Elite

Touring the 2025 Elite fisheries

Take a tour of the diverse lineup of fisheries that will play out during the 2025 Bassmaster Elite season.

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Photography by
Craig Lamb
Captions by
Craig Lamb
The 2025 Bassmaster Elite Series schedule continues its standing tradition to visit the best bass lakes during the best times to fish them, from all phases of the spawning cycle into summer. That includes a stop at Lake Okeechobee, where the prevailing patterns will certainly evolve around vegetation.
In stark contrast, the season concludes in late August on the upper pools of Mississippi River where unpredictable lock schedules and uncertainty of late summer water levels present unknowns to be mastered by the world’s best bass anglers. 
February 20-23: St. Johns River
The first event of the season at the St. Johns River is always a fan (and angler) favorite for many reasons. The river presents options ranging from the main river channel that meanders through a diversity of bass habitat and more.
If the river is off, or doesn’t suit an angler’s style of fishing, Crescent Lake is an option with its cypress-treed shorelines and plenty of vegetation. 
On the way to that lake are myriad canals that provide habitat for spawning, feeding and staging fish. 
In 2024, Canadian Cory Johnston took advantage of the variety of options, fishing on the main river and in Salt Springs, where he amassed a winning weight of 93 pounds, 6 ounces. Photo: Dalton Tumblin
Johnston (not pictured) switched to the main river channel on the final day to augment his weight caught during the early rounds in Salt Springs. 
Most of the magic happened in a magical location that is revered for its unique opportunity to catch bass from a place like none other. 
That place is at the termination of Salt Springs Run, where the Salt Springs mineral springs bubble up into the floor of the river and provide nutrients, habitat for spawning and clear water for visually targeting spawning bass. 
Johnston targeted those bass with Texas-rigged soft plastics and drop-shot rigs. 
February 27-March 3: Lake Okeechobee
The Florida doubleheader concludes at another perennial favorite with an equal number of options, all of those being vegetation related.
Will the prevailing patterns favor the conditions in the vast areas of vegetation on the main lake? That will depend on the coverage area. The south Florida lake has experienced high water conditions unfavorable to supporting the growth of its lush offshore vegetation in many open-water areas.
However, there are areas where enough habitat supports credible concentrations of bass that can sustain patterns over several days. 
The answers will come when the boats leave C. Scott Driver Park in Okeechobee. 
In January 2024, this was the scene on opening day of the St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Lake Okeechobee presented by SEVIIN. Moonshine Bay was the place to be, as the majority of the field fished the popular area for three days. 
The drawing card was a vast area of spawning beds. 
Somewhere in that mass of boats was tournament winner Scott Martin, who on his home lake amassed a three-day winning weight of 90 pounds, 8 ounces. Will it be the place to win in 2025?
At the 2023 Elite season opener in February, one angler shunned the crowds in favor of less-pressured fish in the Kissimmee River. 
That savvy angler was Tyler Rivet, who focused on hard bottom areas along the river to rack up a winning weight of 86 pounds, 15 ounces. Photo: Andy Crawford
Rivet used a jerkbait to locate feeding bass and when that reaction bite subsided the winner switched to a Carolina rig or punch rig. Photo: Andy Crawford
April 10-13: Pasquotank River/Albemarle Sound, North Carolina
This vintage photo gives you an idea of how long it’s been since a Bassmaster pro-level event visited this tidal fishery. The 1980 and 1981 Bassmaster North Carolina Invitationals (held in May and June) were won by a relatively new western-born technique called flipping. Expect more of the same with a modern twist, with the tidal influence playing into the mix.
April 24-27: Lake Hartwell
The home to four Bassmaster Classics (2008, 2015, 2018, 2022) will host its second Elite Series event this time in 2025, out of Green Pond Landing in Anderson, S.C. 
The big question will be what stage of the spawning cycle the anglers will encounter during the late April event. 
The lake has a plentiful supply of blueback herring and other baitfish for the bass to bulk up on prior to committing to the spawning areas, and there are plenty. Those areas range from pockets inside creeks …
… to boat docks functioning as staging areas and spawning sites. 
Water clarity will be another determining factor. 
