Three anglers, one point, one tournament left. The Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year race arrives at the Lowrance Bassmaster Elite at St. Lawrence River in Clayton, N.Y., from Aug. 27-30 with Trey McKinney on 635 points, Drew Cook on 634 and Cory Johnston on 633. Fourth-place Bob Downey is 65 points back. Whatever happens, it will be settled among those three.
It is the tightest three-man finish B.A.S.S. has taken into a finale in recent memory, and Mike Suchan of Bassmaster pointed out that close is becoming the norm here: last year McKinney and Chris Johnston went into the La Crosse finale dead level on 690 points, and in 2024 the top 10 were separated by 50 points heading into this same fishery.
The venue rewards the man who already knows it. Cory Johnston is from Peterborough, Ontario, and in nine B.A.S.S. events on the St. Lawrence he has three wins and two runner-up finishes. Bassmaster's Christopher Decker framed the week as a straight question of whether McKinney can hold off a specialist on home water: the 21-year-old from Carbondale, Ill., has finished second in the points twice, both times to Cory's younger brother Chris, and if he wins this one he becomes the youngest AOY in the series' history, eclipsing Kevin VanDam, who was 24 in 1992.
Cook is the one nobody is talking about, which is odd given he arrives on the back of three straight top-five finishes at Santee Cooper, the Pasquotank River and Lake Champlain.
BIG WEIGHTS EXPECTED
The fishery itself may be the story. Century Club belts — 100 pounds over four days — have been earned at each of the past three Elite visits. In 2024, four anglers cleared the mark and Patrick Walters put up 105-0, the heaviest four-day smallmouth total in B.A.S.S. history.
Jay Przekurat, the 2022 Rookie of the Year and the first angler to break 100 pounds here, thinks the ceiling is higher again.
"I'm expecting huge weights. Possibly the most we've ever seen in a four-day event from this place," Przekurat said. "Hopefully the wind is decent for us."
He put a number on it. "I expect the winning weight to be between 104 to 107 pounds. If a guy catches 30 one day and then backs it up with 25s and 26s, he could touch that 107 mark. It's going to take a special week to do that, don't get me wrong, but the bass are huge out there."
His practice told a more complicated story, though — bigger fish, fewer bites.
"I came up and pre-practiced and it was the best I've ever seen for big fish, but the worst I've seen for catching numbers," he said. "The days of 50, 60 and 70 fish days are kind of over in the summer when they get beat on pretty hard."
Przekurat expects the deep bite on Lake Ontario to decide it, in 25 to 50 feet, on rock mixed with sand, with a westerly wind speeding up the current. "You'll see Top 10s 30 miles apart from each other on the lake," he said. But he hedged on where the biggest fish actually live: "It can always be won out of the river, but I don't know if it can hold up for four days. Personally, I think some of the biggest smallmouth live in the river."
WHAT CHAMPLAIN SHOWED
The previous stop offered a warning about relying on any one pattern. Bryan Schmitt won the SPRO Bassmaster Elite at Lake Champlain with 81-7, edging Chris Johnston by a pound, and described a week in which nothing repeated.
"All week, it was different spots every day. Nothing worked the same from day to day," Schmitt said. "I think these are isolated fish and the spots are not replenishing."
Chris Johnston, second with 80-7, ran into the same wall on the final morning. "I knew I was running low on fish. They don't reload a lot and I didn't have enough new stuff to fish," he said.
Seth Feider, third with 79-12, solved it by abandoning half his programme. "I left the smallies alone today, because it was a waste of time," Feider said. "I spent two hours on them every morning and, at the end of the day, I wasn't really weighing in many of them."
MORE THAN AOY ON THE LINE
The winner takes $100,000, a blue trophy and an automatic berth in the 2027 Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Classic. The Rookie of the Year race is nearly as tight: Caleb Hudson leads Fisher Anaya 538 to 526, a gap that would be wider had Hudson not misread his check-in time at Champlain and taken a four-pound penalty for being four minutes late — a 17-point swing.
Shane LeHew sits 45th in points, the last Classic-qualifying spot, chasing an eighth consecutive berth.
Ninety-eight anglers launch at 7 a.m. ET from Clayton Harbor Municipal Marina, with the field cut to 50 after two days and to 10 for Championship Sunday.