Lake Champlain: Day 2

7:05 a.m. — Carl Jocumsen told Dave Mercer that he had a 25-pound day on Monday but didn’t catch his fish in that same area yesterday. He struggled to get on the juice early, had to change a prop mid-lake, and then dialed things in as the day went on. He believes that the pressure pushed the fish to where he caught them.

Lake Champlain: Day 1

12:14 p.m. — Jeff "Gussy" Gustafson has taken the unofficial lead in this event, being the first angler in the field to hit the 20-pound mark.

"Gussy said his fishing is slow, but every once in a while he gets nice one," Bassmaster Seigo Saito reports. "He has three nice ones, include two largemouth, and he needs to get rid of two small ones. 

"It is totally different from last few visits we were here.  Smallmouth have gottne a lot smarter, and it's harder to get bites."

12:10 p.m. — Trey McKinney has been effectively using his 2-D electronics to upgrade his stringer — landing two 4-pounders in the past hour. After a slow start, during which he unofficially lost the lead of the Progressive Angler of the Year race, the young phenom has not just regained the AOY lead but unofficially propelled himself into the Top 10 of this event.

He currently sits in sixth place on BassTrakk, with 17-6 — just 7 ounces behind current leader Kyle Patrick.

And he just lost what seemed to be another big bass.

11:47 a.m. — Caleb Kuphall is fan casting and covering a very large area of shallow grass with a bladed jig, Bassmaster photographer Dalton Tumblin reports.

"This has made for a productive morning, as he is currently sitting in third on BassTrakk, with a sack full of largemouth," Tumblin said. "The grass is in about 6 feet of water and spans over a very large area. Caleb said he’s extremely happy with the start he’s having, considering that his practice did not go well.

"He said right now he’s hunting around this grass a little quicker in hopes get a couple bigger bites and cull up."

11:33 a.m. — Keith Combs has had a really good morning so far, building a 16-pound stringer that has him unofficially sitting in 10th.

"All his fish have come on a vibrating jig," Bassmaster photographer Shane Durrance reports. "But now he has a problem: In the last hour, floating grass has started to move in on top of his fish, and it’s making it almost impossible to cast the vibrating jig without getting hung up."

11:22 a.m. — Trey McKinney just landed a badly needed football of a bass. Landing what he said was a 4-pounds, 10-ounce smallmouth allowed hi to cull a 2-pounder.

"Now I'm in it; now I know what I'm doing," McKinney said on Bass Live.

That one catch moved him from 37th to 31st place, according to BassTrakk.

"A couple more of those, and we'll be alright," McKinney said.

11:03 a.m. — Beau Browning got off to a hot start this morning, with a five-fish stringer weighing an estimated 16 pounds, 6 ounces. Bassmaster photographer Chase Sansom said Browning is now giving his area a rest, but plans to return this afternoon.

“I was fishing a stretch of grass about 500 yards long this morning, and I smoked them on a Chatterbait," Browning told Sansom. "If I had live scope I’d hate to see how many were actually there, considering how good they bit a Chatterbait.”

Browning is one of the anglers battling for his career. He began this event in 85th place, and he needs to move into the Top 70 by the end of the season to protect his spot on the Elite Series.

10:54 a.m. — Trey McKinney has finally caught his fifth bass, according to BassTrakk — and that edged him back into the unofficial AOY lead.

It's a razor slim lead over Cory Johnston, however: There are now unofficially just 7 points separating the two anglers who have been battling it out in the Progressive Angler of the Year race.

10:38 a.m. — We've been tracking the average age of the Progressive Angler of the Year Top 10, and the addition of a couple of "old" Elite anglers after the Pasquotank River event bumped the age back above the 30-year-old mark.

Brandon Cobb, at 36 years old, and Bob Downey at the ripe old age of 38 joined 41-year-old Cory Johnston. That pushed the average age of the Top 10 going into today to 31.1 years.

That's higher than the past two seasons, during which forward facing sonar were allowed in every event. However, it's still lower than 2020, 2022 and 2023.

10:33 a.m. — Brandon Cobb currently hopped into the Top 12 on BassTrakk.

"He caught this keeper as we were pulling up to him near North Hero island," Bassmaster photographer Dalton Tumblin said. "He’s only fishing in about 8 feet of water along a hard bottom with some scattered grass. He’s spending a lot of his time poled down and picking it apart slowly.

"He told me he can’t seem to catch them on much of anything else besides a drop shot rig at the moment, although he is switching back and forth with a wacky rigged Senko, occasionally."

10:18 a.m. — Matt Messer currently holds sixth place on BassTrakk, and he is fishing shallower water than normal in Inland Sea area, Bassmaster photographer Saigo Saito reported. 

"He said he has three decent ones and two that he would like to get rid of," Saito said. "Has about 16 pounds in the livewell, and he is about to leave his best spot for awhile to give the fish at this location a rest."

10:09 a.m. — Austin Felix continues to lead, according to BassTrakk. Bassmaster photographer Chase Sansom said the angler is weeding through fish to build his stringer.

"He is running through numbers of fish to get a couple good ones," Sansom reported. "Running and gunning seems to be the move for Felix, as he’s hit three or four spots since I’ve been with him. He’s running a mixture of high shoals on the main lake — all producing numbers, and a quality bite here and there. He's doing most of his damage with a wacky rig on a drop shot."

10:06 a.m. — Bassmaster's Craig Lamb has been flying a drone down in Ticonderoga, and his photos show massive beds of vegetation.

