Elite

A look at Lake Champlain

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Captions by
Mike Suchan
It’s up to you, New York, New York. The Bassmaster Elite Series resumes in the Empire State with back-to-back events to close the season. On the line are tournament titles, season awards, Classic berths and requalification. The drama begins to unfold Thursday when the Tackle Warehouse Bassmaster Elite at Lake Champlain launches.
Once a Great Lake, albeit only 17 days, Lake Champlain is a huge fishery on the New York/Vermont border. From north to south, it is 107 miles long, and its widest point is 14 miles across. The natural freshwater lake, which sports both trophy largemouth and smallmouth, covers 490 square miles and has a maximum depth of 400 feet.
There have been 15 previous pro B.A.S.S. events — six Elite tournaments — on Lake Champlain. The 101-man field fishes Thursday and Friday before the Top 50 move on to Semifinal Saturday. The Top 10 advance to Championship Sunday.
Lake Champlain offers quantity and quality. Anglers can pursue largemouth in shallows and smallmouth in rocky depths, or both. Winners have totaled around 80 pounds after four days, and it usually takes about 18 pounds a day to make the Top 50 cut and close to 20 a day to make Championship Sunday.
The Plattsburgh City Marina, 2 Dock St., is tournament central. Daily blastoffs are there at 7 a.m. ET with weigh-ins set for 3 p.m. ET. All B.A.S.S. events are free to attend. The Expo opens at noon Saturday and Sunday.
Kyoya Fujita won last year’s Elite on Champlain with 86 pounds, 12 ounces. After 21-5 on Day 1, Fujita landed the CrushCity Monster Bag of 23-14 on Day 2 then added 22-9 and 19-0 to top Justin Atkins by 1-6.
Fujita targeted smallmouth following baitfish in the Inland Sea with his forward-facing sonar. He was working depths from 12 to 30 feet to find the bigger smallmouth. There were 1,290 bass brought in, and they weighed close to 4,600 pounds, for an average of 3-9. The Japanese rookie’s 20 averaged just over 4-5.
Fujita’s victory was one of his four Top 10s in 2023, helping him finish seventh in the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year race and one point back of Joey Cifuentes for the Dakota Lithium Bassmaster Rookie of the Year. Despite winning the season opener on Toledo Bend, Fujita’s sophomore season hasn’t been as fruitful. He stands 40th in AOY and needs two good events to remain among the top 40 who receive berths to the 2025 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic presented by Jockey Outdoors.
Zach Goutremout, a Tackle Warehouse Elite Qualifiers pro from Chaumont, N.Y., said he thinks the tournament will pretty much follow last year’s script. “Scoping roaming fish out there chasing bait is probably how it is going to go down,” he said. “Nine times out of 10 it is going to go down in the Inland Sea. For whatever reason, it seems like the bigger fish tend to come out of there.”
Bryan Schmitt, who won the 2021 Champlain Elite, shows off a 5-1 largemouth that came in his mixed bag on Day 3 last year. Goutremout doesn’t totally discount the largemouth bite, considering the lake level is up and Mark Burgess won the B.A.S.S. Nation event there in late July with all green fish.
“Somebody might get a day or two out of some largemouth,” Goutremout said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Day 1 leader with largemouth, but I don’t think that can last four days.” There were multiple 20-pound bags of largemouth in the Nation event, mainly caught north. The historically popular largemouth area of Ticonderoga requires a long run and full-day commitment and hasn’t been a player of late.
Bass are feasting on plentiful alewives, Goutremout said, but someone, perhaps Cody Huff who took third here last year, can find something a little bit different to gain an advantage. “A lot of times if you can find the perch eaters, they tend to weigh a little more than the smallies feeding up on alewives,” Goutremout said.
The region has experienced rains of late, and mild mornings with highs in the 70s, along with a few showers, are forecast for competition days.
Winds can always become an issue. Coming from the wrong direction and building through the day can make things rough. The present forecast shows it shouldn’t get bad enough to postpone a day, which happened last year.
Classic champ Justin Hamner has a rare double at stake. He goes into Champlain leading the Angler of the Year race with 595 points. The 33-year-old is vying to become only the third angler to win the Classic and AOY in the same season.
Trey McKinney is Hamner’s closest pursuer, sitting 24 points back and working to recover from a blunder that erased his big AOY lead. Others within range include Huff, 26 back; Chris Johnston and Jacob Foutz, both 39 back; John Garrett, 42 behind; Jay Przekurat, 46 back; and rookie JT Thompkins, 48 back. McKinney has an 18-point advantage on Garrett for the ROY.
Classic champs Hank Cherry and Jeff Gustafson are among the anglers outside Classic qualification hoping to climb and break that bubble. Also, a number of anglers need to do well to requalify for the 2025 Elites. After Champlain, the Elites head to Waddington, N.Y., for the season-ending Humminbird Bassmaster Elite at St. Lawrence River. The winner will take the $100,000 first-place check and an automatic berth to the Classic on Lake Ray Roberts out Fort Worth, Texas.
Bassmaster LIVE kicks off tournament coverage Thursday and Friday mornings at 8 a.m. ET on Bassmaster.com, while FS1 will broadcast live with the tournament leaders Saturday and Sunday.

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