Let’s get this season rolling! As our field heads north, the feeling of endless opportunity greets them as they start the season. A new year, with new opportunities, and a few new rule changes as well!
Most Notably:
- There is now an “Official Practice Period” for each Champions Tour Event. Practice begins on Friday Morning at Official Sunrise, and Tour Anglers must be off the water at Noon on Monday before the event.
- There is now an “Off Limits Period” for each Champions Tour Event of 10 Days before practice begins.
- The last 1 Hour of each Champions Tour Event will feature a “Blackout” of the Reel LiveWell App. Anglers, and fans, will have to tune into the Awards Ceremony to see who brings home the win, as no one will be able to see the scores for the last hour of competition.
With these updates, fans can expect to see even more heart pumping action and excitement from the Champions Tour. Be sure to tune into our Facebook and YouTube for the LIVE Awards Ceremony at each event.
Now, It’s time to kickoff the 2025 Champions Tour, Presented by Skeeter Boats. To start the year our field of 67 Anglers is heading WAY north, to Tower, MN. Lake Vermilion has been a popular stop for the Tour over the years, but never this early in the season. This 39,272 acre lake is a massive playground for our field, settled in the far Northern Region of the state of Minnesota. To preview this event we chatted with Champions Tour Pro Ron Mehr, who recently won the MN TBF Springfest on Lake Vermilion with a 5 fish bag weighing in at 18.76 lbs, and Tournament Angler / Guide Hayden Anderson, who’s called Northern Wisconsin and the Northeastern part of Minnesota home throughout his developing career.
Vermilion is often referred to as one of the most fertile fisheries in the state, seemingly littered with not only bass, but walleye, pike, and panfish all throughout. “I’ve traveled around the country and I still tell people everywhere that I think it’s the most beautiful lake in the country,” Mehr explained, “and it’s by far my favorite lake.”
What makes this body of water so unique is that it’s very “Canadian-Eque” if that’s a word. The lake is stuffed full of rock, lots of trees laying down into the lake creating ample natural cover, and the water is clear but has the “stained” color of water that’s kind of like tea. The lake has over 300 islands on it and more bays than we could begin to count, the opportunities are endless, but also can be overwhelming.
Anderson explained, “You could fish a new piece of structure out there, every hour, every day for a whole year and not even come close to touching the whole lake.”
Vermilion features a very prevalent and well known smallmouth bass population. It’s widely regarded as one of the best tournament fishing venues not only in Minnesota, but the Upper Midwest in general. The sleeper on the lake is the largemouth bass population that comes out to play at specific times of year, and spring could definitely be one of them. Mehr weighed in on this topic, “I’m hoping the largemouth do play a little bit in this one but I think it’s going to be a little more oriented around the spawn, so smallmouth will play more.”
Anderson also added, “I definitely think largemouth could play, and in a big way this time of year. In one or both of the halves (depending on the lake split).”
The largemouth population is more established on the west side of the lake, but with the way this spring has been there’s a very real possibility that a significant amount of the largemouth will be either done spawning, or very hard prespawn. If someone finds the right stretch of reeds, or inside shoreline weeds, a big flury is very possible Anderson explained.
It’s pretty easy to look at all of the weather apps and see that Northern Minnesota has had a pretty strong warm up in the past few weeks, with temperatures rising above seasonal averages. Both Mehr and Anderson believe this tournament is going to go down in shallow pockets, or on the bank in general. “It’s going to be pretty hard to find a fish in deeper than five (5) feet of water,” Anderson chuckled.
Mehr is overflowing with excitement and anticipation for this event and the fun that is likely to be had during it. “I think the number of fish you’re going to see caught in this event is going to be very high” he added, keeping what his plan for the tournament might be close to the vest.
However, Anderson isn’t fishing the event, so he provided us with some insight into what his strategy would be. “If I were fishing the event, I’d go into it targeting prespawn/transitioning into spawning smallmouth,” he stated. As this event seems to be lining up with a large migration of fish that will hit the bank. “I wouldn’t focus on the spawning fish, I’d make note of them and use them as a part of my plan, but there’s going to be so many fish transitioning.”
