Story by Ken Duke | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
Just how good was the fishing at Stop 5 of the National Professional Fishing League 2025 season? It was the NPFL’s 30th overall tournament, first trip to New York, and first event on a river. Of course, the results would be historic.
2025 has been a record-breaking year on multiple fronts for the NPFL. From audience and sponsorship growth to often great and sometimes challenging fishing conditions, the NPFL record book has been rewritten after every tournament. Stop 5 on the St. Lawrence River out of Massena, New York was no exception.
Nor was it a surprise. Anyone who follows the sport on a national level knows that the St. Lawrence is one of the world’s great bass fishing destinations and very likely the greatest smallmouth bass fishery to be found anywhere. Five-bass limits weighing more than 20 pounds are not only possible, they’re required if you hope to compete, and a 5-pound brown bass will rarely be weighed for big fish honors, After all, something bigger will come along shortly.
But to really tell you how good it was, we need to look at the numbers.
It’s hard to choose where to begin, but let’s start with weight. Day 1 saw the NPFL field of 108 anglers bring 2,058 pounds, 15 ounces of bass to the scales. That’s a record—the heaviest single day weight in NPFL history. The next day, the field weighed in 1,952-12—the second heaviest single day weight in league history. On Day 3 it was 1,808-11 for the third heaviest single day catch.
Those are the most productive three days of fishing in NPFL history.
Add them up and you get 5,820-06, which is obviously the heaviest total tournament catch in league history … but it’s more than that. The catch of nearly three tons of bass obliterated the previous record set earlier this year at Santee Cooper by more than 1,000 pounds!
It might be a long time before this new record is threatened.
As you might expect, such heavy catches means that the average angler catch each day was record breaking, and it was. The average angler on Day 1 brought 19-01 to the scales. On Day 2 it was 18-01, and on Day 3 it was 16-12. Those now rank 1, 2, and 3 in the NPFL record book for heaviest average bags. On Day 1, forty-eight bags exceeded 20 pounds. On Day 2 it was forty. The overall average was 17-15, breaking the record from Santee earlier this year by more than four pounds,
And Santee was a slugfest … with egg-laden largemouths … in the spring!
The St. Lawrence also set a new record for heaviest average bass at 3.76 pounds, eclipsing the previous mark from (you guessed it) Santee Cooper by a little more than an ounce. That’s right. The smallmouths from the St. Lawrence were — on average — bigger than the largemouths from the legendary South Carolina reservoirs.
It took nearly 60 pounds over three days to finish in the money at the St. Lawrence, and the average catch for the tournament was 53.89 pounds, besting the previous record—from Santee—by more than 13 pounds!
The fish were not only big. They were plentiful. On the first day of competition, the bassing average was 4.95 out of a possible 5 (i.e., the average angler brought 4.95 bass to the scales). That’s the highest average in NPFL history for a single day. Overall, the bassing average was a stout 4.77 — third best ever behind Douglas Lake earlier this year and Lake Hartwell in 2022.
In short, the fishing was spectacular!
If you want to talk fishing productivity, Stop 5 at the St. Lawrence was indisputably the greatest tournament in League history … and it’s not close.
Tomorrow, we’ll look at some of the individual accomplishments from the St. Lawrence. I think you’ll find them just as impressive as the overall fishing.
