By B.A.S.S. Communications Staff

HARRISON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — 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 win in the Bassmaster Open at Lake St. Clair, his first Opens victory as a boater. His quickly growing resume includes two Opens victories as a co-angler, an Elite Series win at the St. Lawrence River in 2022 and 2022 Elite Series Rookie of the Year honors.

Opening the tournament in 4th 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 7th place in the 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 2nd with a total of 71-12, followed by Canadian Jamie Bruce in 3rd with 71-10. Trevor McKinney, who led Days 1 and 2, fell to 4th 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, Przekurat 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 3/8-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 1/4-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 dropshot 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 Bassmaster College Series.

“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 3/8-ounce VMC Hybrid head over the smallmouth. A Berkley MaxScent Flat Worm and a Strike King Z Too rigged on a 3/8-ounce dropshot were also key baits.

On the final 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 4 1/2-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 fish. 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 1/4-ounce BT Smeltinator Custom Redline jighead caught several of his better bass as well as a CrushCity Freeloader on a prototype BT Rocker Jig.

With six events complete, Easton Fothergill of Grand Rapids, Minn., leads the Elite Qualifier points race with 1,033. Dakota Ebare of Brookeland, Texas, is 2nd with 1,032 and Idaho’s Cody Meyer is 3rd with 1,002. Alabama’s Tucker Smith is 4th with 994, Texas pro Jack York is 5th with 992 and Canadian Evan Kung is 6th with 989. Andrew Loberg is 7th with 983, Bobby Bakewell is 8th with 960, Matt Adams is 9th with 948 and Emil Wagner is 10th with 947.



Final Standings

1. Jay Przekurat -- Plover, WI -- 15, 75-05 -- 200 -- $49,192
Day 1: 5, 24-03 -- Day 2: 5, 25-01 -- Day 3: 5, 26-01

2. Aaron Jagdfeld -- Rochester Hills, MI -- 15, 71-12 -- 199 -- $19,677
Day 1: 5, 24-04 -- Day 2: 5, 25-00 -- Day 3: 5, 22-08

3. Jamie Bruce -- Kenora, ON -- 15, 71-10 -- 198 -- $14,758
Day 1: 5, 20-13 -- Day 2: 5, 26-14 -- Day 3: 5, 23-15

4. Trevor McKinney -- Noble, IL -- 15, 71-08 -- 197 -- $13,774
Day 1: 5, 27-12 -- Day 2: 5, 22-03 -- Day 3: 5, 21-09

5. Trey Schroeder -- Theodosia, MO -- 15, 71-00 -- 196 -- $12,790
Day 1: 5, 23-02 -- Day 2: 5, 23-09 -- Day 3: 5, 24-05

6. Taku Ito -- Dalton, GA -- 15, 70-04 -- 195 -- $12,306
Day 1: 5, 23-02 -- Day 2: 5, 24-03 -- Day 3: 5, 22-15

7. Blake Smith -- Lakeland, FL -- 15, 70-02 -- 194 -- $10,822
Day 1: 5, 22-00 -- Day 2: 5, 24-08 -- Day 3: 5, 23-10

8. Jack York -- Emory, TX -- 15, 67-15 -- 193 -- $9,838
Day 1: 5, 24-12 -- Day 2: 5, 21-14 -- Day 3: 5, 21-05

9. Kenta Kimura -- Osaka, JAPAN -- 15, 67-07 -- 192 -- $9,838
Day 1: 5, 23-06 -- Day 2: 5, 22-15 -- Day 3: 5, 21-02

10. Brett Cannon -- Kiln, MS -- 15, 66-15 -- 191 -- $9,838
Day 1: 5, 23-11 -- Day 2: 5, 22-04 -- Day 3: 5, 21-00