“I don’t think you can keep pace by primarily targeting spawning fish,” Anderson elaborated.
The biggest factor in Champions Tour events is being consistent and keeping a solid pace. Fishing in an area with a lot of fish migrating through, or meandering around, seems like it’s going to be the biggest player in this event. “If it were me I’d have a fluke, a wacky rig, and a hair jig on my front deck: 2 of each rigged up, and I’d focus on getting around the (most) fish possible. There’s going to be a lot of fish caught on a Vocelka Fishing and Customs Hair Rod this week,” Anderson laughed.
With the mass migration heading towards the bank, the question seems to be, what area of the lake may play the most and are anglers going to end up being crowded, as can happen with spring events. However, Mehr thinks the opposite, “You will be able to catch fish all over the lake, the entire lake is fishable and will be fishable. It should spread out a lot, and guys will run into each other a little bit, but you shouldn’t see 20 boats in one spot. They will be spread out.”
The ultimate question always comes down to, what is the winning weight of this event going to be? Almost every time we’ve come up to Vermilion, Anglers have said it’s going to take over 100lbs. But here we are, several tournaments down, and the 100lb mark still has never been broken on the Northern Minnesota gem. It’s consistently been won in the 60-80lb range, and we’d expect to see something similar heading into this one. In 2022, Dave Larson took the win on Vermilion with just over 60 pounds. In 2020, last season’s AOY Kyle Schutta topped the Champions Tour field with 76 pounds.
However, Anderson did end with, “I feel like it’s going to take over 100 lbs to win this one. I know it’s typically taken less, but with it being spring and how concentrated the fish can be, someone is going to crack them.”
Mehr also chimed in, stating that as of now through practice, the lake is fishing incredible. Prior to arriving, he believed it would take around 100 lbs to win, but now he’s saying there’s a chance we could hit the 120-140 lb mark.
“It is absolutely ridiculous how good this lake is fishing right now,” Mehr added, “It’s completely anyone’s game at this point. There are fish everywhere, they are all shallow, and they all want to bite. It’s going to come down to efficiency if this weather pattern holds.”
We can’t wait to see how it’s going to go down in the Iron Range! Come on down to the Awards Ceremony at Fortune Bay Resort & Casino on Tuesday, June 3rd at 4:00 to see us crown our first Champion of the year.
Pundit Picks
Bart:
Vermilion is a very unique fishery and over the history of the Champions Tour we’ve seen a few of the same faces play each time we’ve come up here. With us visiting in a different time of year, I expect to see a little bit of shake up in this, but some of these guys who consistently do well on Vermilion I expect to duplicate that success. And with an event earlier than we’ve ever seen for the Champions Tour, I think we’re going to see some strengths from anglers that we have not yet seen up to this point. The springtime transition happens fast, and there’s some anglers in this field that know how to play that game, really well.
Pick 1: Right out of the gate, I have to pick Kyle Schutta for this event. Hot off an Angler of the Year and winning a Skeeter ZX200 at the Championship, I expect him to ride that momentum right back to the place he won his first Champions Tour event. Schutta is well known around the Upper Midwest for his prowess in the spring, and his ability to move fast while being efficient is going to make him very dangerson. Plus, he’s fished two (2) Champions Tour Events here in his career, he finished 1st and 3rd, I’d expect more of the same from Schutta.
Pick 2: A little bit of a sneakier pick for this event, but I would expect this to be James Chapman’s coming out party. Heading into his 3rd Season on the Champions Tour, I think it’s taken Chapman a little bit of time to adjust to the format, but with that said, there simply isn’t a better shallow water smallmouth fisherman in this field than Chapman, especially when a fluke can play. Whether they’re on a bed or not, the dude is absolutely lethal chasing them around when they are shallow. I’d expect that when this event comes to a conclusion, you will see Chapman in the Top-10, and potentially chasing down his first win.
