Day 1 of the Minn Kota Bassmaster Elite at St. Lawrence River was record-setting. Rookie Bryant Smith brought in the heaviest limit of smallmouth in B.A.S.S. competition history, weighing 29 pounds, 5 ounces. The day brought with it grueling conditions. Stiff 20-mph winds built huge 6-foot-tall waves that scared many an angler off the lake.
Half the field however still dared to venture out into it. Whether the prize was worth the pain is dependent on who you ask, but the results we saw were astonishing. Just 2 ounces shy of a 5-pound average was good enough for 10th. That’s 24 pounds, 14 ounces of smallmouth for 10th place, nearly 4 and ½ pounds off the lead.
Let’s look at the numbers we gathered through BassTrakk, our on-the-water LIVE leaderboard system, to see if we can identify the best bite windows of the day.
There were 552 bass logged into BassTrakk on Day 1, a lighter number than we’re used to seeing in an Elite. That can likely be attributed to one of a few variables. For one, it’s not a numbers game on the St. Lawrence River or Lake Ontario. The bites are few, but they are big.
And, with the adverse conditions, navigating the waves took a while. Several anglers forfeited half their day of fishing in order to make the 4-hour roundtrip run out and back in. All this in addition to the limited number of marshals, the lack of cell service on the lake, and the inherent challenges afforded to anglers who chose not to try to enter their own catches whilst battling wind, waves, and giant smallmouth. So, we can reason pretty easily as to why the total numbers were a little lower.
Here’s the breakdown of the 552 catches we did have reported by time of day.
| Day 1 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 39 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 89 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 69 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 106 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 53 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 69 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 65 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 48 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 14 |
| Total | 552 |
The low numbers in the first hour and the last two hours make sense when considering long run times. One interesting bite window came between 10 and 11 a.m., when nearly a fifth of the day’s total catches came. Not sure what happened there, but it will be interesting to see (once we get the numbers in later today) if this same window was as active on Day 2.
Let’s look at when the bigger bass were caught, those over 4 pounds. There were 175 bass logged into BassTrakk in this range. Here they are by size.
| | Day 1 |
| 4-pounders | 132 |
| 5-pounders | 38 |
| 6-pounders | 5 |
And here’s the breakdown of those better fish by time of day.
| Day 1 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 15 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 24 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 18 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 31 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 16 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 19 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 25 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 21 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 6 |
| Total | 175 |
One of the best big-bite windows came between 8 and 9 a.m., when all the anglers had finally settled in on their starting spots. Then the 10- to 11- a.m. window was again the best of the day. But there was also a strong big-bite window for two hours late in the day, betweem 1 and 2 p.m. These late culls were critical on Day 1, and we’ll likely see this same thing unfold today, as anglers fish until the last possible second. For 52 Elite Pros, today is the last day of their 2023 season, as only the Top 50 will continue on tomorrow.
