it was the site of KVD’s first BASS tournament, in 1987, and in 1995 it was the venue for his second BASS win, on the way to a record 25 of them.
Back in the day, you needed largemouths or a combination of largemouths and smallmouths to win. It produced one of my favorite memories from The Bassmasters – in the 1998 tournament New Hampshire pro Rick Lillegard was so dialed in that he could catch ‘em faster than he could cull and get a new bait set up, so he had multiple rods rigged and ready and his third day partner Bill Corbin graciously handled the administrative tasks.
Lillegard beat runner up Clark Wendlandt, who will compete this week, by over 4 pounds, with a total of 45-00 over 3 days (a young Illinois pro named Mark Zona finished 4th with 39-05). Now it’s one of the hottest big smallmouth fisheries on the planet. Last year Rookie Jay Prezekurat made history by being the first angler to win a major smallmouth tournament with over 100 pounds (he totaled 102-9), and everyone in the top 10 had over 90 pounds for four days. In other words, while Lillegard averaged 15 pounds a day, last year the lowest-finishing angler in the top 10 (Bob Downey with 91-07) averaged over 7 pounds more than that per day. Over two days, the 50th place finisher averaged 20-12.
I’ve yet to visit, and there’s really no excuse for that, because Clayton is only about a 7 hour drive and Waddington is only about 8 hours. Many of my local friends have made the trip and they’ve said that while it’s not necessarily easy to average 22+ pounds, and weather plays a major role in where you can fish, in many respects the fish are predictable and not hard to find. Along with Clear Lake in California, it’s at the top of my “tournament venue bucket list” right now (likely pushing Lake Champlain temporarily out of the way for the northeastern champ).
If you’re headed up there this year, or all of the fanfare has you scheduling a trip for next year, consider stocking up on some of the following tournament-winning lures before you go:
2013: Brandon Palaniuk
Dropshot: Berkley Powerbait Twitchtail Minnow with Gulp! Alive Marinade
2015: Edwin Evers
Wacky Worm: Zoom Fluke Stick Jr.
Swimbait: Megabass Spark Shad
Dropshot: Zoom Z Drop
Jerkbait: Megabass X-80 Trick Darter
2017: KevinVanDam
Dropshot: Strike King Half Shell
Swimbait: Strike King Rage Swimmer 2.75 and 3.25
Wacky Worm: KVD Perfect Plastics Ocho
Spybait: [Unnamed]
2018: Josh Bertrand
Dropshot: Berkley Powerbait Maxscent Flat Worm or Berkley Gulp! Minnow
2019: Micah Frazier
Ned Rig: Yum Ned Dinger
2020: Chris Johnston
Dropshot: Berkley Powerbait Maxscent Flat Worm
Ned Rig: Z-Man Finesse TRD
2021: Taku Ito
Dropshot: Ecogear Aqua Swim Shrimp
Neko Rig: Nories Latterie Neko Rig Worm
2022: Jay Przekurat
Dropshot: Strike King Half Shell
In his first St. Lawrence win, VanDam used a self-weighted spinnerbait to burn it for smallies. As you can see, that lure hasn’t played a major role in any of the recent victories. In 2020 Mississippi pro Brock Mosley averaged over 21 pounds a day to finish 3rd — primarily fishing a Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer with a NetBait Big Spanky trailer. He also added a dropshot (NetBait Drifter) and topwater (Bill Lewis StutterStep) into the mix.
