Pro Bass Fishing Tourneys – 2022

Local guys AOY standings finish:
Jay Przekurat 10
Seth Feider 22
Bob Downey 23
Austin Felix 29
Josh Douglas 56

Przekurat won rookie of the year too. Impressive season for a rookie on the BASS tour he had.

It was a really good year for the local guys. Its great to see so many Minnesota and Wisc. guys doing well on the big stage. It just goes to show what great bass waters we have here in our area and how many good fishermen there are.

I see BASS announced the schedule for next year. Here it is:
Okeechobee, FL
Lake Seminole, GA
Tennessee River, Tenn
Lake Murray, SC
Santee Cooper, SC
Lay Lake, Ala.
Sabine River, Tx
St. Clair, Mich
Champlain, NY
St. Lawrence, NY

What are your thoughts?

I was a little disappointed to not see a Midwest Lake or River on the schedule. I’d like to see one on Leech lake, Rainy lake, or Mille Lacs, or even Minnetonka. Even though it been a few years since they have been to a few of the lakes, There are no totally new lakes on the schedule. I think they should do at least 1 totally new lake each year. Its un to watch some of these great fishermen trying to figure out totally new waters.

fishthumper wrote:

I was a little disappointed to not see a Midwest Lake or River on the schedule. I’d like to see one on Leech lake, Rainy lake, or Mille Lacs, or even Minnetonka.

Ya this is a little bush league. Too many events in the south on the same bodies of water and nothing here in the Midwest. I don’t foresee them going to a place like Leech, Rainy, or Tonka. They might eventually come back to Mille Lacs at some point though. I figured they would go back to the St Lawrence after the monster bags of smallmouth there this year.

Back in 1997 they held what at that time was the largest payout bass tourney ever on Lake Minnetonka. It paid 200,000 to the winner and had a total payout of 1 million dollars. It was called the FLW cup. Local fishermen Jim Moynagh won it and earned the 200,000 first prize. It was not greeted well by the homeowners and locals around Minnetonka. It was said after that tourney that there would probably never be another professional Bass tourney on Lake Minnetonka. As far as I’m aware of there never has been another big one held out there.

I think the lakes/cities have to put in a proposal to host the events, so it might be that no one in MN had done so. I’m sure BASS does inquiring to cities about the possibility to host, but still up to the cities to offer it up.

blank wrote:

I think the lakes/cities have to put in a proposal to host the events, so it might be that no one in MN had done so. I’m sure BASS does inquiring to cities about the possibility to host, but still up to the cities to offer it up.

Definitely possible. Certainly takes a bit of planning and organization to be a host for such an event.

I think they should be fishing some of these northern smallmouth fisheries earlier in the season too. Seems like they always visit them in midsummer when the spawn is long over.

Bass will not be back at Mille Lacs. The DNR will not give a waver as they did the last couple of times. I spend a lot of time with the DNR and push this heavily every year to not give any wavers for catch and keep tournaments.
Mille Smallmouth Alliance had intentions this year of having a June Tourney during spawning which really surprised me. When I had a heart to heart discussion on this, the comment was that they really didn’t want to have a tournament during the spawn but that was about the only time available.
I contacted the DNR on this and no permit would be granted as this would be against their five year plan.