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Best of 2025: Opens top lures

Old school lures made a comeback in the top lures used by Opens winners.

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The 2025 season of the St. Croix Bassmaster Opens presented by SEVIIN began on a chilly January day in South Carolina and concluded in August at Leech Lake in northern Minnesota. Here is a recap of the top lures used by the winners of all eight events spread across the two divisions. 
Old Man Winter did his best to put a damper at the season opener on Clarks Hill Reservoir. In late January, bitter cold temperatures and a canceled day due to snow threw anglers a curveball, but the two-day tournament showcased the best of what Clarks Hill has to offer.
In total, 234 limits were caught by the field of 161 pros over the course of the two-day event, including multiple 20-pound bags and plenty of 5- and 6-pound largemouth. Chase Clarke, however, was the only angler to land multiple bags of more than 20 pounds.
That helped the Virginia Beach pro claim his first Opens title and a spot in 2026 Bassmaster Classic. Nine of his 10 bass were largemouth, and three of those largemouth bested the 6-pound mark.
One style of bait pushed Clarke to his first Opens victory.
Clarke used this Greenfish Tackle Bad Little Shad jighead with a fluke-style bait. He used either a 3/16-ounce, a 1/4-ounce or a 3/8-ounce depending on how deep he was fishing.
The Open at Sam Rayburn Reservoir might go down as one of the strangest tournaments in B.A.S.S. history. A mid-February cold front brought strong winds to east Texas midweek, forcing the cancellation of Day 1. Forecasts also indicated severe weather would impact the area on the regularly scheduled Day 3, which forced tournament officials to make the difficult decision to make the event a one-day shootout.
Under much cooler temperatures than what they practiced in, anglers had to work hard to catch the bass they could. But even still, big Texas bass crossed the weigh-in stage, including multiple 8-pounders and a couple of 9-pounders.
Iowa’s Chris Miller found the winning ingredients for the one-day event, catching big prespawn largemouth moving through ditches to their spawning areas. His 28-10 total was nearly 5 pounds better than the second-place finisher Garrett Paquette.
Two baits carried Chris Miller to victory at Sam Rayburn.
This Berkley Nessie glidebait caught one of his key largemouth.
This Strike King Z Too in Alabama Shiner also generated a key bite. He rigged it on a 1/4-ounce jighead.
Yui Aoki was fishing some 6,600 miles from his home in Japan, but he looked right at home at the Open held on lakes Kentucky and Barkley. The early March tournament aligned perfectly with his skill sets. 
Aoki’s winning weight of 66 pounds, 14 ounces, included daily limits weighing 24-4, 18-10 and 24 pounds, all of it caught from a stretch of main river channel flooded timber. Swimbaits ruled in the Championship Saturday lure lineup, an indicator of prespawn feeding. 
Aoki used swimbaits as a primary lure, among other choices. 
A DSTYLE Virola Tail Swimbait 145 was a top choice. 
Next was a DSTYLE Virola 4 or 5 rigged with a 3.5-gram jig head.
Mother nature didn’t play nice at the early April Open at Norfork Lake in the Arkansas Ozarks. Massive storms pushed through North Arkansas, causing the event to be a one-day shootout on Thursday.
The White River is a special place to B.A.S.S., and despite the shortened event, Norfork showed out with impressive springtime weights.
Casey Scanlon’s 18-5 was enough to get the win. Prespawn tactics like jigs, jerkbaits, spinnerbaits and jighead minnows were major players.
Scanlon fished a spinnerbait around shoreline runoff areas featuring isolated wood. Alternatively, he fished a tube jig where channel bluff banks transitioned to boulders and laydowns. 
Scanlon used a 4-inch Bass Pro Shops Magnum Flipping Tube on a 4/0 Hayabusa WR959 Wide Gap Offset Heavy Duty Hook, with a 5/16-ounce Bass Pro Shops Tungsten Weight. 
