Alec Morrison has watched countless tournaments won by anglers fishing for largemouth this time of year on Lake Champlain. For much of practice, and a decent chunk of the first day of the Nitro Boats Bassmaster Elite Qualifier on Lake Champlain presented by Bass Pro Shops, the Peru, N.Y., angler tried his hardest to unlock the quality largemouth puzzle box.
He hasn’t to this point, but luckily the smallmouth on his home fishery are fat, healthy and ready to start their fall feeding frenzy.
Morrison landed 22 pounds, 10 ounces of brown bass on Day 1, which claimed fourth place on a remarkably productive day of fishing for the 106 boat field on Champlain. He was one of 49 anglers to eclipse the 20-pound benchmark on Day 1, almost all of whom caught all smallmouth or majority smallmouth.
Matt Messer leads after Day 1 with 23-9, a limit made up of five smallmouth.
For comparison, only 22 anglers reached or eclipsed the 20-pound mark during the Bassmaster Elite Series event held here last August.
The water is historically low in upstate New York this week, limiting the number of areas largemouth will be. Even still, Morrison was expecting more big largemouth to play in this tournament.
“I spent more than half my practice fishing for largemouth. Typically, this time of year, it is really hard to win on smallmouth, especially in the local deals we fish,” Morrison said. “It just never happened for me. Luckily, I was able to make some good decisions and catch a few big smallmouth.
“What I witnessed today, the largemouth I did find totally shifted. They left or moved. I don’t know if the conditions did it or what.”
But while Morrison and others tried the largemouth deal and came up empty, others found exactly what they were hoping for in the shallows. Grae Buck caught 20 pounds of smallmouth early on Day 1, and spent almost the entire rest of the day searching for big green fish. He found two, a 5-9 and another 5-pounder to go with a 5-pound smallmouth.
He sits in second with 23-8, just an ounce behind Messer. Can he do it again? Maybe, but it won’t be in the same location.
“To go do it again, it will have to happen somewhere else,” Buck said.
Georgia’s Cody Stahl should be leading this tournament after finding a gold mine of largemouth that culled out the majority of his smallmouth, but suffered a 2-pound penalty for a culling infraction.
Stahl’s hot largemouth area is structure oriented, and also gets better as the afternoon goes along.
“I just went to wearing on them,” he said. “I know there are more fish there, but I don’t know what the weather will do to them.”
Unlocking the smallmouth
It’s not particularly easy to land quality smallmouth, despite what the numbers may indicate. They are scattered everywhere in the lake, and choppy conditions keep the bait and the bass on the move.
Anglers focusing exclusively on smallmouth have reported seeing smallmouth in all sections of the water column. Morrison caught most of his on the bottom in deep water. Stahl reported catching smallmouth suspended in 80 feet of water over 100 feet of water, while Matt Adams is targeting bass suspended in 15 to 40 feet of water over 50 feet.
“It changes throughout the day for me,” Trey Schroeder said. “It seems like early in the morning they come up a little, and then they’ll go back down to the bottom towards the afternoon. And then right before check-in time they start floating again.”
Messer said a lot of the brown fish in his area stay on the bottom until a school of baitfish swims by, and that is when he can pick them up on his forward-facing sonar and make an accurate cast to them.
The big smallmouth aren’t necessarily schooled up either. Alabama’s Connor Jacob said he usually catches his best quality when he sees three or less smallmouth on his forward-facing sonar.
“They run in sizes here,” Adams said. “They’ll pair up or get into groups of three even, and you’ll get bit when that happens.”
Tomorrow’s wild card
Day 1 was much windier and rougher than expected on Lake Champlain, with winds coming from the south. Friday’s forecast calls for a north wind to blow between 10 and 15 mph. Navigations will be tough, but the change in wind direction could also move the baitfish and smallmouth into different areas.
