Jay Przekurat, only 23 years old, recently became the youngest angler to ever win a Bassmaster Elite Series event. But that’s not the headline. The Stevens Point, Wisconsin, angler did it by catching and weighing the heaviest tournament total of smallmouth bass ever recorded. His history-making 4-day bag of 102 pounds 9 ounces (20 fish total) on the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario was accomplished in a 90-boat field of the best bass anglers on earth on what many are calling the most prolific smallmouth bass fishery in the world.
“It’s all still pretty surreal,” Przekurat said. “Winning this tournament means a lot in terms of the goals I set for myself this year, which included winning Rookie of the Year (ROY) and qualifying for the Bassmaster Classic.”
Rare, calm conditions made for ideal, record-breaking smallmouth fishing conditions for all competitors on the massive fishery, yet despite having never fished there, Przekurat found a way to separate himself from a talented pack of anglers.
"It really came down to the two main areas I had,” Przekurat said. “Fish had been pushing out and there were other guys keyed into the right depths, but the areas I had were different because they were just loaded with bait. I think it was alewives or rainbow smelt, maybe both, and there were just hundreds of bass in there. I couldn’t have fished either of those areas out.”
Przekurat says he was primarily fishing a green pumpkin Strike King Half Shell on a drop shot, but he never shared the specific presentation he alluded to at the weigh in.
“I was sight fishing most all of my fish and was able to watch the way they reacted to the bait,” Przekurat said. “Once the early morning bite tapered off each day, they wanted it super-fast — they needed to chase it. I’d burn the handle then let it fall 3 or 4 feet back to the bottom. You could see it excited the fish, so I just kept doing that until they bit, sometimes just once and other times it took three or four times.”
One other angler broke the century mark with smallmouth bass at the event. Canadian angler Cory Johnston brought five smallmouths to the weigh-in stage on the final day that tipped the scale at 28 pounds 8 ounces, giving him a 4-day total (20 fish) of 100 pounds 5 ounces. Johnston finished in second place and won $35,000. Przekurat received a $100,000 check for first place.
Check out the 90-second video below to watch Przekurat land a 6-pound smallmouth on the final day of competition.