"From 400 feet and pointing camera straight down, I literally thought I was in Florida," Lamb reported. "What appears to be grass on the surface is actually 5 feet down below.

"Two emerging patterns: following grass line edges and working isolated larger spots of grass. There were at least 10 boats when I left, and none of the original arrivers from 7:30 have moved. My boat driver said of the entire Ticonderoga region that this one area has all the grass, and all the boats came here."

10 a.m. — This year's Progressive Angler of the Year race continues to exciting. Trey McKinney started today in the lead, but he's the only one of the Top 5 without a limit right now. That means Cory Johnston has moved into the unofficial lead, with McKinney slipping into second with a 10-point deficit.

Of course, there's a lot of fishing left — but it's apparent the winner of this year's AOY will not cruise to the finish line.

9:35 a.m. — So far one of the biggest stories of the morning is the amount of anglers that are focusing on the topwater bite. This is certainly a technique that we have seen play in the past, but without forward-facing sonar it appears to be making a comeback.

While photographer Shane Durrance was covering Cory Johnston, he noticed Jordan Lee scooping up a topwater fish off in the distance.

9:20 a.m. — Report from Bassmaster Photographer Shane Durrance:

Cory Johnston, who comes into this event in 2nd in Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year points, is throwing a topwater walking bait that has a very loud knocker in it. We are at least 50 yards away and we can hear the knocking from here. Johnston currently has two fish, but he did break a big one off early this morning.

He is about to make a run to a largemouth area in hopes of making a move up the standings.

9:08 a.m. — Report from Bassmaster Photographer Dalton Tumblin:

I’m the midst of trying to find Beau Browing, I ran into Dakota Ebare. So far today he’s had three bites with two of them being keepers for about 6-10 on BassTrakk. He’s keeping a Carolina rig set up in his hand, dragging it over a large area of gravel/sandy bottom. He says practice went well in his area, but no wind is definitely changing up his bite. Right now there is no wind and no current, which isn’t good for what he’s trying to do. He said if the wind could pick up, it could turn on for him.

9:00 a.m. — Two hours into Day 1, here's an update on where the Top 5 in Progressive Bassmaster AOY stand on BassTrakk.

1. Trey McKinney – 20th (8-8)
2. Cory Johnston – 35th (4-15)
3. Drew Cook – 34th (5-4)
4. Cole Sands – 12th (10-7)
5. John Garrett – 40th (3-0)

8:25 a.m. — Every time the Elites visit Lake Champlain, one of the questions that always comes up is if Ticonderoga will come to play.

Craig Lamb is down at Ticonderoga cooking up a drone gallery that will be up on Bassmaster.com shortly, and estimates at least seven boats are in the bay that he's in currently. As you can see from the drone shots above, this area of Lake Champlain features a great deal of vegetation which makes it a largemouth hot spot.

It will be very interesting to see how many anglers in the Top 10 after Day 1 of competition made the long run.

8:20 a.m. — Just before takeoff, Hunter Shryock told Bassmaster photographer Andy Crawford that he's focused on green fish — but he said a lot of others will, too.

"I put all my eggs in one basket," he said. "I didn't give myself enough options."

Shryock said his area could have a lot of competitors hitting it — but he also noted that this is Lake Champlain, which is massive.

"The lake is so big that you can spread out," he said.

8:10 a.m. — Trey McKinney has started around the North Hero island and has only boated two small ones, according to Bassmaster photographer Chase Sansom.

"I asked Trey how this week has gone, and he said, 'It’s been awful, but I’m hoping today we can put together what little bit I did figure out and have a good day.'"

8:03 am. — Anglers repeated the same phrase over and over again during interviews yesterday for the Dock Talk gallery: "Lake Champlain is different this year." Louisiana pro Greg Hackney said much of that difference has to do with the vegetation in the lake.

"The last time we were here, I think the grass was in the best shape it's ever been," Hackney said. "This year, it's the worst. The last time we were here, it was all about finding that one type of grass that held fish within all the other grass. If you figured that out, you could run a pattern: That type of grass amongst the other 10 types of grass.

"This year, (the grass) is all bad."

7:15 a.m. — Reports from practice have been a bit all over the place. We know that this tournament would look vastly different if forward-facing sonar was allowed, but it is not.

After catching up with Justin Atkins this morning at takeoff, he made the comment that "it's easy to catch 15 but hard to catch 17 pounds a day". Being consistent in a non-FFS tournament is typically more difficult, so expect plenty of flip-flopping on the leaderboard each day.

7:14a.m. — Chris Johnston has registered the first catch of the tournament on BassTrakk. A 2 pounder to start the day for the back-to-back Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year winner.

7:00 a.m. — Day 1 of the 2026 SPRO Bassmaster Elite at Lake Champlain is officially underway! To catch up on what the Elites said about practice, click here for the Dock Talk gallery.

6:45 a.m. — From Bassmaster Photographer Chase Sansom:

I got out here at takeoff pretty early so I spent the morning talking to John Cox and Jason Christie.

Cox is strictly doing the largemouth deal all with Berkley Maxscent Moeba. “I called Melissa last night and I was the verge of tears. It’s useless to throw a swim jig anymore”

Jason Christie spent two days practicing for largemouth and never ran across them but said he spent the majority of yesterday after the smallmouth and figured out a little deal to catch. I asked him where 18 pounds a day would put anglers. “I think 18 in a scope tournament would obviously put you well in the 70’s but this week without scope, 18 pounds I think will be in the 20’s if not the top 20”