BUFFALO, N.Y. — New York’s Alex Korol overcame a lingering case of bronchitis and two hard-charging Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series pros to win the Turtlebox Bassmaster Open at Lake Erie presented by Battery Tender with 75 pounds, 9 ounces of smallmouth bass over three days of competition.
In a tournament where weights were generally tightly-packed, his winning margin of 3-11 seemed immense. The difference between 2nd and 4th was a mere 8 ounces.
Elite Series rookies Nick Trim of Wisconsin and Aaron Jagdfeld of Michigan came in 2nd and 3rd with 71-14 and 71-8, respectively.
“I know how special this is and how hard it is to come by,” Korol said. “It is just unbelievable.”
This event featured an absolute rarity in multi-day Great Lakes tournaments — three days with no weather warnings, delays or cancellations. The service crews remained busy, but the tournament went on as scheduled, as did the entirety of the Opens schedule this year.
The result was record-breaking, with more 20-pound or higher limits than at any other tournament in Bassmaster history, dating back to the 1960s. There were 114 of them on Day 1 alone and Korol’s 27-1 was the biggest of the tournament. The 10 anglers who qualified to fish on Championship Saturday added eight more to make the tally even more insurmountable.
While the 33-year-old Korol is from Fairport, N.Y., he calls Lake Ontario and the Finger Lakes his home waters and said that this week marked the longest stretch of consecutive days he’s ever spent on Erie.
The key to his victory was an area that lacked obvious structure but contained multitudes of bait balls. It was close to some obvious and well-known contours, so the surprise wasn’t that it held bait, but that they remained there all three days.
“Eighty percent of the time my boat was in 50 feet of water,” he said. “But it was rare to see them actively feeding on the bait. I was catching most of them off the bottom. The key was staying free with how I moved through the area. I never stayed glued to one particular area.”
Korol tempted the vast majority of his fish with a drop-shot rig tipped with a diminutive Megabass Hazedong Shad in colors including green pumpkin, green pumpkin shad and black.
One key to his success was the use of light line to cut through the water column. He employed a main line of 5-pound test Cortland Master Braid with a leader of 8-pound test Seaguar Tatsu.
Despite the win, Korol did not fish a full division of Turtlebox Bassmaster Opens presented by Battery Tender and therefore is not qualified to compete in the 2027 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Under Armour or this fall’s Nitro Boats Bassmaster Elite Qualifiers presented by Bass Pro Shops. The now-vacant Classic spot will instead be filled by a grateful Elite Series angler. Korol said that he has no regrets about that decision but he intends to fish a full division of Opens next year.
“My dream is to fish the Elite Series,” he said.
For now he’ll have to be content with beating some of the Elite roster. Three of them made the Top 10 and many more past and present Elites populated the tournament’s initial field.
One of those was Nick Trim, last year’s Mercury B.A.S.S. Nation Championship presented by Lowrance champion. The Wisconsin pro caught a day’s best 24-13 to jump from 6th place up to the runner-up position. He’d caught his fish on a jighead minnow the first day but transitioned to a 3/8 ounce Cast Again Ringer football jig on Days 2 and 3 to make a charge at the title.
Trim ran 40 miles each way to his prime spot.
“My main goal was to get away from everybody,” he said. With today’s stiffer winds, he had less than 3 hours to fish there and made the most of it. The ride back left him with time to fish one additional spot and that’s where he caught his biggest smallmouth of the day — enough to outlast fellow Elite Aaron Jagdfeld.
“This is just what I needed going into the Elite Series tournament on the St. Lawrence,” Trim stated. “Chasing smallmouth is something I love to do and it feels good to crack ’em.”
Jagdfeld will likewise carry the momentum of success in an absolute slugfest into the season-ending Elite event. This is his best finish in an Open or an Elite since he came in 2nd at an Open on Lake St. Clair — another smallmouth factory — in 2024.
“This should bring some confidence back after a down season,” he said. “I hope that Ontario sets up the same way as this place.”
Like much of the field he utilized a jighead minnow and an urchin-style bait to mine an average of nearly 24 pounds of smallmouth a day, and he said that one key to his success was his choice of a Lew’s Hypermag 3000-sized spinning reel. The shallow spool and 6.2:1 gear ratio allowed him to make more presentations to the fish he’d located and resulted in fewer wind knots.
Dillon Falardeau of Tennessee, who’d won an Open on the Upper Chesapeake Bay last season to qualify for the 2026 Bassmaster Classic, fell to 4th, just 2 ounces behind Jagdfeld. The Top eight finishers all caught at least 21 pounds per day. Everyone in the Top 10 had at least one bag over 23 pounds and six of them did it twice. Korol was the only one to top 23 each day.
Yesterday Garrett Smith of North Carolina caught the Phoenix Boats Big Bass of the tournament, a 6-13 smallmouth,
This tournament was the final chance for anglers to move their way into the Nitro Boats Bassmaster Elite Qualifiers presented by Bass Pro Shops for the opportunity to claim one of 10 invites to the 2027 Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series. This season, 50 anglers took on both divisions, and 35 of them will advance to the Elite Qualifier round.
Cody Stahl of Georgia won the Division 1 points race.
Brody Robison of Alabama won the Division 2 points race.
Brock Bila of Missouri won the combined points race.
The Buffalo Sports Commission hosted this event.
2026 Bassmaster Opens Series Title Sponsor: Turtlebox
2026 Bassmaster Opens Series Presenting Sponsor: Battery Tender
2026 Bassmaster Opens Series Platinum Sponsor: Progressive, Toyota
2026Bassmaster Opens Series Premier Sponsors: Bass Pro Shops, Humminbird, Mercury, Minn Kota, Mountain Dew, Nitro Boats, Ranger Boats, Rapala, Skeeter Boats, Yamaha
2026 Bassmaster Opens Series Supporting Sponsors: AFTCO, Daiwa, Lew’s, Lowrance, Phoenix Boats, VMC, Yokohama