At the last Elite Series visit to Hartwell in early April of 2019, a near full-blown bed fishing derby evolved on the lake. Waves of spawners moved into the shallows, and it was Brandon Cobb who dialed into the best bite. Cobb’s winning weight of 72 pounds, 4 ounces came on a Zoom Fluke Stick and Zoom Trick Worm. Photo: Andy Crawford
May 8-11: Lake Fork
The Elite Series returns to where history was made in 2024, when the perfect storm of a post-front warming trend followed a full moon during the February event. 
The Top 10 anglers all earned Bassmaster Century Club honors by surpassing the 100-pound final weight mark. Photo: Kyle Jessie
Fishing in just his second Elite event, rookie Trey McKinney topped the field with a winning weight of 130 pounds 15 ounces. While that weight is unlikely to be surpassed in mid-May, the lake where anglers come from around the world to catch a personal best is certain to oblige with more double-digit catches. In May alone, the Toyota ShareLunker program has recorded 30 entries. Photo: Andy Crawford
May 15-18: Sabine River
The Sabine River’s Elite Series playing field stretches into bayous, rivers and coastlines from the Louisiana border and along the coastline to Houston, a 110-mile, one-way boat run. 
What stood out at the 2023 event were the wise decisions made by the top finishers to maximize fishing time by staying nearer the launch site and host city of Orange, Texas. Photo: Shane Durrance
One angler in particular figured out how to win, running no more than 45 minutes away to keep his line in the water to catch more fish. Photo: Shane Durrance
That savvy angler was Brock Mosely, who won the event with 44 pounds, 3 ounces. Photo: Dalton Tumblin
Mosely won the tournament by less than 3 pounds, making his choice to home in on a shoreline strike zone vital to the win. 
To do it, he rotated through a topwater, bladed jig and Texas-rigged soft plastics, all capable of drawing out bass holding in the cover. 
June 12-15: Lake Tenkiller
The seventh event of the season is a summertime stop in eastern Oklahoma. Lake Tenkiller is a 12,900-acre impoundment nestled in the Cookson Hills of the Ozark Mountains. 
Tenkiller has an abundance of largemouth and smallmouth, giving anglers two choices for patterning summertime bass on the impoundment featuring bluffs, sloping shorelines and offshore areas conducive to deeper patterns.
The Elite anglers will also share the lake with recreational boaters. 
In September 2019, Carl Jocumsen cracked the code on the largemouth with a winning weight of 54 pounds, 15 ounces. 
The winning lure was a Molix GT Football Jig used by Jocumsen to target offshore structure favored by the largemouth in a strike zone between 20 and 30 feet.  Photo: Andy Crawford
August 7-10: Lake St. Clair
The season concludes with a Midwestern swing in Michigan and Wisconsin, both on familiar waters to the Elite Series. The first stop is at Lake St. Clair, which in recent events has proven its reputation as a top smallmouth fishery. 
In recent events, one particular area has shown out. This aerial view represents a snapshot of the 40 or more tournament boats on the expansive Anchor Bay area during the 2023 event. 
For four days, the area consistently produced forward-facing sonar induced limits of smallmouth. Why would anyone leave when the tournament could be won there?
One angler chose to shun the crowd and find an area all to himself. That tactic paid off for winner Joey Cifuentes III, whose four-day limits weighing 22-10, 24-0, 21-1 and 23-13 totaled 91 pounds, 8 ounces for the win. Cifuentes targeted an area of smallmouth that had transitioned into their summertime patterns. A simple drop-shot rig did the trick.
In July 2024, Elite pro Jay Przekurat won the St. Croix Bassmaster Open presented by SEVIIN with a three-day winning weight of 75 pounds, 7 ounces. Anchor Bay produced the weight with the winner using a simple drop shot. 
August 21-24: Mississippi River
The 2025 season concludes on an upper stretch of the Mississippi River, where the anglers will have access to myriad fishing opportunities on pools 7, 8 and 9. The playing field will be determined by where the water level stands in late August. 
In low-water conditions, the bass favor the river channel and surrounding sloughs that provide deeper water. 
The outlier in the tournament is the locking schedule, which dictates how much fishing time is available to anglers choosing to lock through into pools 7 and 9. Commercial barge traffic gets the green light of priority. Being late is not an option, and especially at the last event when valuable points are on the line. 
In 2022, Bryan Schmitt amassed a winning weight of 63 pounds, 4 ounces. Throughout the tournament, Schmitt focused on a 200-yard stretch of eelgrass in Pool 8. Schmitt located the winning catch in a trench spanning 20 feet wide by 100 feet long. 
A Carolina rig, frog and drop shot covered the water column for his patterns in play. Photo: Andy Crawford

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