Day 1 of the Carhartt College Bassmaster College Series National Championship presented by Bass Pro Shops is officially underway on the beautiful St. Lawrence River. As always when B.A.S.S. events come to the St. Lawrence River, the expectations are sky high, but there’s no question that the river is fishing differently from just a few weeks ago when the Bassmaster Elite Series wrapped up the regular season.
After speaking with a few anglers, it seems as if some of the same patterns will be at play, but there could be a twist this time around.
Connor Jacob and Sam Smith of Auburn University, who won the third Carhartt College Series event of the season on Smith Lake, believe that the weights are going to be stout this week and fish will be caught in a variety of depths.
“It’s a crazy fishery and it’s going to take a lot of weight,” Jacob said. “You really have to catch at least 18 pounds just to feel good about yourself.”
Over the past few weeks, the St. Lawrence River has been the destination of several larger events, which led Jacob and Smith to believe that fishing would be a bit tougher than it was while the Elites were here.
“We knew with all the bigger tournaments here and it being a weird time of the year that it wasn’t going to be easy to find big numbers of fish,” said Jacob, an Illinois native. “We caught fish in practice from 20 to 50 feet of water but we never found anything too consistent.”
The 2021 National Championship will be a three-day event compared to the two-day events in the regular season, so consistency will be key to make the final day.
A large percentage of the field is from the Southeastern part of the county and have little to no experience fishing for northern smallmouth, so practice was a major learning experience. That is exactly the case for the team of Beau Browning and Hunter Baird of Drury University.
“Being guys from Arkansas and Kansas, we’re not really used to the true smallmouth fishing that is offered up here,” Browning said. “By Day 2 of practice, we were able to get the hang of things but like I said we don’t really know what to expect.”
Browning and Baird had a good practice, but both mentioned how grateful they were to have the opportunity to come to the famed St. Lawrence River and learn how to fish for these giant smallmouth bass.
Be sure to follow all the coverage on Bassmaster.com throughout the week, including blogs, photo galleries and more. Daily weigh-ins start at 2:30 p.m. ET.