Pick 3: I picked him as my angler to watch in the Season Preview article and I have to stand by it now, I’d expect Aaron Teal to have a good event to start the season. I think a lot of people are going to get really distracted by spawning fish, and ultimately get into a battle that halfway through they figure out they can’t keep pace with the transitioning fish. Teal is a smallmouth wizard, and his ability to find multiple intricate patterns on a body of water meshes very well with Vermilion. Whether he has to crank, jerkbait, wacky rig, fluke, hair jig, you name it; Teal is extremely proficient with all of it. I’d expect Teal to come into tournament day with a loaded gun for this one, and be able to adapt to the conditions that unfold throughout the week, and on tournament day. I think that’s what’s going to be needed to ultimately bring home a trophy at the end of the day.
Pick 4: Last pick for this event and I’m going to go with a Rookie; Nate Nipper. Sometimes you just have a feeling someone is going to do well in an event, and that’s how I feel about Nipper. He’s fishy, has spent time fishing in the Spring up in the Iron Range Area having fished multiple tournaments in this region, and I think Nipper’s ability to simply, get bit, is going to get him off to a quick start that will calm the Rookie nerves. He’s a smallmouth enthusiast and I don’t know of many smallmouth anglers that don’t love going to Vermilion.
Jack:
Vermilion in early June should send Champions Tour anglers home with sore thumbs. I’d expect this one to be full of fish catches, both smallmouth and largemouth, and on a wide variety of techniques mainly because I think the guys will be faced with all phases of the spawn. The wild card is of course the Minnesota weather. Even in far northern Minnesota, things were tracking well ahead of schedule in my opinion with temps into the 80’s around the week of the fishing opener. Then of course we regressed big time for a stretch that had overnight lows below freezing. During and just after that front fish pulled away from spawning areas, spread out, and just became plain hard to catch. We’re certainly past that weather event now but there’s no doubt it likely slowed down the spawn to some degree. Due to that and the sheer number of fish in Vermilion, we should see bass doing just about everything, which you could argue could make the fishing great across the board or maybe even a bit tricky at times.
Pick 1:
Per usual, there’s so many guys in this field that can win this tournament. The first one that jumps out to me is Kevin Fassbind. Kevin has had a number of great Champions Tour events, coming very close to winning multiple times. He’s a big fan of Lake Vermilion and has spent a good amount of time up there. He seems very comfortable getting up shallow and simply catching bass. Weather that’s docks, rocks, laydowns, vegetation etc. And it feels like that might be exactly what this event is. Locate some key stretches that have numbers of fish and find ways to pick them apart and consistently catch fish all day long.
Pick 2:
My second pick is Arnold Helgerson. There’s approximately 4 million docks on Vermilion and Arnie might fish every one of them. The challenge is that they’re relatively spread out and it’s a lot of water to cover. We saw Kyle Schutta run this program to perfection and win on Vermilion in 2020. Like Fassbind, Arnold is a deadly shallow water fisherman that we all know can catch dock fish with the best of them. There should be great numbers of fish on docks, using that structure no matter what stage of the spawn they’re in.
Pick 3:
My AOY pick for 2025 was Brad Leuthner so lets get him off to a great start with a win on Vermilion. Brad won a Champions Tour event here in 2019. If memory serves me right, fishing was fairly tough that day and Brad simply junk fished his way around up shallow catching everything he could in front of him. I don’t necessarily think the fishing will be tough this year but Brad certainly knows Vermilion and knows how to get up shallow and load the Reel LiveWell app with bass.
Pick 4:
My final pick is going to be a popular one and for good reason. You can’t leave Kyle Schutta off this list. He’s currently the hottest Champions Tour angler coming off last season where he captured the AOY Title and won the Championship to tow home a brand new Skeeter bass boat. Kyle won here in 2020 and his run and gun style is absolutely going to have him in the hunt next week. Again, all signs point to there being a large number of bass in 5 ft or less. Similar to the Arnold Helgerson pick, Kyle is going to put baits around as many docks, trees, shallow rocks and vegetation as he can. It’s not a matter of if Kyle catches them, it’s a matter of how many.
