Since Seth Feider has won on the Great Lakes’ top smallmouth fishery, it’d be a good bet he’s excited about his chances in next week’s AFTCO Bassmaster Elite at Lake St. Clair.
He’s not.
Apprehensive is more like it.
“I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never been there before August,” the pro from New Market, Minn., said. “It’s a little earlier, and you really don’t have a lot of options – 15 to 20 foot of water, drift around aimlessly.”
There’s the rub. Running into the right smallmouth on St. Clair is hit and miss, perhaps requiring more good fortune than knowledge. Although he won the Angler of the Year Championship in 2019, Feider noted that Elite Series winners on St. Clair have been southern pros known more for largemouth.
“No disrespect to anybody,” Feider said, “but you see guys like Jason Christie, Bill Weidler, win on St. Clair because you don’t need to know … Sooch, you could go catch them on St. Clair.”
C’mon Seth, is it really that easy?
“It can be,” he said. “I’ll make it harder on myself than it needs to be, but yeah.
“You can know absolutely nothing about smallmouth and catch them on St. Clair. If you just drove out in the middle of the lake and threw a drop shot and just drifted for hours, you would catch smallmouth bass.”
But could you find the winning weight?
“Probably not. That’s the hard thing,” he said. “It’s almost like Florida, a get lucky thing.”
Feider has long been known to fear the fickle Florida waters, saying he could have the sun shine on him for a Top 10 as easily as being thrown shade for a bottom 10.
St. Clair will be a typical smallmouth tournament in that there will be lots of catches and tight weights, Feider said, but he has no clue how he’ll fare. With every competitor able, he said you might do better blind picking the leaders than looking at past finishes and smallmouth acumen.
“It’s exactly the same as fishing in Florida — draw names out of hat, there’s your Top 10,” he said. “Name another smallmouth place that Jason Christie is going to win on. I believe he’s won two events there.
“He’s a good fisherman, but I’m just saying that it makes sense he wins on St. Clair. If he won on St. Lawrence, my head would explode. St. Lawrence is smallmouth fishery. St. Clair, I don’t know what you call it — it’s the Florida of smallmouth.”
In 2020, Weidler stumbled across the winning spot in Anchor Bay. Although he had practiced in the area, Weidler said he got cold on his Day 1 run and stopped to warm up. He began drifting and catching. He topped 20 pounds each day for a total of 86-7, holding off smallmouth expert Cory Johnston by 8 ounces.
Feider said he’d prefer a more difficult smallmouth venue as he pursues a fourth B.A.S.S. title and his seventh consecutive Classic berth. After his slow start in Florida, Feider has slowly climbed into Classic contention. Behind a 10th at Lay Lake and a 29th at the Sabine River, he’s jumped inside the cut at 29th in points.
Yet the easy pickings at St. Clair have him concerned. That’s in part why it ranks seventh in this year’s Bassmaster Magazine’s Best Bass Lakes — it’s the premier fishing destination on the Great Lakes. Half the fishing effort on the system is on St. Clair, and it’s estimated that more than 100,000 smallmouth are caught there each year.
“I can see that,” Feider said. “It’s easy fishing. It never gets that rough. You got a lot of states with big populations around. Everyone from Chicago goes there, everyone from St. Louis.
“They all go there in the spring and just line up and beat the hell out of the bed fish. And they think that’s smallmouth fishing. That ain’t smallmouth fishing.”
Yeah, not to a northern pro who cut his teeth on places like Mille Lacs, where in 2016 he averaged almost 26 pounds a day to win the three-day Angler of the Year Championship. Feider doubled up on AOY Championships at St. Clair on Oct. 1, 2019, even admitting he got lucky on Day 1.
With rough water preventing him from running to a big school, he found himself alone in a community hole, where he caught the Phoenix Boats Big Bass of 6-12 in the VMC Monster Bag of 26-12. At his school the next two days, Feider caught fish after fish for 24-13 and 26-6, giving him 77-15.
“It was the only time I’ve found them on a specific place on that lake in my life,” he said. “Usually, it’s like a half-mile zone.”
The field might be more evened out with the advent of forward-facing sonar, where anglers can cast to specific fish. Feider was among the few who didn’t have it the last time at St. Clair in 2020, yet he finished 25th. In other St. Clair Elites, he was 26th in the 2017 and 52nd in 2015.
In both of Feider’s AOY Championship wins, he was on pace to eclipse 100 pounds with smallmouth if it were a four-day event. That happened for the first time last year at the St. Lawrence River, when rookie Jay Przekurat and Cory Johnston both earned Century Belts.
Feider said he does not think the 100-pound mark will be achieved in any of the final three events, which would break a four-year stretch of at least one where the mark was attained. Last year there were three.
“I wouldn’t think so,” he said. “I haven’t been checking tournament results, but just in general at this time of year, we won’t get those weights. They’re in there. Maybe somebody will figure it out, but I can see like 21 pounds a day winning.”
Last November, the first double-digit Great Lakes smallmouth was caught in Lake Erie, inside tournament boundaries for this tournament. Grant Gallagher put his dad, Gregg, on a 10.15-pounder, showing the potential for game changers.
“That was kind of a freak,” said Feider, hoping that entices some to run in hopes of finding monster smallmouth. “The more who go to Erie and Huron, the less they’ll be on St. Clair.
“We’ll for sure see a couple over 6 … Some guy from Florida will catch a 7-pounder.”
After St. Clair, the Elites head to New York to finish the season, starting on Lake Champlain. The season finale is at the St. Lawrence River, where Feider doesn’t think conditions will produce another 100-pound event.
“Doubtful,” he said. “That last time, you had four glass-calm days. That just doesn’t exist. Odds of that happening two times in a row, it’s zero to none.”
But he said picking the top finishers will be easier than this week, where there’s a lot on the line. Besides the title, the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year and Dakota Lithium Bassmaster Rookie of the Year races could jumble while Classic hopes will rise and fall.
It’s just too hard, or easy, of a fishery to predict.
“You can damn near name the Top 10 for St. Lawrence,” Feider said. “Good luck picking the Top 10 for St. Clair.”
