There’s nothing Jay Przekurat loves doing more than catching big smallmouth bass, and this week at Lake St. Clair the 25-year-old utilized a methodical approach to catch some of the most meaningful brown fish of his career.
With a three-day total of 75 pounds, 5 ounces, Przekurat claimed the title at the St. Croix Bassmaster Open at Lake St. Clair presented by SEVIIN, his first Opens victory as a boater. His quickly growing resume includes two Opens victories as a co-angler, an Elite Series title at the St. Lawrence River in 2022 and 2022 Elite Series Rookie of the Year honors.
Opening the tournament in fourth place with 24-3, the Plover, Wis., pro jumped to second on Day 2 with 25-1 before landing 26-1 in the final round. All three limits were personal bests on the famed fishery.
“I had to stay on a 25-pound average on St. Clair. That is almost unheard of in the month of July right after the spawn,” Przekurat said. “A lot of hard work and preparation came together. All of the lost fish I was thinking about, I don’t have to think about anymore.
“I was doing my favorite thing, catching giant smallmouth.”
Given he fishes the final two Division III events at Leech Lake and the Upper Mississippi River, another body of water he is very familiar with, Przekurat will earn an automatic bid to the 2025 Bassmaster Classic.
Currently in seventh place in Progressive Angler of the Year standings, Przekurat will have the freedom to take some risks at the final two Elite Series events in search of his first AOY title.
“Now I feel like I can shoot for it in the Elite Series,” he said. “It relieves some stress.”
Michigan’s Aaron Jagdfeld moved into second with a total of 71-12 followed by Canadian Jamie Bruce in third with 71-10. Trevor McKinney, who led Days 1 and 2, fell to fourth with 71-8. With calm, sunny conditions prevailing, the entire Top 10 caught bags weighing more than 21 pounds on the final day of competition, an exclamation point on a phenomenal week of fishing that saw 412 limits achieved across three days.
Throughout the tournament, the former Elite Series Rookie of the Year focused on several specific quarter-mile stretches of Anchor Bay. Those stretches featured a hard sand bottom with sparse grass. His best areas needed to have both of those ingredients, but the majority of his smallies were caught off a clean bottom.
He also recognized that if he found a group of three smallmouth together, they would almost always be better-than-average-sized bass and he could get one of them to bite easier than the single bass he saw. Garmin LiveScope was essential in finding these groups of bass.
“If I could find one in a group of three, it would usually be a bigger one,” Przekurat explained. “I did catch some big ones that were by themselves too, but I could almost call my shots if it was a group of three. They’d all chase it, and they’d all look big.”
While other anglers raced around on their trolling motor looking for smallmouth across the bay, Przekurat instead slowed down in his best stretches and refished them multiple times a day.
“A lot of guys were saying, ‘Oh, you can put the trolling motor down and go wherever you want,’ but it wasn’t really like that,” he explained. “You were going to catch fish, don’t get me wrong, but you weren’t going to catch better-than-average-sized fish consistently. I had three sections and ran them the entire day. I would sit in one spot for a couple hours and then another one a couple hours.”
During practice and the first day of the tournament, an Arkansas shiner-colored Strike King Baby Z Too rigged on a drop shot with a ⅜-ounce Woo Tungsten weight was Przekurat’s bait of choice. Because of how many short strikes he received, he threaded the bait onto his hook.
As the tournament progressed, he began rigging the Baby Z Too on a ¼-ounce jighead and feathered the bait over the smallmouth. The slower he could let the bait move to the bass and keep it over their heads, the better, Przekurat said. Some of the bass Przekurat saw would follow the bait for 30 seconds.
“When I made the key adjustment to put it on a jighead instead of a drop shot is when the lightbulb clicked on,” Przekurat said. “I could go through the same areas and get the fish to move. The key was to go as slow as you could go and getting the fish’s attention. Maybe pick up the pace if it picks up the pace. I was matching the pace of the fish.
“Most of the time, it was slow and steady, keep the bait coming and I would feel a tick. That’s when it would either engulf it or eat about a quarter of the Baby Z Too.”
After losing more than 20 pounds worth of bass on the second day, Przekurat landed four bass on the final day that weighed more than 5 pounds. His biggest came late in the day as the pleasure boat traffic began to pick up. Being able to forget about the bass he didn’t land and moving onto the next bite was critical.
“So many people lost fish this week,” he said. “I don’t know what the deal was, but just staying in the game was important. One minute you would lose a 5 (pounder), but you know there are 4,000 of them swimming out here ready to be caught.”
In his first Open, Jagdfeld landed bags of 24-4, 25-0 and 22-8 to finish in the runner-up position. The recent Adrian College graduate calls St. Clair home and will be competing in the College Classic Bracket later this year with teammate Elliot Wielgopolski after winning the Legends Trail of the Strike King Bassmaster College Series presented by Bass Pro Shops.
“It’s been an incredible experience. A lot of these guys I was watching on Bassmaster LIVE two weeks ago wanting to be in their position,” he said. “Being able to fish against them in the Opens is really cool.”
Every morning of the tournament, Jagdfeld made the run to Canadian waters and targeted a school of smallmouth in 19 to 24 feet of water. While there was cabbage grass around, the majority of bass were sucked to the hard sand.
When the smallmouth were more active, Jagdfeld shook a CrushCity Freeloader rigged on a ⅜-ounce VMC Hybrid head over the smallmouth. A Berkley MaxScent Flat Worm and a Strike King Z Too rigged on a ⅜-ounce drop shot were also key baits.
On Championship morning, Jagdfeld arrived at his starting area and found the school had vacated the area, forcing him to move back to the U.S. side of the lake and fish some backup areas.
“Today, they were all gone. I caught one 4½-pounder and a couple 3-pounders, and they were done,” he said. “I had to scrap it and basically went fun fishing. I ended up putting my head down and grinding all day.”
With bags of 20-13, 26-14 and 23-15, Bruce locked in his third Top 5 finish in his short Opens career. The smallmouth guru had never been to St. Clair prior to this week but was able to use his forward-facing sonar to find quality smallmouth in a similar way he fishes for walleye in Ontario.
“The goal was to win it, but after the first day I really can’t turn my nose up at a comeback from 44th to 3rd,” Bruce said. “It was fun fishing. No grinding at all. This is my third smallmouth Open, and I have three (3rd-place finishes) now.”
Bruce turned his trolling motor on high and cruised around Anchor Bay looking for quality smallmouth bass. He caught fish out of a variety of different covers, from hard sand to thick grass.
A CrushCity The Mooch Minnow as well as a CrushCity The Jerk rigged on a ¼-ounce BT Smeltinator Custom Redline jig head caught several of his better bass as well as a CrushCity Freeloader on a prototype BT Rocker Jig.
Arkansas pro Greg Bohannan caught the Phoenix Boats Big Bass of the Tournament on Day 2, a 6-2 smallmouth that earned him the $750 bonus. Japanese pro Taku Ito claimed $500 total in Garmin rewards for his sixth-place finish.
With six events complete, Easton Fothergill of Grand Rapids, Minn., leads the Tackle Warehouse Elite Qualifier points race currently with 1,033 points. Dakota Ebare of Brookeland, Texas, is second with 1,032 and Idaho’s Cody Meyer is third with 1,002 points. Alabama’s Tucker Smith is fourth with 994 points, Texas pro Jack York is fifth with 992 points and Canadian Evan Kung is sixth with 989 points. Andrew Loberg is seventh with 983 points; Bobby Bakewell is eighth with 960 points; Matt Adams is ninth with 948 points; Emil Wagner is 10th with 947 points.
The Detroit Sports Commission hosted the tournament.