BAY CITY, Mich. — Michigan’s Saginaw Bay showed out in record fashion with fish catches aplenty at Toyota Stage 7 Presented by Ranger Boats. The bay inside Lake Huron kicked out some nice smallmouth early, but the largemouth fishing stole the show and accounted for huge numbers as the event moved along.
The shallow fishery has a plentiful largemouth population, and the top anglers were able to catch them in bunches with various power fishing techniques. Here’s a rundown of how the top anglers caught their fish in the Bass Pro Tour season finale.
1. Jacob Wheeler – 110-0 (42)
Jacob Wheeler drove home from Michigan $250,000 richer thanks to his Fishing Clash Angler of the Year title and the tournament’s top prize. While much of his time on camera saw him throwing a frog, he credits his early smallmouth bite for putting him in contention.
“I had a big bag of smallmouth that first day during the first period, and I think that slid under the radar a little bit, but catching them so quickly gave me room to breathe,” he said. “I was catching them on a drop-shot with a CrushCity Salted Ned Roll in the green pumpkin and goby colors on a #2 VMC RedLine Series Finesse Neko Hook and 1/2-ounce VMC Tungsten teardrop drop-shot weight offshore. I was fishing 20 to 30 feet of water and targeting isolated rock piles and high spots.”
After catching a solid smallmouth total, Wheeler settled in with the largemouth on the bay’s eastern side, making sure he did what was needed to win Angler of the Year. Once he went shallow, it was game on around the shallow reeds. He caught his largemouth several ways – burning a soft plastic toad, using a wacky rig, flipping a CrushCity Bronco Bug in green pumpkin blue, and throwing a SPRO Bronzeye Frog in killer gill.
“The No. 1 deal was the frog, but I could catch them reeling a toad around in the morning when they were roaming more,” he said. “Once they took cover, I could pick those fish off if I could make precise casts to where they were sitting based on the sun.”
2. Todd Faircloth – 102-10 (40)
Texan Todd Faircloth made a valiant run at the win, swapping the lead with Wheeler multiple times on the final day before ending the tournament as a runner-up. He fished his strengths as a grass angler and primarily stayed in the northwest part of the competition field around Au Gres.
“I fished grass all week and targeted the edges the fish use to follow as they swim along,” he said. “Some of it was the outside edge, and some was in the inside edge, but I also focused on little holes in the grass. A mixture of different grasses was good; there was some cabbage, some that looked like hydrilla, and some stringy stuff. As long as it had a hard bottom, you had everything you needed to find fish.”
His top three baits were a Strike King Cut-R worm, a 3/8-ounce Strike King Thunder Cricket and a 3/8-ounce Strike King Tour Grade swim jig with a Rage Menace grub on the back, all in green pumpkin.
3. Edwin Evers – 86-10 (36)
Edwin Evers needed an excellent finish to make REDCREST, and he delivered with a third-place showing after winning the automatic qualification to the final day based on his success the first two days of the tournament. He found an interesting backwater area that produced great weight each day.
“It was just kind of a little backwater pond,” he said. “It was very shallow, but it was full of baitfish and bass. They were super skittish back there, and you had to be really quiet and not disturb anything. The fish would even get scared of your bait flying over them from the shadow, so you had almost to make your casts a curveball around reeds so you didn’t spook them.”
His top bait of the week was a 1/8-ounce buzzbait with a Berkley PowerBait Boss Grub in place of the skirt. He used black blue fleck when it was cloudy and the California color when the sun came out. As the fish became more educated to his buzzbait, he switched it up to a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General in green pumpkin.
4. Cole Floyd – 66-2 (26)
Cole Floyd continued his remarkable run to finish the season with his fifth straight Top 10 – the last four regular-season events and Heavy Hitters. He’s fishing very well and doing it with his strengths, staying shallow and using power fishing techniques like he did on the west side of Saginaw Bay.
“I stayed shallow, maybe a foot deep all week, and targeted pencil reeds,” he said. “There are a lot of reeds out there, so the key was finding places with a clean bottom. Some areas were slimed up on the bottom, and those places were dead. In practice, I covered as much water as possible with fast-moving baits just looking for those areas.”
Floyd said almost all of his weight came from two key stretches that were roughly a half mile each. He employed two main baits: a green pumpkin, 1/2-ounce Strike King Tour Grade swim jig with a Strike King Rage Bug as the trailer and swimming a Strike King Cut-R worm, also in green pumpkin.
5. Brent Ehrler – 61-2 (25)
California pro Brent Ehrler logged his 14th regular-season Bass Pro Tour Top-10 finish and third this season by focusing solely on largemouth. He was all in on the shallow water bite from the event’s start, fishing the same stretches of reeds near Sebewaing all four days by flipping, frogging and swimming a jig.
