Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
It’s almost here—Stop 5 of the 2025 NPFL season at the St. Lawrence River out of the Town of Massena, New York.
Here’s almost everything you might want to know about the event.
1. The tournament is scheduled to start on Wednesday, July 9 and it will end on Friday, July 11. Launch will be out of the Massena Intake Boat Launch. Anglers can fish anywhere their boats can take them, but they are not allowed to lock-through to other bodies of water or other pools of the river.
2. This is the NPFL’s 30th tournament and first in the Empire State. None of the League’s pro anglers are New York residents, but several of them list the St. Lawrence as their favorite bass fishery.
3. Live video coverage of the tournament starts on Wednesday with the weigh-in at 3:00 p.m. ET. That’s when Big Al McCullough brings the BOOM! If you’re in the area, come on out, meet the pros, get some autographs and feel the pride. Day 2 and Day 3 weigh-ins start at the same time and place on Thursday and Friday.
4. Live on-the-water coverage with Luke Dunkin and FatCat Newton begins at 9:00 a.m. and runs until 2:00 p.m. ET on Thursday and Friday. There will be cameras in the boats of the top five anglers in the tournament standings, so you can catch the action from the anglers who are really catching ’em.
5. The St. Lawrence River is named for Saint Lawrence of Rome, a Christian martyr. It was given that name by French explorer Jacques Cartier, who arrived at the mouth of the river on August 10, 1535—the feast day of Saint Lawrence on the Roman Catholic calendar. To commemorate the saint, Cartier named the gulf and later the river after him.
6. The river is controlled by the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, a U.S. federal agency under the Department of Transportation
7. This section of the river is home to both largemouth and smallmouth bass but expect smallmouth to be the stars. They average bigger than their cousins here. Either way, a bass must be at least 12 inches long to bring it to the scales. If you have one or more bass that are around a foot long in your best five, you have a problem. You’re not catching the size you need to be competitive here.
8. The primary bass forage on the St. Lawrence are crayfish, panfish, gobies, various minnows, yellow perch, and frogs.
9. No one seems to be quite sure what the St. Lawrence record for largemouth bass is, but the river record for “brown bass” is an impressive 9 pounds, which is also the state record. It was caught by Dante Piraino in 2024 … during a tournament!
10. Other state records that have come out of the St. Lawrence are the state record walleye (18-02 in 2018) and the state record musky (69-15 in 1957).
11. It’s hard to identify pre-tournament favorites for this event since any recent experience these anglers may have here would have been using forward-facing sonar, which is not permitted in the NPFL this year.
12. The Progressive Angler of the Year battle is a three-horse race that’s heating up as the season moves into its final two events. Kyle Welcher leads with 974 points. He’s trying to repeat as NPFL’s Angler of the Year. Greg Hackney and Patrick Walters both have 969 points, but Hackney is technically in second place because he’s brought a little more weight to the scales in 2025. Hackney is trying to become the first angler in history to claim AOY titles on three major tours. Walters is young but easily one of the greatest anglers never to win a major AOY title. Other anglers are mathematically still in the hunt, but they have a lot of ground to make up in a short period of time and these three standouts are not likely to stumble.
13. There is no formal Rookie of the Year award, but among the rookies Derek Lehtonen leads the way with 864 points (18th in AOY). He’s followed by Chad Marler with 809 points (37th in AOY) and Keith Bardolf with 802 points (42nd in AOY). Lehtonen looks like a lock to earn a spot in the 2026 NPFL Championship. Marler is already qualified by virtue of his win at Stop 4 on Lake Eufaula. Bardolf will need to get into the Top 40 of the AOY race or win one of the final two events to earn a spot. The rest of the rookies have struggled this year.
14. There are quite a few NPFL records in jeopardy this week. Here are a few:
- heaviest winning weight (82-12 — Jason Christie, Santee Cooper, 2025)
- highest tournament bassing average (4.88 — Douglas Lake, 2025)
- heaviest total weight (4,757-13 pounds — Santee Cooper, 2025)
- heaviest average daily catch (13.56 pounds — Santee Cooper, 2025)
- heaviest average bass (3.69 pounds — Santee Cooper, 2025)
- biggest smallmouth bass (6-13 — Kevin Martin, Saginaw Bay, 2024)
15. And some streaks are on the line. Here they are:
- Drew Cook has limited on 27 consecutive competition days (NPFL record)
- 16 anglers have limited every competition day of 2025
- Kyle Welcher has 10 consecutive top 20 finishes (already the NPFL record)
- Kyle Welcher has 10 consecutive in-the-money finishes (NPFL record is 11 by Todd Goade)
- 5 anglers have finished in-the-money at every event this season (Brandon Cobb, Greg Hackney, Gerald Swindle, Patrick Walters, and Kyle Welcher)
16. Along with records and streaks, there are career milestones … like tallying 1,000 pounds in NPFL events or winning half a million dollars. So far, only Timmy Reams has surpassed 1,000 pounds, but three other anglers (Louis Fernandes, Brandon Perkins, and Patrick Walters) could get there this week. And—if he wins—Brandon Perkins could join Walters in the $500K club for career NPFL prize money.
All in all, there’s a lot to watch at the Stop 5 on the St. Lawrence River this week!
