Neal wins tight Knockout Round, stage set for smallmouth slugfest on St. Lawrence
MASSENA, N.Y. — The 20 anglers contesting the Knockout Round at Minn Kota Stage Seven Presented by Humminbird got the full St. Lawrence River experience on Saturday — gusty wind, turbulent waters and smallmouth bass by the bunches.
With the vast majority of the field targeting the smallmouth synonymous with the fishery and the bass eager to oblige, anglers lit up SCORETRACKER® early and often. After a handful of competitors traded the top spots throughout the afternoon, Michael Neal wound up atop the leaderboard with 83 pounds, 11 ounces on 27 scorable bass. He finished 15 ounces clear of John Hunter, with Matt Becker just 1-6 back of him.
After weights zero overnight, expect another tightly bunched sprint during Sunday’s Championship Round. The Top 10 anglers will duke it out to claim the final Bass Pro Tour trophy and $100,000 payday of the 2024 season. Watch all the Championship Round action on the MLFNOW! live stream at MajorLeagueFishing.com and the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app from 7:45 a.m. ET through 4:30 p.m.
Full results can be found here.
Lack of sleep can’t slow down Neal
While Saturday ended with Neal atop SCORETRACKER®, his day got off to a disastrous start long before he thought about making a cast.
Shortly after midnight, a rescue squad knocked on the door of his rental house. Due to the torrential rain from Hurricane Debby, a nearby river had risen 6 to 8 feet, its waters starting to lap on the front porch of the house. The rescue squad told Neal and roommate Andy Morgan that it might be wise to seek shelter elsewhere.
With nowhere else to stay, Neal drove to the Massena Intake Boat Launch, where anglers check in and pick up their boat officials each morning before driving to their launch ramp of choice. He tried (unsuccessfully) to sleep in his truck.
“I slept about 30 minutes, maybe,” Neal said.
While he didn’t blame the lack of sleep, once his competition day finally started, Neal struggled to get into a groove. However, he made a move in the second period and caught fire. In the span of 1 hour, 15 minutes, he stacked nine smallmouth totaling 27-10 onto SCORETRACKER®, taking the lead for the first time.
Neal’s key adjustment was focusing more on structure that created current breaks, as the wind blowing in the same direction of the current made it stronger.
“Once I started focusing on the more current-driven areas, I started getting bit a lot more consistently,” he said.
While quite a few anglers have had success targeting smallmouth in water shallow enough to see the bottom, Neal is plying deeper habitat, fishing rock anywhere from 30 to 60 feet deep. Wielding a Big Bite Baits Quarantine Craw on 7-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon, he said he’s rigging the soft plastic “a little bit different.”
“I’ll get into that a little bit more tomorrow, but it seems to make a difference,” Neal said. “I’ve fished around several guys this week, seemed like I’m getting a few more bites.”
As the wind increased in strength throughout the day, Neal said it actually helped his bite — to an extent. When blowing with the current, it positions the fish more predictably. That said, it can also make for an uncomfortable day on the water and cause challenges in accurately presenting a bait, especially on light line. With winds once again forecast to blow out of the southwest and reach the teens on Championship Sunday, conditions should be similar.
Neal thinks he could have continued to fish all his spots amid Saturday’s conditions, but once he’d built a safe advantage over the cut line, he looked for some more protected water. Turns out, he found the bite just as good there, too.
“It got easy this afternoon,” Neal said. “Like, I could call my shot. When I ran back to the American side, I caught four, I think, in the last 30 minutes, and it was first drift every time.”
Set to compete in his fifth Championship Round of 2024 and third in as many events, Neal will finish in the Top 10 for the 20th time in his Bass Pro Tour career — second only to Jacob Wheeler. He feels overdue to add a second career victory. He believes he’ll be around the fish to win, but given the number of strong smallmouth anglers in the remaining field and the number of bass in the fishery, he knows it’ll take a nearly flawless day to hoist the trophy.
“I’ll definitely be around enough, 100%,” he said. “How many of them I’ll get to bite, I don’t know. Where I really started catching them in the second period, I think I’ve just made two drifts there and caught them really good, and there’s way more fish there than what I’ve caught.
“The whole Top 10, anybody can win it. All it takes is landing on one stretch, one current seam that’s just loaded up that you can go back and forth all day on.”
REDCREST rallies
The season-long goal for just about every Bass Pro Tour angler is to qualify for REDCREST. With just one day left in the 2024 season, the field list for REDCREST 2025 on Lake Guntersville is just about complete.
A handful of anglers who started Stage Seven outside the cut line have successfully fished their way into the field with their performances on the St. Lawrence. That includes Justin Cooper, Mark Daniels Jr., Nick Hatfield and Chris Lane. All four anglers made Saturday’s Knockout Round, with Hatfield and Lane advancing to the Championship Round.
Marty Robinson still has a chance to pull off the most dramatic rally of the bunch. Robinson, who arrived at Stage Seven in 54th place in the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year standings, qualified for his first BPT Championship Round, and he could fish his way into the REDCREST field if he finishes fifth or better. Should he do so, he would bump James Elam out of the final spot (assuming whoever wins the Toyota Series Championship isn’t a double qualifier).