How many follow professional Bass Fishing?

I have tried and tried to like the MLF events and just can’t get into it. I really like the coverage that BASS offers. But that’s just me.

If MLF can’t get their owner to enforce their rules and covering up cheating scandals, that league will never be taken seriously. It’s funny how every an angler that isn’t on the MLF get’s asked about Boyd Duckett they always say, “I don’t know how anyone could work for that guy.” Basically sounds like he’s a huge swindler.

Seth Feider and Mark Zona both made it well known in recent podcasts. I posted Seth’s earlier in this thread.

Off and running on St. Larry. Leader is pushing 23lbs already!

Joe Jarl wrote:

Off and running on St. Larry. Leader is pushing 23lbs already!

This one is going to be fun. There is going to be lots of Big bags weighed in. My guess is there will be several fishermen end up with over 100 Lbs. If the weather does not force them off the big lake areas. It just crazy to watch low long some of these guts fight a fish. That tells me two things. These SM are crazy powerful and they are fishing some really light lines. Always one of my favorite locations to watch them fish.

Last year at this location there were several weights over 100 pounds for 4 days. That’s why its the top ranked smallmouth location in the country right now.

I will have to say that I am a little disappointed in the online coverage ( or more the lack of it ) this season. I think they had a deal with FS1 to have them cover parts of it from time to time and they would turn off the online coverage during those times. I think they also cut back on the # of hours they had live coverage for each event. I for one prefer watching it online. Even when I’m home and have a TV to watch. I think far more people have internet than those with cable TV

fishthumper wrote:

I will have to say that I am a little disappointed in the online coverage ( or more the lack of it ) this season. I think they had a deal with FS1 to have them cover parts of it from time to time and they would turn off the online coverage during those times. I think they also cut back on the # of hours they had live coverage for each event. I for one prefer watching it online. Even when I’m home and have a TV to watch. I think far more people have internet than those with cable TV

It’s a 1 hour break each day with no commentary. I’m fine with that (actually don’t mind a little break from Zona). They still have live coverage on the anglers during that break and they also have the Live Mix. Not sure what more you want for free.

I don’t think there will be over 100 lbs this year. Last year was absolutely perfect weather for that to happen and even then it took over 28 lbs for Cory J on day 4 to barely get to 100 and finish 2nd.

It’s fun so watch the AOY and ROY chase too as the leaders are doing great today already.

blank wrote:

It’s a 1 hour break each day with no commentary.

Some of the ones I watch have had longer breaks than 1 hr. I believe. I don’t think they can have online coverage when its live on FS1. The amount of coverage they have on FS1 seems to be different each event.

Jay Pzrekurat is currently in third with 23 pounds, 4 ounces. That guy is a smallmouth fishing machine.

gimruis wrote:

Jay Pzrekurat is currently in third with 23 pounds, 4 ounces. That guy is a smallmouth fishing machine.

Fix it. Winning ROY last year (finished 10th in AOY) and in the top 4 at the start of this event. Not just a smallmouth guy.

blank wrote:

and in the top 4 at the start of this event

Good call. I didn’t realize he was that high in the season points. He’s now listed as 3rd in AOY.

Great event. Some local guys doing well. Some others need to get going to make top 50 cut.
Przekurat current showing in 7th
Josh Douglas in 114th
Downey in 15th
Felix in 55th
Feider 59th

Really cool that the top 4 in AOY are currently showing in the top 10. Going to be a battle to the end for AOY.

Sure would be nice to see Douglas rebound and have a nice finish after his troubles last week. Unless he can pull out the Win, not likely we will see him fishing the BASSmasters next season.

Not sure what is up with Seth Feider this season. He’s just been off all year. Even on the Smallmouth waters. Hopefully just a off year for him.

fishthumper wrote:

Not sure what is up with Seth Feider this season. He’s just been off all year. Even on the Smallmouth waters. Hopefully just a off year for him.

He was in 14th for AOY heading into the “northern swing” at Lake St Claire last month. Two relatively poor finishes at smallmouth waters have sent him to 40-something place now. That is very unusual for him being that smallmouth are his specialty.

Weigh in kicks off with a 28-3 bag. The first 5 bags all weighed over 22 lbs. Crazy weights.

