Justin Lucas Wins MLF-PBT Sturgeon Bay

Justin Lucas arrived in Wisconsin last week looking for a second straight Bass Pro Tour top-10 finish that would put him in next year's Redcrest Championship. He left with not only that berth in hand, but also a big trophy and the first-place paycheck after pillaging Sturgeon Bay smallmouth to the tune of 105 pounds per day. He set new BPT standards for single-day weight (141-09), two-day weight (205-06) and Championship Round weight (110-05). He won his qualifying group by a 45-pound margin en route to his first tour-level victory since the Potomac River Bassmaster Elite Series in 2016. When his initial idea about where to fish on the expanded venue that included a big portion of Lake Michigan didn't pan out on the first of two practice days, he fell back on some research he'd done on the fishery. That homework paid off in a big way.

"I'd read an article that said that 8,000 or 9,000 smallmouth spawn in Little Sturgeon Bay and I knew they weren't that far done from spawning," he said. "That got me thinking about where they'd be going in the big bay before heading out to the main lake (where they'll spend the summer). "I started looking at my graphs in 12 to 16 feet of water and started finding isolated clumps of grass on a flat. I was sure they'd spawned on the flat and they were using the grass while they were moving from there back to the lake. There was a lot of grass out there, but I was looking for areas with less grass - that's where they had to be. I didn't want to go through vast amounts of it trying to find them." He put waypoints on approximately 50 locations and ended up using 15 to 20 of them during the event. Fortunately, none of the other 79 competitors appeared to be keyed in on the same stuff.

He caught a personal-best 6-07 bronzeback during practice. That fish was almost a pound heavier than any weighed in during the tournament. "There just wasn't a ton of big ones biting, and the other thing was they were post-spawn and not super-fat. They don't weigh as much right now as they will in a month or as they did a month ago."

Saved Best for Last:

Lucas didn't even have to fish his best grass until the Championship Round. He spent the first two days exploiting a nearby rocky point that was also loaded up. "I could see all that other water from there and no one was fishing it," he said. "That made me even more confident because I could beat up an obvious spot to qualify for the Championship Round. I didn't know what anybody in the other group was doing, but no one in my group was touching the stuff I really wanted to fish." The grass-oriented fish that he caught in the finals were usually gathered in groups of 10 or less, but there could be a bunch if there were multiple clumps of vegetation within the same small area. He'd make pitches in any direction, but kept them short because he wanted the ability to reel in quickly if he saw on his graph that one had swam underneath his boat. He caught all 109 fish that he weighed during the event on a dropshot rig with a Berkley MaxScent Flat Worm. He made a single cast with another bait, but immediately put it down and went back to his mainstay.

He didn't have to manipulate the bait at all Ð there was plenty of wind-generated current to do that. He'd let it sit for 15 to 20 seconds before reeling in for another toss. He noted that all three of his tour-level victories have occurred in the shadow of a giant body of water - the Pacific Ocean (California Delta), Atlantic Ocean (Potomac River) and now a Great Lake. "You just don't get the opportunity to win very often. I thought I had a chance at the last one (he was 4th at Heavy Hitters on Florida's Kissimmee Chain), but then Jordan (Lee) ran away with it. It's just nice to get one of these red trophies that he's got two of."

Winning Gear:

Dropshot gear: 7' medium-action Abu Garcia Fantasista Premier rod, size 30 Abu Garcia Revo Premier spinning reel, 8-pound Berkley x5 Braid (main line), 8-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon (8' leader), size 2 Berkley Fusion 19 dropshot hook, 3/8-ounce teardrop-shape tungsten dropshot weight, Berkley MaxScent Flat Worm (green-pumpkin, black or smoke purple/black flake).

He tied his hook about 14 inches above the weight.

MLF/PBT Tour Sturgeon Bay Winning Pattern - BassFan 7/17/20 (John Johnson)

Mark Daniels Jr. caught more than 100 pounds in the Championship Round and made a valiant attempt to chase down Lucas at the end of the day. He was the winner of the previous day's Knockout Round, which he barely qualified for - he was the 20th-place finisher in Group A with a two-day total that was almost 130 pounds less than Lucas compiled. He had little confidence entering the Knockout Round and almost opted not to check on a place where he'd found fish during practice, but had been barren on each of the handful of times he'd visited it during the tournament. "I rolled over and it seemed like every bass in the lake was magically there," he said. "They'd decided to come back. Their timing was perfect."

The place was a large shoal on the bay side of the Door Peninsula. "I stayed on the outside of the shoal and casted to the top," he said. "The school would bust up a little bit after a while and then I'd pick off individuals using (Garmin Panoptix) LiveScope." Almost all of his fish bit a Ned-rigged Z-Man Finesse TRD.

"There was so much natural current due to the wind that I didn't have to work the bait - if I worked it, I wouldn't get bit. Letting the natural current wash it over the top of the shoal was the best presentation. "Just trusting my electronics and trusting my gut was the biggest thing for me. I knew that I'd found fish in several places and I had to have faith to go back and revisit them."

Gear:

Ned rig gear: 6'8" medium-action Favorite Fishing Hex rod, 3000-size Platinum spinning reel, 15-pound Seaguar Smackdown flash green braid (main line), 8-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon (7' leader), 1/5-ounce Z-Man Finesse ShroomZ jighead (green-pumpkin), 2.75" Z-Man Finesse TRD (green-pumpkin or green-pumpkin goby).

