Taku Ito Wins 2021 Bassmaster Elite St. Lawrence River!

Cory Johnston 4th  & Chris Johnston 5th

Ito captures 26lbs final limit and first Elite!
(Photo: BASS) 

BASS PRESS RELEASE

WADDINGTON, N.Y. — Saving the best for last may not have been his intention, but Taku Ito’s eye-popping 26-pound limit propelled the Japanese sensation to a convincing victory at the Farmers Insurance Bassmaster Elite at St. Lawrence River with a four-day total of 90 pounds.

 

Hailing from Chiba, Japan, the second-year Elite placed 38th on Day 1 with 17-15, then improved to 11th with a second-round limit of 22-14. Day 3 saw Ito secure his Championship Sunday berth by adding 23-3 and improving to seventh.

 

Earning $100,000 for his Elite win, Ito anchored his third and fourth days’ limits with 6-pound smallmouth, both of which earned $1,000 daily awards for Phoenix Boats Big Bass.

 

“I love Waddington — I’m very, very happy,” Ito said with the engaging sincerity Elite audiences have come to love. “When I was 8 years old, I won the (Bassin’s Black Bass with Hank Parker) video game and now, on the St. Lawrence River, I won the Bassmaster Elite Series.

 

“Big Bass. Big Stage. Big Dreams. Bassmaster!”

 

Ito, who placed sixth at last year’s St. Lawrence River event, devoted all four days to Lake Ontario. The first two days, he fished rock structures in approximately 20 feet. On Saturday those areas failed to produce, so he relocated to a spot in 26 to 27 feet near Chaumont Bay.

 

Calling this spot “Taku Disneyland” for its abundance of fish, Ito caught his Day 3 limit there and started on the spot Sunday.

 

“I was driving about two hours (each way) and I had about two hours and 30 minutes of fishing time,” Ito said.

 

Arriving at his spot this morning, Ito thought his graph was malfunctioning when he saw what appeared to be a false bottom at 13 to 14 feet. To his delight, it was a massive school of Lake Ontario giants.

 

“Usually, smallmouth are on the bottom, but today there was a school of big smallmouth suspended,” Ito said.

2018 FLW Tour Harris Chain Day 2: Chris Johnston Grabs Leads with 45-04lbs!

Gustafson 16th, Richardson 37th, Cory Johnston 105th
by Curt Neidermier

FLW PRESS RELEASE

It didn’t take long for Chris Johnston to get the action started during day two of the FLW Tour event presented by Lowrance on the Harris Chain this morning. Nor did it take long for him to rile up the weigh-in crowd. Johnston was one of the first to cross the stage, dropping more than 25 pounds in the weigh basket to take the lead with a two-day total of 45 pounds, 4 ounces.

Canadian Chris Johnston rockets to lead with 25lb limit.
(Photo: FLW)

Yesterday, Johnston went to Griffin in the morning and caught three of his five keepers there, then finished in Harris. With an early check-in time today, he figured he’d be better off avoiding lost time in the lock and staying in Harris, which is the lake where the field takes off from each morning. 

Smart decision.

“It started right off the bat this morning,” he says. “I went to the spot where I finished yesterday.”

Shortly after takeoff Johnston hooked a tiny bass – we’re talking 4 inches. As he was winding it in, the bass suddenly started fighting back and ducked under the boat. Johnston called for the net, just in case, and when his co-angler dipped the net into the lake he came back up with a 6-pounder. 

“The 6-pounder ate the small bass and the bait,” Johnston says. “They were both in the net, so that was crazy.”

Crazy, maybe, but definitely a good omen, as Johnston quickly landed a limit of bass.

His strategy was to park his Ranger on a 300-yard-long stretch of 12-foot-deep hydrilla packed with shad and pick it apart with a reaction bait.

“It’s definitely key to get them early in the hydrilla,” he says. “I think there’s a little bit of a shad spawn in the morning.

“I’m fishing a main-lake weed edge. There’s a little bit of an indentation in it, and there’s some wind blowing into it. I just hit the Spot-Lock [on the Minn Kota Ultrex] and sat there.”

Johnston caught about 30 bass without moving the boat. That was partly based on playing defense to keep other anglers off, and partly because he was dialed in on an isolated group of fish. He’s hoping this weekend he’ll be able to work up and down the edge more to try and locate more groups of fish. 

Most of his action came on one bait, which he declined to name, but he did make a big upgrade in the hydrilla at 9:30 with a key bait switch.