Someone just weighted a bag of 29 pounds, 9 ounces. Its the single biggest bag of smallmouth ever weighed on the Elites.

Looks like Ike hasn’t changed. He only weighed in 17 pounds, just turned and walked off the stage and wouldn’t even talk to Mercer. SMH….

Ford Guy 1 wrote:

Looks like Ike hasn’t changed. He only weighed in 17 pounds, just turned and walked off the stage and wouldn’t even talk to Mercer. SMH….

Lol he’s a dip chit

Well, I may be wrong that there won’t be any 100 lb totals with the top 10 all 25 lbs plus (24-14 is close enough).
You can never take too much stock in BassTrakk, but especially this event. Walters and Ito were shown in 24th and 34th place respectively but ended up in the official top 10.

WOW.5 Bags over 25 Lbs. and 48 over 20.A fair amount of guys are on pace or close to pace to hit 100 Lbs. Most feel the weights will most likely improve tomorrow when the weather conditions are better. Going to be interesting to see what it takes to win this thing. But knowing SM. some of the guys who found them today may struggle tomorrow. and there will be some who struggled today who will catch them much better tomorrow. That’s the fun part about SM fishing.

Fishing seems to be a little slower today despite the wind conditions being much better for the guys to get out onto the lake.

blank wrote:

Fishing seems to be a little slower today despite the wind conditions being much better for the guys to get out onto the lake.

Yes it does. Wind direction change always seems to cause the SM bite to fall off. Still plenty of fishing time but I think the overall # of 25lb. + bags will be down. Still think there will be several on pace or near pace for the 100 Lb. mark.

Some pretty good shuffling of the leaderboard today!

Joe Jarl wrote:

Some pretty good shuffling of the leaderboard today!

That’s the norm in these SM tourneys. I think some of the fishermen didn’t want to chance that run to the big lake with the winds yesterday. I think they thought they could catch them good enough in the river to still be close. The weights in the river were just lower than some thought.

fishthumper wrote:

Not sure what is up with Seth Feider this season. He’s just been off all year. Even on the Smallmouth waters. Hopefully just a off year for him.

Not trying to act like I am anywhere near the same, but after doing local tournaments for the past 5 or so years, it amazes me when guys are consistently finishing in the top 20 of tournaments year after year in the elites. Fishing is something you where can have all the intel, all the gear, and all the skill, but if things don’t line up right, you get your butt kicked.

That’s what I think is going on with Seth this year. He’s had no luck, and just can’t seem to get the bigs to bite. It’s crazy to me how some guys are so good that they can almost always get big bites consistently.

What a great tourney to end the season. 4 People hit the 100 Lb. mark and one just missed it by a few ounces. Kind of a bummer that Welcher had boat issues on the final day. I think he may have had a good shot at the win if he had a full day of fishing time. Great to see him win the AOY title. He seems like a great guy. Also really cool to see 2 rookies end up in the top 10 of the AOY standings. These young fishermen are getting to the Big show with all the skills they need to compete right away for wins.

They surprised me by continuing to catch 5lb average limits over the course of 4 days.
The rookie field was very impressive this season. 4 of the 9 events were won by rookies, while Gerald Swindle has won 2 AOY titles and hasn’t won a single event in his career. Crazy.
Also really impressive how well the Japanese anglers are with smallmouth fishing. The finesse fishing they practice in Japan certainly appears to transfer over very well to the smallmouth here.

Another fun fact. In the last 5 years none of the AOY winners won a individual event in the year they won the AOY. That seemed a little strange to me, but its about consistency not just doing well at one or two events.

Although the Elite Series is over, the Bassmaster Opens Elite Qualifier still has three more tournaments to go. Snatcher Tuma is right on pace.

I still can’t quite figure out why they completely removed the AOY tournament that they always had in September. They had it twice on Mille Lacs in 2015 and 2016 and then a couple more years after that and then just stopped doing it. It was the top half of the field for a 3 day event. Weird

I can only speculate but maybe the anlgers didn’t really like the event being half the field included with nearly all of them already qualified for the classic which most of them put as their annual goal, less payout, but all the same expenses of traveling. To me it didn’t really make much sense to have the event other than to provide a last ditch effort for someone to qualify for the classic or win AOY, so probably only a dozen anglers who even cared about it.