> What: Northern FLW Series
> Where: 1000 Islands (Clayton, N.Y.)
> When: Thursday through Saturday (Sept. 6-8)
> At stake: Top prize (including boat and motor package) could reach $90,000
> Expected field size: 170-plus boats
> Last FLW Series at 1000 Islands: Aug. 27-29, 2017
> Winner: Matt Becker (66-04) – Click here to read about Becker's Winning Pattern.
> What they’re saying: “This is one of my favorite tournaments of the year,” said the 2018 FLW Tour Rookie of the Year Matt Becker of Finleyville, Pa., who won this event in 2017. “It’s an extremely beautiful and scenic fishery. The weather is great – the wind can get blowing, but temperature-wise there are not too many places in the country that you can go right now and not be sweating. And the fishing is so great. We’re going to see a lot of big smallmouth in this one.”
Becker said that he expects a drop-shot rig will likely dominate the top of the leaderboard, but also mentioned swimbaits, tubes and spybaits as baits that could play a role.
“A drop-shot is going to dominate like it always does – I throw a 3-inch Keitech Shad Impact soft jerkbait – but you can always catch them on a Keitech swimbait or a tube as well,” Becker said. “You can never rule out a spybait, though. It won here a couple of years ago.”
In the 2017 tournament, nine of the final 10 pros spent the majority of their time fishing offshore in Lake Ontario. Although he said that he expects the tournament to most likely be won there, Becker said that many more anglers would be spending their fishing time in the St. Lawrence River.
“The river is fishing a lot better right now than it was last year,” Becker said. “I think we’ll see a much bigger split this year – half of the competitors in the river, half in the lake. Especially if the wind is blowing. Barring any crazy weather, I think we’ll see bigger weights than last year. I think it’ll take a three-day total between 72 to 75 pounds to win this one.”
Some of the information above was taken from an FLW press release.