“That bite died, so I threw a ‘Trap in there and caught an 8-6.”

It was 10:30 until Johnston finally pulled the plug on his honey hole. He spent the rest of the day running some old water and hunting for a bonus kicker, which he got in the form of a 4-pounder that let him cull up to his final weight.

2018 FLW Tour Harris Chain Day 1: Jamie Horton Leads with 24-13lbs!

Chris Johnston 12th, Gustafson 21st, Richardson 32nd, Cory Johnston 88th

FLW PRESS RELEASE

Horton's 2 big bass pave way to lead.
(Photo: FLW)

They say you should make hay while the sun shines, and apparently the FLW Tour’s best pros already knew that. They steamed back to Florida’s Harris Chain for the second event of the season, which is presented by Lowrance, and enjoyed a sunny, breezy, all-around beautiful first day that resulted in 11 limits of more than 20 pounds. Their co-angler partners added four more 20-plus bags.

At the top of the heap is Alabama pro Jamie Horton, who weighed 24-13 to take the early lead over Florida’s Koby Kreiger. Kreiger, who was assessed a 2-pound penalty after he violated rule No. 9 by running the main motor while he was on the front deck, trails Horton by just 1 ounce.

Horton admits he didn’t really have a sound game plan coming into the day, but he had two patterns that he knew had the potential to produce limits of fish. Thankfully for Horton, he was able to put a few in the boat early to relieve some of the pressure caused by his uncertainty.

“I just caught a couple good ones this morning,” he says. “I tried to capitalize on the shad spawn, what little bit was going on.”

With what would eventually be his second-best kicker in the boat early, Horton switched his attention from shad eaters to spawners in an area where he’d found bedding fish in practice, but where he didn’t expect to see the quality he found during day one. Thankfully, the water had cleared a tad, allowing him a better visual approach, and he was able to slowly decipher what they were “sitting on.” From there he just chipped away at 24 pounds.

Chris and Cory Johnston Win 2017 B1 Team of the Year and St. Francis Event!

Brothers sack 49.03lbs on Lake St. Francis for win!
By Luigi De Rose 

Cory and Chris Johnston enjoy the windfall. (Photo: Cory Johnston)

The fishing was as red hot as the weather on Lake St. Francis in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec. The 108 two-man teams battled it out on one of the most specatular smallmouth bass fisheries on the planet. Unfortunately,  catching the huge smallmouth became a trying experience for most. With temperatures in the low 30C, the bass were not in their predictable early autumn locations. Many found the bass disinterested even with the best presented baits and blamed countless bass tournaments throughout the summer and early fall for the fickly bass. Regardless, the Johnston brothers displayed once again why they are top FLW Touring pros and sacked a tremendous two-day limit of 49.03lbs for ten bass. Day 1 leaders, Lenny Devos and Jeff Magee came the closest to dethrore the Johnston boys who just won the Emerald Isle tournament the weekend prior.
Along with grand prize of $20 000 cash, Cory and Chris also won a Ranger Boat package plus  additional Ranger Boat and Garmin contingency prizes. Quite a haul for the last B1 Event of 2017

Top 5

1. Chris and Cory Johnston 49.03 lbs
2. Lenny Devos and Jeff Magee 48.95 lbs
3. Mathieu Dansereau and Jean Charles Goulet  44.41 lbs
4. Ryan Thornton and Josh Lewis 44.41 lbs
5. Denny Andrade and Scott Nagy 44.19 lbs

Brother's Johnston Win Casey Cup with Over 26 pounds of Smallmouth

By Luigi De Rose

Cory and Chris Johnston display why this team is one of Canada's best.
(Photo: Chris Johnston FB)

#	Angler	Co-Angler	Weight	BF	Points
1	Cory Johnston	Chris Johnston	26.3		200
2	Sean Lazary	Bill Lindsay	25.1		199
3	Dan Risorto	JP DeRose	24.7		198
4	Derek Strub	Mike Desforges	24.05	6.45	197
5	Chris Vandermeer	Jeff Slute	23.7	6.45	196
6	Nick Cousvis	Henry Vanderlaar	21.8		195
7	Fred Kerr	Oleg Lapidus	21.75		194
8	Gary Miller	Dean Lemcke	21.7		193
9	Erik Luzak	Tom Hardy	21.15	5.3	192
10	Ryan Johnson	Callum Johnson	20.85		191

Full Standings below

CSFL TRI Lakes July 2th Tournament

The result keep rolling in.

CSFL TRI LAKES Tournament on July 1, 2012