PLATTSBURGH — Due to high winds and the associated waves, Day 3 of the Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats Northern Division opener on Lake Champlain was canceled. With sustained south winds over 20 miles per hour in parts of the lake, it was set to be one of the roughest tournament days on record on the big pond.
The weather put the brakes on what was an outstanding event, with the top seven pros separated by less than a pound heading into the final day, and post spawn smallmouth coming over the gunwales in bunches. Leading after two days, pro Tucker Smith of Birmingham, Alabama, took home the win by 3 ounces over Ethan Fields of Breese, Illinois, with a 40-pound, 4-ounce total. On the co-angler side, Jarvis Ellis of Leesburg, Georgia, wrangled 31-8 over two days for the win and a new Phoenix boat.
Oddly enough, despite a short but very decorated career, the win is the first with MLF for Smith. For it, the young pro banks $40,000, and he’s now qualified for the Toyota Series Championship at Grand Lake, and his presence will strengthen the already impressive field.
Though he admittedly was surrounded by fellow anglers with experience on Champlain, this was Smith’s first time on the big northern lake. Obviously, it suited him, and it didn’t take much practice for him to find the winning zone.
“I tried to stick to certain areas and just figure out that area,” said Smith. “I started off going into the Inland Sea when I first got to practice, and I caught some fish. I found a lot of fish, I also found some bed fish and I was actually able to catch a couple in the tournament. But, I ended up running around and ended up going around the midsection of the lake. I went down below the Inland Sea and ended up starting to catch some better quality smallmouth than I’d caught up the lake.”
Fishing for bass a little farther from the spawn, Smith capitalized on what may be turning into the norm for June events on Champlain. Though the smallmouth spawn has historically been a key player, these days, modern technology allows anglers to pursue fish in all stages very effectively.
“I think where I was at, the water was a little bit warmer, and those fish were a little bit farther along,” Smith outlined. “It seemed like in the Inland Sea, the water was a little bit colder, and they were still in that spawning phase and, you know, postspawn funk. It seemed like where I was at, they were already moving out off the bank chasing bait, alewives, and getting fat again. A lot of them had guts on them, which was key.”
Roaming on flats, the edges of them and the basin associated with them, Smith ran into what would be the winning fish in the afternoon on the first day of the event.
“I found the spot that I caught them off yesterday in the afternoon,” said Smith. “There were probably, you know, 20 smallmouth swimming around, and I ended up catching a few nice ones the first day of it. I started there in the morning on the second day, and I would say I saw 50 to 75 smallmouth on a 50-yard stretch. And, it seemed like that morning they were biting really well.”
Smith used some smallmouth staples for his catch, namely, a minnow and a Ned rig. For his minnow, he used a 5-inch Yamamoto Shad Shape Worm, with ¼- and 3/16-ounce Picasso heads. He also used a Yamamoto Ned Senko with a Picasso Rhino Ned Head. For his minnow, his setup of choice was a 3000-sized Shimano Vanquish spinning reel and a 6-10, medium light G. Loomis NRX+ spinning rod.
Smith had a few keys to his event, other than finding the fish. One was being able to pick out the smallmouth to be efficient.
“There were smallmouths in all depths,” Smith explained. “There were some swimming as deep as 50 feet coming up onto the flat and shallower, and then there were also some that were 20 feet on the bottom on top of the flats. And then there were also some that were just swimming on the edge that were suspended.
‘There were even some up near the surface as well, but they were kind of just swimming everywhere in that area in the morning. You had to pick apart which were the smallmouth and which were the walleye, because there were a lot of different trash fish as well, swimming around. After looking at those fish for a while, I was able to really figure out exactly which one was a smallmouth pretty quickly and make as many casts at just smallmouth as I could.”
Smith has been very successful in his young career, and winning a smallmouth tournament up north was meaningful for him.
“It was awesome,” he said. “It is really special to win in a place like this. I’ve never been here before, and I love smallmouth. I really wanted to fish today, but, you know, it was definitely not the conditions to fish. But I had a blast being here, and I’m thankful for the win. This is definitely a good step for the next tournaments this year, and hopefully it gets me back in the groove.”
The top 10 pros at the Toyota Series at Lake Champlain finished:
1st- Tucker Smith, Birmingham, Ala.
2nd- Ethan Fields, Breese, Ill.
3rd- Emil Wagner, Marietta, Ga.
4th- Brody Campbell, Oxford, Ohio
5th- Dylan Quilatan, Windermere, Fla.
6th- Kurt Mitchell, Milford, Del.
7th- Kyle Patrick, Cooperstown, N.Y.
8th- Riley Harris, Orange, Texas
9th- Ethan Carr, Massena, N.Y.
10th- Tripp Berlinsky, Florence, Ala., 10 bass, 38-9, $4,000
Complete results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Pro David Kranz of Woodstock, Illinois, who also hosts the popular WeFishASA podcast, earned Thursday’s $500 Berkley Big Bass Award with a bass weighing 5 pounds, 4 ounces, while pro Bryan Schmitt of Deale, Maryland, won Friday’s $500 Berkley Big Bass, weighing in a 5-pound, 8-ounce to earn the $500 award.
Jarvis Ellis of Leesburg, Georgia, won the co-angler division at Lake Champlain with a two-day total of 10 bass weighing 31 pounds, 8 ounces. Ellis earned the top co-angler prize package worth $33,500, including a new Phoenix 518 Pro bass boat with a 115-horsepower outboard motor.
The top 10 co-anglers at the Toyota Series at Lake Champlain finished:
1st- Jarvis Ellis, Leesburg, Ga.,
2nd- Christopher Dam, Staatsburg, N.Y.
3rd- Hunter Tibbetts, Centreville, Va.
4th- Glenn Hall, Wellsville, N.Y.
5th- Michael Luckey, Lynchburg, Va.
6th- Jakob Labelle, Hinesburg, Vt.
7th- Allen Haigh, Prospect Hill, N.C.
8th- David Archibald, Somerset, Mass.
9th- Robert Bruguiere, Roseland, Va.
10th- Haydan Marshall, Quitman, Texas
Co-angler Braxton Clements of Donalsonville, Georgia, earned the first Berkley Big Bass co-angler award of the event on Thursday with a 5-pound, 4-ounce bass to earn the $150 prize, while Friday’s Day 2 $150 co-angler award went to David Williams of Fredericksburg, Virginia, who weighed in a bass totaling 5 pounds, 5 ounces.
The Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats at Lake Champlain was hosted by the City of Plattsburgh and the Adirondack Coast Visitors Bureau. It was the first of three regular-season tournaments for the Toyota Series Northern Division. The next event for Toyota Series Northern Division anglers will be the Toyota Series at the St. Lawrence River Presented by Suzuki Marine, Aug. 14-16, in Massena, New York. For a complete schedule of events, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com.