He also used a self-designed and made 1/2-ounce Trophy Bass Company with a 2/0 Hayabusa WRM929 Trailer Hook.
It ain’t over till it’s over. As the saying goes, it played out for Trey Schroeder at the mid-April Open held on the Tombigbee River. The 25-year-old angler from Missouri mounted a come-from-behind win with 14 bass totaling 42 pounds, 12 ounces, just enough to edge veteran angler Stephen Browning with 42-4. 
The former high school and college standout didn’t burn half a tank of gas all week, never venturing into the main river and instead fishing in Columbus Lake. The flipping and pitching techniques connected Schroeder with his catches. See his lures for spawning cycle bass. 
Schroeder set out to cover as much water as possible with a swim jig. He switched to a flipping rig after locating isolated areas with specific prespawn largemouth.
His search bait was this 3/8-ounce 6th Sense Braid Swim Jig with a 6th Sense Stroker Craw for a trailer. 
Schroeder’s one-two punch included this 6th Sense Bongo, rigged on a 1/2-ounce 6th Sense Pitch Black Tungsten Weight, with a 5/0 6th Sense OX Flipping Hook. 
The late July Open held on the Upper Chesapeake Bay showed out in a big way and showcased the potential of the prestigious tidal fishery. Many of the leaders found themselves fishing near one another on flats of submerged vegetation.
Dillon Falardeau outshone everyone by going wire to wire, posting weights of 22-7, 19-2 and 21-4 to total 62 pounds, 13 ounces. A major win has been a dream of Falardeau’s his whole life, and now he claims a spot in the 2026 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour in Knoxville, Tenn.
Falardeau stuck to three key baits to complete his St. Croix Bassmaster Open victory. 
The first was a 3/8-ounce Jackall Super Eruption Jr. (Chartreuse White) paired with a Zoom Twin Tail trailer (white).
A Yo-Zuri 3DRX Series Flat Crank (Perch) produced some key bites. Falardeau replaced the hooks with #4 BKK trebles.
Lastly, Falardeau employed a 1/2-ounce Z-Man JackHammer in Black Blue. A Hog Farmer Spunk Shad in Black Blue Flake was his trailer of choice. A vibrating jig was a huge player on the Upper Chesapeake Bay.
Once again, the St. Lawrence River proved why it is one of the best, if not the best, smallmouth fisheries in the country in the late July tournament. Well over 100 20-pound sacks were brought to the scales during the Division 1 finale, including five that eclipsed the 26-pound mark.
There are no signs this mighty river is slowing down either. This 7-pound, 5-ounce smallmouth caught by Ryan Lachniet was the heaviest smallmouth weighed in at the fishery since Paul Mueller caught a 7-13 in 2020.
Cory Johnston may have started the final day in fourth place, but the Canadian pro put on a show during Championship Saturday, catching 26-7 to claim his second Opens trophy at the St. Lawrence River.
Johnston used one primary presentation to get the win.
All week, he tossed a 6th Sense Party Minnow in electric shad. He rigged it on a prototype BKK drop-shot hook with a 3/8-ounce 6th Sense Drop Shot weight.
Can an old-school topwater frog win a derby at the national level? Of course it can, and Laker Howell proved it by the mid-August Open held on Leech Lake. Faced with fishing for smallmouth, largemouth or both, Howell chose to focus on largemouth, and it paid off with multiple rewards. 
Howell posted a two-day weight of 39 pounds, 13 ounces, also earning a berth in the 2026 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic, and he already qualified for the upcoming Nitro Boats Bassmaster Elite Qualifiers presented by Bass Pro Shops. The next goal will be to join his father, Randy, on the Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series. 
Howell committed to a wild rice field where he discovered prized largemouth in 5 foot or less of water. Clean bottoms and deeper pockets set up obvious ambush points around mixed growths of rice, milfoil and lily pads. 
Howell’s primary bait was a discontinued old-school Snagproof Frog in the Mossback pattern. 

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