PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. — Jeff Kriet didn’t plan to fish for smallmouth bass when he came to Lake Champlain this week. In previous tournaments here, he’d never earned a check catching only smallmouth bass.
So what did Kriet do on the first day of the Bassmaster Elite at Champlain presented by Dick Cepek Tires & Wheels? He weighed in 20 pounds, 4 ounces of smallmouth bass. That was good for third place in the standings, and left him less than a pound behind leader Todd Faircloth.
“I kept looking for largemouth in practice,” said the 48-year-old veteran angler from Ardmore, Okla. “I caught ‘em and caught ‘em and caught ‘em. But the biggest one I caught all week was maybe 2 ¾ pounds. So I started fishing for smallmouth a little bit, and I started catching some decent ones.
“I fished for smallmouth all day today. I probably caught 50, and I bet I had more than 15 that were over three pounds. I’m really happy with it.”
Smallmouth bass were a surprising story at Lake Champlain, where skinny, post-spawn smallies are seldom a factor this time of year. John Boyle, the B.A.S.S. employee working the “bump table” backstage, saw every one of the 539 fish weighed-in Friday and estimated the ratio of smallmouth to largemouth was 50-50.
With that said, there are still varying theories about whether you can win while concentrating on smallmouth bass now.
“There’s a time on Lake Champlain from about mid-June to the end of July that you’ve really got to target largemouth if you’re going to give yourself a chance to win,” said Alton Jones, who had all largemouth bass in his second place bag of 20-11. “The smallmouth bass in this lake for some reason go into a post-spawn funk. You can catch a lot of them, but you don’t catch big ones. Come mid to late August and September, you can win here on smallmouth.
“I predict whoever wins this tournament is going to weigh-in at least some largemouth.”
Faircloth’s first-place bag of 21-1 included four largemouths – one of them being a 6-pound, 1-ounce big bass of the day – and a single smallmouth.
“I caught both,” he said. “I spent the majority of my practice fishing for largemouth. I spent very little time fishing for smallmouth, but I was impressed with what I saw when I did, so I mixed it up.”
It seems that much of the fishery has a bit of a largemouth/smallmouth mix going on now.
“I had two largemouths and three smallmouths,” said Matt Lee, who is in seventh place with 19-0. “A couple of my areas are smallmouth spots, but you could catch a largemouth there too. The largemouth are kind of a bonus. In practice I got some largemouth bites where I thought I shouldn’t and today I did too.”
As this tournament plays out over the next two days, it will be interesting to see if one species or the other dominates. After one day, it appears to be all even.
“I think you can win with smallmouth here now, especially if it had been a four-day tournament,” said Brandon Palaniuk, who had all smallies in his 21st place bag of 18-1. “I think they’re big enough that you can catch 20, 21 pounds of smallmouth. And I think there’s a lot more smallmouth in that class (than largemouth).”