FLW Tour Lake Guntersville 2-5 Patterns - BassFan 7/20/20 (John Jonson)

Josh Bertrand hails from Arizona, a state that's not exactly a smallmouth mecca, but he's developed a reputation as one of the top brown fish-catchers in the game. His record backs that up, as it includes a win at the St. Lawrence River and a bunch of high finishes on that venue and several other northern smallmouth fisheries from his tenure on the Bassmaster Elite Series. He practiced on both sides of the peninsula for this event in an attempt to ensure he'd have fishable water no matter what the wind did. He stayed on the bay side during competition days.

"I figured if I found 10 places, three would likely be good in the tournament," he said. "I ended up having five that were good when I thought I had 20. "There was a lot of baitfish present where I found groups (of smallmouth), so that's something I was looking for - it was really critical. I knew to stick with the dropshot. I had so much confidence in the technique and the bait (a Berkley MaxScent Flat Worm) that all I had to worry about was finding areas to fish." He pulled smallmouth from rocky places at depths that ranged from 14 to 28 feet.

"They were big pieces of structure - the side of a reef or the point of a reef or an island. A couple of places had one key boulder that I might catch five fish off of. It wasn't super-specific, but again, having bait around was important. "(Garmin) LiveScope was the biggest key for me. I'd see individual fish, or even better I'd see multiples and a lot of times I was throwing into a little wad of them. I didn't have places where there was a school of 100, but it wasn't uncommon to pull up and see six and catch two or three of them. The others would be like, 'Uh, no. Something's up.'"

Gear:

Dropshot gear: 7' medium-action Abu Garcia Fantasista Premier rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier spinning reel (size 30), 8-pound Berkley x5 braid (main line), 6-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon (8' leader), size 1 Berkley Fusion 19 dropshot hook, 1/2-ounce tungsten weight (round), Berkley MaxScent Flat Worm (black, green-pumpkin or brown back).

FLW Tour Lake Guntersville 2-5 Patterns - BassFan 7/20/20 (John Jonson)

Jordan Lee, the winner of the previous BPT event (Heavy Hitters at Florida's Kissimmee Chain), notched his fourth appearance in the Championship Round out of five events on the season. He clinched the Angler of Year title by advancing to the finals - he was the only competitor of the top 17 on the points list prior to the derby to achieve that feat. He was the third member of the top 4 in the final standings to do all of his damage with a dropshot-rigged Berkley MaxScent Flat Worm.

"The main thing for me was just moving around a lot and not staying in one spot too long," he said. "The fish would bite if you were around them and a couple of days I ran into them just by moving. There were certain areas where they moved more than others and I was in one where they were constantly moving - they were really affected by the wind currents and all that." He spent the tournament in the Sister Bay vicinity. A lot of his fish came from the 17- to 20-foot depth range but there were a couple of days when the bulk came from much shallower water. For instance, he couldn't get a bite or mark a fish from his deep stuff on the latter day of his Qualifying Round, but he found hundreds swimming around on a shoal that he sight-fished.

In the Knockout Round, he pillaged a flat with a little bit of grass that had fish in the 7-foot range to rack up 94 pounds. "That was one of the best days of smallmouth fishing I've ever had for numbers and size," he said. "Then we had a weather delay for two hours and I go back out and there's not a bass anywhere. It was crazy to see how much they moved."

Gear:

Dropshot gear: 7' medium-action Abu Garcia Fantasista Premier rod, Abu Garcia Revo Premier MGX spinning reel (size 30), 8-pound Berkley x5 braid (main line), 8-pound Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon (15' leader), size 1 Berkley Fusion 19 dropshot hook, 5/16- or 3/8-ounce tungsten weight (teardrop), Berkley MaxScent Flat Worm (green-pumpkin and various other colors).

"The color of the bait did not matter," he said. "I threw whatever I could get my hands on."

FLW Tour Lake Guntersville 2-5 Patterns - BassFan 7/20/20 (John Jonson)

Alton Jones likely has more experience on Sturgeon Bay than anyone in the BPT field. "I've fished a Bassmaster post-season event and an AOY Championship there, but even before that, it's a place I'd come to on my own if I was stuck up north with a week between tournaments," he said. "I've probably got 40 to 50 days on the water. "Anytime you've spent that much time playing around on a place, you learn a lot about it. And you're not hunkered down on fish like you are in a tournament, you're just exploring. When I found out this event had been diverted (from its original site at Lake Champlain due to coronavirus restrictions in New York), I was super-excited and hopeful. I knew that if I covered enough water that at some time I'd intersect a bunch of fish."

He caught the bulk of his weight from 8 to 12 feet of water, but some were swimming as shallow as 4 feet. He worked completely different areas on each of his first three competition days and was happy to discover that his fish from the Knockout Round stayed put for the finals. He caught most of his fish on a dropshot rig, but a tube was also a big player. "I alternated them - I could tell on Panoptix whether a fish was hot for a bait or not and if it didn't hit one, I'd try the other. Some would fire on one or the other and some wouldn't fire at all.

"I wouldn't make a cast unless I saw fish (on the graph). I put myself in target-rich environments and they wouldn't all bite, but some would." He said his wife, Jimmye Sue, played a big role in his success. "She's been my partner in everything I've done in this sport for the last 31 years," he said. "She makes all the reservations and launches me every day, and that's really important at a place like this where I'm putting in and taking out at multiple locations in the same day."

Gear:

Dropshot gear: 7' medium-action Kistler Helium 2 rod, unnamed spinning reel, 15-pound Seaguar Smackdown braid (main line), 8-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon leader material, size 1 dropshot hook, 3/16-ounce weight, various goby-imitating baits.

He used a 6'9" version of the same rod for the tube.

FLW Tour Lake Guntersville 2-5 Patterns - BassFan 7/20/20 (John Johnson)