Yesterday I had a fun conversation with Buddy Gross about his first experience on the St. Lawrence River.
“I came up here thinking that I was going to be catching all smallmouth, after seeing all the guys in previous years catching 30, 40 a day and weighing 25 pounds,” he said.
Instead, Gross added that he caught nearly all largemouth. Part of that plan was by design. After failing to uncrack the smallmouth code, Gross did what he does best. He went largemouth fishing.
He is doing that now, slowly but surely climbing the BASSTrakk scoreboard and currently in 9th place. Is this a sign of good things to come? Maybe.
In recent years, the higher water during summer on the river has been good for largemouth year-class recruitment. Higher water means more nursery habitat for juvenile largemouth. And a byproduct of that is even more shallow cover for baitfish supporting the largemouth food chain. The sum of the whole is more largemouth.
Add to that the pressure received by the smallmouth population, leaving the largemouth largely ignored by anglers. Who wants to come up here and catch largemouth, when you stand a greater chance of catching a PB smallmouth?
My prediction is that largemouth will be more in play this week, than in the previous five years of Elite Series competitions here. Largemouth won’t win the tournament, but they could be the co-star of the winning bag.