MASSENA, N.Y. – As the Bass Pro Tour season progresses into the summer, the anglers are preparing to fish a familiar piece of water: the historic St. Lawrence River serves as the playing field for General Tire Stage Five Presented by Berkley.
The fishery was scheduled to host an event in 2020 before pandemic altered plans for the year, so this will be the first time a Bass Pro Tour event will be held on a river that’s regarded as one of the best smallmouth fisheries in the world.
Most of the anglers in the 80-man field are very familiar with the St. Lawrence, which has served as a frequent stopover for the major national circuits. The one curveball is the late-June date, which is much earlier in the year than most events have taken place here. But by all accounts, the fishing should be lights out on the St. Lawrence, as anglers will have their pick from large populations of both smallmouth and largemouth bass.
About the Fishery
The St. Lawrence River is a massive waterway that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via Lake Ontario. Its 743-mile range flows through Quebec and Ontario, Canada and serves as a border between the United States and Canada.
This week’s focus will be the 90-plus miles of river from Massena, New York, to the mouth of the river near Cape Vincent, and the field will be limited to U.S. waters only due to border restrictions related to the pandemic. But even with the smaller playing field, there’s plenty of fertile water to locate bass in numbers.
Anglers are likely to find bass in all stages of the spawn. Shallow fishing for smallmouth and largemouth should dominate, along shallow flats for brown fish and in grassy bays and around docks for the green ones.
KVD Looks to Repeat
Kevin VanDam has had success virtually everywhere he’s fished in his career, but he’s absolutely owned New York and has several big wins in The Empire State, including the St. Lawrence River. He’s won in New York five times, with three wins occurring on the St. Lawrence, the last of which was a 2017 Bassmaster Elite Series event.
VanDam is hoping to rekindle his success in New York and aims for back-to-back wins on the Bass Pro Tour after claiming the Stage Four trophy on Lake Chickamauga. He’s understandably excited to return to the fishery, but isn’t quite sure what to expect since the tournamentt is much earlier in the calendar year than his previous trips.
“I have no experience here this time of year, but it’s June and fishing is pretty good everywhere right now,” VanDam said. “It’s unique that (we’re fishing it) earlier in the year, but it’s such a great fishery for both largemouth and smallmouth. I believe we’re going to break all of our records and see big weights similar to what we saw at Sturgeon Bay last year.”
With both largemouth and smallmouth bass in play and a 2-pound variable minimum weight for the event, VanDam expects the field to be split relatively evenly between the two species.
“The largemouth will be a factor this week, without a doubt,” VanDam said. “There are so many of them and they’re healthy. They’re also a little more predictable from day to day, while smallmouth tend to roam all over the river. Another factor is how concentrated they get.”
VanDam is a disappointed that Canadian waters are off limits, but says there’s still plenty of water to fish.
“That’s going to be a factor since so many productive areas are in Canada,” he said. “It really shrinks what we can fish, but there’s still a huge section of water to cover.”
VanDam predicts that a large variety of tactics will work during the event.
“You’ll see guys finesse fishing for smallmouth and some power fishing for them,” he said. “Others will be flipping and frogging for largemouth. It’ll truly be an event where guys can fish their strengths. Nobody in the field should be disappointed because you can do whatever you want to here, and the fishing should be excellent.”
Expect Big Catch Totals
Pine Bush, New York angler AJ Slegona has competed multiple times on the St. Lawrence River and Thousand Islands at both the Toyota Series and Phoenix Bass Fishing League level. A quick glance at tournament results on the fishery for the last several years shows his name constantly near the top of the leaderboard.
Slegona finished third in the 2019 Toyota Series stop on the St. Lawrence, but that was in September of that year. As is the case with the Bass Pro Tour field, most of his fishing on big river occurs much deeper into the summer than this week’s event.
“This is pretty early in the year, and I believe it’s going to be dominated by fishing shallow,” he said. “They should still be bedding like crazy and there’ll be plenty of fish cruising the shallows.”
Slegona says that fish group up in big schools in deeper water in the summer – this is the best way to win in the warmer months, but it’s also a well-known pattern that attracts crowds.
“There are only so many areas to fish out deep in the summer, but (for Stage Five), every fish in the river will be near the bank, which will spread the field out more evenly,”
The St. Lawrence is deservedly known as a “bucket list” smallmouth fishery and they will surely be a big portion of the bass caught, but Slegona agrees with VanDam that largemouth will play a role in Stage Five’s outcome.
“I’ve never targeted largemouth there in a tournament because it’s always a five-fish format and the largemouth just aren’t big enough,” he said. “But, there are tons of 2- to 3-pound largemouth in the river. Guys fishing with 65-pound braid will be able to land them much faster than messing around trying to land a smallmouth on 6-pound test. That’s something to watch this week because efficiency is so important on the Bass Pro Tour.”
Even with all of the added national attention from bass anglers over the past several years, Slegona still thinks the next six days on the St. Lawrence are shaping up to be a slugfest.
“That river has been getting way more pressure (in recent years), but it still has so many fish in it,” he said. “You’ll see guys catching them sight fishing, throwing hair jigs, spybaits, and a spinnerbait up shallow. It’s still the best smallmouth bass fishery in the world.”