Despite landing a Top 10 bag on Day 1 of the St. Croix Bassmaster Elite at Pasquotank River/Albemarle Sound, Brandon Lester is having trouble getting a gauge on what stage of the spawn the majority of the bass are in.
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Lester said after landing 17 pounds, 7 ounces Thursday.
It’s a tough puzzle to piece together, considering how many factors are at play this week in eastern North Carolina. Wind, fronts, storms, dramatic changes in air and water temperatures, and a full moon on Saturday are all determining where the bass want to be.
With such a massive playing field, what the bass may be doing in one river may not be the case in another.
Prior to and during the first part of practice, air temperatures were well above average and the water temperatures rose to about or over 70 degrees in a lot of sections, which likely sent plenty of bass to the bank to begin their spawn.
“A lot of the ones you catch look like they spawned a month ago,” Lester said. “I’m sure there are still some left to spawn, but I feel very confident that some have already done their thing.”
Then, a cold front pushed through during practice, tanking both air and water temperatures. The nighttime lows dipped below freezing. Virginia pro Jacob Powroznik, and a frequent fisher of the Albemarle Sound, said the water temperatures went from over 70 degrees to 59 degrees in the areas he’s focused on this week.
“That is shell shock to those bass who are trying to get up there and spawn,” he explained. “The males will stay there usually, which you can tell based on what we are weighing in, and the females will just back off and not bite.”
To Powroznik’s point, 71 limits were caught on Day 1 of this tournament and the majority of those limits weighed between 9 and 14 pounds.
Anglers like Day 1 leader Kyle Welcher (30-11) and second-place Easton Fothergill (23-13) were able to land some of the prespawn females. Welcher in particular caught four females over 6 pounds to take control of the tournament, while Fothergill landed a mix of pre and postspawners.
Fothergill was planning on power fishing the entirety of Day 1, and he saw plenty of bass in “the dirt” trying to make beds or already guarding nests in practice. When he started the tournament Thursday, some of those beds were on dry land and others were close to it.
While not a traditional tidal fishery that experiences daily, timable fluctuations, the rivers in the Albemarle Sound can drop and rise unpredictably. The changes in levels this week are likely wind-driven.
Alabama’s Justin Hamner is fishing a river closer to the Atlantic Ocean. In practice, he found milfoil beds that were in the water and fully expected those to play come tournament time. When he arrived, that grass was no longer in the water and he scrambled to find a viable pattern. Luckily for the 2024 Bassmaster Classic champion, he did and found himself in 14th with 16-6.
Similarly to Powroznik, the water temperature also dropped tremendously in his area, but the result of both drops may lead to an awesome Day 2 performance. On Day 1, he would get the attention of the bass with a spinnerbait or jerkbait and then catch them with a Netbait Hextek Eko Craw.
“I figured it out today, but only had about two hours,” Hamner said. “The water has dropped two feet and the water temperature has dropped 15 degrees. But if I have more time I think I can do really good. I found, like, actual schools of them. A 5-pounder was my biggest one and it was in a school of seven. I think they are pre and post-spawners.
“They are running with stripers and chasing shad.”
To highlight just how good of a general fishery the Albemarle Sound is, Hamner has caught five different species of fish this week.
“I’ve caught redfish, stripers, two things that I still don’t know what they are and I caught a mudfish today,” Hamner said.
More condition changes are expected throughout the tournament. Thunderstorms will overspread the area on Day 2, bringing with it more rain, wind and a colder air temperature for Day 3. Winds will shift from the south, southeast and blow out of the north and northwest the final two days of the tournament.
Big bass are present, it is just a matter of putting the correct ingredients together.
Quotes of Day 1
Brock Mosley: “Off the water, the people are super nice and helpful. They are excited about us being here. There aren’t many venues where people still get really excited about us being there. These people are super friendly, and it has been a really fun time. It is a super cool town.
Keith Combs: “The map doesn’t do this place justice. I live on Rayburn, which is the biggest lake in the state of Texas. The big river arm, the Angelina River, is the size of (just) the Pasquotank River. That is just one of eight rivers on the Sound.”
Drew Benton: “This place is not a stereotypical river. It is a giant body of water with some lakes off of it that turn into rivers at the very back of them. I ran 70 miles or so down to the Chowan. It got really rough, and I questioned if I should be going.”
Jacob Foutz, when asked if he was using FFS this week: “No, I don’t even have a front graph on my boat this week. I’m an OG bank beater. That’s how I grew up fishing, and I still love to do it. I took the front graph off this morning to make the run and never put it back on.”