6. Bryan Thrift – 58-0 (23)
When the Bass Pro Tour visited Saginaw Bay in 2023, Bryan Thrift was in the Top 10, and he again found himself in the final day’s field. He employed a similar strategy in both events, targeting largemouth in vegetation away from the bank.
“In practice, I started targeting smallmouth and caught a few but never found what I liked,” he said. “So, I returned to where I caught them two years ago and got a bunch of bites immediately. Then, I spent the rest of my time looking for more places like it with my Humminbird side scan. I just didn’t find enough of it to last all week.”
Thrift scanned for offshore grass between 2 and 4 feet deep, which was deeper than most anglers were fishing. He found success with three main lures: a 1/2-ounce Z-Man Evergreen Jack Hammer ChatterBait in Brett’s Bluegill with a Damiki 5-inch Armor Shad on the back for the mornings, and then a swimming worm and standard Texas-rigged ribbontail worm the rest of the day. For all of his lures, he added BaitFuel Fuse Gel 55 for additional attraction.
7. Nick Hatfield – 54-12 (23)
Nick Hatfield capped off a great season and squeaked into REDCREST 2026 with a Top 10 in Michigan. He caught roughly 100 pounds a day the first three days of the tournament but ultimately finished seventh with about half of that amount on the final day. He did it all primarily through one key stretch of reeds.
“I went down this one stretch in practice and had 30 or 40 blowups on a buzzbait but only hooked a few of them,” he said. “I kept doing that some more and found three or four more excellent stretches where I could get bites, but knew if I switched to a swim jig, my hookup percentage would be way better. I was fishing a Megabass Uoze Swimmer swim jig.”
He fished that swim jig in white, black-blue and green pumpkin and mixed in a vibrating jig in the same colors. At times, fish would come up schooling on the surface, and he also caught some of them with a topwater walking bait.
8. Spencer Shuffield – 49-15 (21)
Spencer Shuffield ended the season strong with his third straight Top 10 finish. He did it with a simple approach, throwing a swim jig nearly the entire time.
“I was fishing pencil reeds with a white Team Ark Elite Z-Swimmer swim jig with a Strike King Rage Menace on the back,” he said. “I fished the 3/8-ounce when it was thinner cover and a 1/2-ounce in the thicker stuff. I also caught some fish flipping this week, but 85 percent of my fish came on that jig.”
Fishing on the lake’s western side near Pinconning, Shuffield sought areas with slightly deeper water on the ultra-shallow fishery.
“Places with 4 or 6 more inches of water were better,” he said. “Even though it was only about a foot deep in some places, that was enough water for them.”
9. Keith Carson – 45-17 (18)
Keith Carson finished 10th at the last event on the Potomac River and improved a spot this week on Saginaw Bay by fishing shallow with a host of different baits. He stuck to the southern part of the bay and ventured into the Saginaw River, with several spots playing a factor in his success.
“I had a couple different patterns going, throwing a Berkley Frittside 5 in ghost morning dawn on some rocks and then fishing soft plastics around cattails,” he said. “I threw a baby bass color Berkley PowerBait MaxScent The General around some shallow cattails, but could only fish that place the first day because we had a south wind that dropped the water so much that I couldn’t get back to them.”
Carson also scored fish during the week with a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Stank Bug in black blue fleck and green pumpkin, which he fished on the back of a swim jig as a vibrating jig trailer and as a flipping bait.
10. James Elam – 43-6 (18)
James Elam was the fourth angler to notch back-to-back Top 10s on the Potomac and Saginaw Bay, and he used a similar approach of targeting shallow grass at both venues.
“I was fishing pencil reeds on the bank and fishing some offshore grass spots,” he said. “I had four or five spots with grass and five or six with reeds. One of my best baits around the reeds was a bluegill-colored homemade swim jig – my dad made the mold and poured with a Mustad hook. If I’d miss one, I’d throw back in there with a LIVETARGET ICT Stick Worm in black blue on a 1/4-ounce weight and 4/0 Mustad Alpha-Grip flipping hook. That seemed to be a good trick to catch those fish, and I caught probably half of the fish that missed my swim jig.”
He threw a vibrating jig, swim jig and a beefier drop-shot rig amid the offshore grass.
“That ‘power-shot’ was a big deal, and I caught most of my fish on the second day with it,” he said. “I was fishing a green red color LIVETARGET ICT Finesse Worm with the same flipping hook I used on the stick worm and a 1/4-ounce weight on a baitcaster with 15-pound line and cleaned up on them.”