Hey everyone and welcome back to this, part two of our coverage of the 2024 Pan American Black Bass Championship, which took place on the Saint John River in beautiful New Brunswick, Canada.
For those of you who missed part 1 of this two-part show, the Pan Am Black Bass Championship is an annual Bass tournament in which Canada, the US, as well as several other countries, compete for gold. Canada got involved in this great event through the Canadian International Sportfishing Association, otherwise known as the CISA. The ultimate goal here is to achieve the inclusion of competitive sportfishing into the Olympic games!
In the previous show, we covered the event’s opening ceremonies, team registration, day one blast-off, a whole whack of fishing and, of course, the weigh-in at the end of the day. To get the full recap of the preceding show, you really should go to the Fish’n Canada YouTube channel, and search up the Pan American Black Bass Championship, part 1.
Day 1 was a great start to this unique bass tournament
We ended off on day one with the top three team pairings. They were TYLER WILLIAMS & TREY MCKINNEY of Team USA weighing 18.75 pounds leading the field. In second place is ALEC MORRISON & NICK HATFIELD also from Team USA with 17.46lbs. And rounding out the top 3, COREY GAFFNEY & ADAM HOWELL from Team Canada coming in with 17.3 lbs
So when all was tallied up, the top 3 “countries” in contention for gold, silver and bronze after day one were:
Team USA leading the pack with their top 4 angling pairs weighing a total of 68.44lbs
Second was team Canada with their top 4, 2-man teams weighing 63.37lbs
And third was team China, total weight, 59.61lbs
Looked to us like it was going to be a battle of the titans between two of the favourites, Canada vs the US!
Jeff Gussy Gustafson from BASS & Jacob Wheeler from MLF… such an outstanding group of competitors
So, similar to day one, day two started out with all the participants sitting idle, waiting for their boat number to be called and, putting the throttle to the max.
From our past tournament experiences, the second-day jitters aren’t near as bad as the first’s. However, if you dropped a big weight onto the scales on day one, and you’re wondering if your pattern will hold for another day… yeah that’s pretty stressful. Our thoughts are that team Canada was one, chomping at the bit to get at er’ and two, hoping and praying that team USA has a slower day than day 1.
The final day of a tournament usually puts anglers into a slightly different mind-frame, one that actually begins to take shape earlier in the event. Sometimes, this even involves avoiding fish!
Let us explain
Big fish are hard to come by and, in this river, those sought-after fish are three-pounders.
Since this was a multi-day event, you need those fish in the boat “both” days, occasionally forcing you to back off earlier in the event when your bag is “good enough” for the day, the last thing you want to do is burn out fish that you’ll need tomorrow.
On the final day of an event, however, it’s all in. Catch as many as you can, and keep culling to the biggest bag you can possibly catch.
A bass tournament “blast-off” is always fun to watch
If you watched the episode on TV or on YouTube, you may be wondering why cell phones were allowed here, yet almost all other tournaments ban them, here is your answer. Since this was a multi-person team event, the Pan Am officials actually encouraged the use of phones to add yet another element to the game… It truly is the only way a captain and/or a teammate can reach out and talk with their entire team about strategy.
So, with that said… let the battle of the titans begin…
The Fishing
All the competitors took the “on the water” portion of this event very seriously
As we drove around the Saint John River while filming the competitors, the common denominator was everyone was catching fish. There might have been a lull in the action every now and then, however, for the most part, it was a continuous barrage of fish catches. Both big and small, singles and doubles, jumpers and diggers, it was all happening on day two.
Team USA’s Joey Cifuentes exhales after fighting a scrappy Saint John Brownie
A rare highlight of the day was as Ang and Pete dropped off “Vova”, the Fish’n Canada main cameraman, onto Scott Martin and Ryan Latinville’s boat and they proceeded to hook into a Smallmouth Bass that gave Scott the fight of his life!
In an epic man vs fish battle, Scott Martin hung tough with a Smallmouth that was tangled in a tree (see right side of boat)
The common goal in this event for the competitors was to get into those 3-pound plus Smallmouth. It sounds easy but remember one, this is a river system and oftentimes the fish do as much “exercise” as they do eating, and 2, for some reason the Saint John has an extremely slow growing season for Smallmouth.
Probably the most popular fishing technique we observed here was dropshotting. Guaranteed that at least 90% of the competitors had one set up in their boats, and for good reason. Dropshotting for Smallmouth Bass, no matter where you are, is a deadly technique.
Topwater fishing was another popular method here. Gussy was constantly catching fish on a topwater bait, as were a bunch of other competitors. Topwater fishing by the way catches big bass!
Topwater baits like poppers and prop baits caught a lot of fish during this event
Spinning rigs seemed to be more popular than baitcast but the ratio certainly wasn’t overwhelming. Many of the competitors were firing bigger hardbaits with baitcasters.
FINAL WEIGH IN
Team Canada was trying their best to overtake the US
Well, it all comes down to this… The final day weigh-in. And as many expected, it’s the classic Canada vs the US…
In tournament fishing, the most sought-after part of the weigh-in stage is the “Hot Seat”. This is where the leaders are placed, forced to watch their competitors weigh in and sweat every ounce that is shown on the scale. Here, the last man standing wins.
First in the hot seat was a pair of tournament favourites from Team Canada, Gussy and Coop. And a big “buzzer beater” fish on Day 2 has our boys at the top of the pack!
Next up was “Captain America” and Ryan Latinville. As you watched alongside us, Scott and Ryan were on em good today, and a spectacular net job looks like it was enough to knock Coop and Gussy from the podium. Good effort boys.
Next, we had some friendly fire from the American boys as Joey Cifuentes and Josh Weaver jump ahead of their captain to reduce Canada’s hope of a gold medal down to one team.
On Day 1 we saw Corey Gaffney and Adam Howell carry the weight for Canada (literally), and now, with all the glory on the line, a tough Day 2 had them just short of dethroning the Americans.
Corey and Adam come up just short to take over from the American powerhouse-stacked team
However, it’s not over yet, there’s one powerhouse yet to hit the scales. Tyler Williams and Trey McKinney had been putting on a clinic… and our boys were sweating, watching them walk to the stage.
With an impressive weight of 18.77 pounds, Team USA captured a well-deserved victory on Canadian waters.
CONCLUSION
The kids are the “best of the best observers”… the future of the sport. So nice to see them at this event
Wow, what a conclusion to such an epic event, these are truly great anglers.
First, we’ve gotta give props to Team USA for coming north to foreign territory, and taking the win!
And keeping with Team USA, the young guns of Tyler Williams and Trey McKinney proved that you don’t have to be a couple of old seasoned veterans like Ang and Pete, in order to fight against the big dogs!
Team Canada made it a really tight race against a world-class US team and proved yet again, that the great white north can go toe to toe with the best of them
We saw how skilled anglers from both central and south america travelled up to 3000-miles, and they all weighed in an incredible number of quality bass, proving they have the skill to compete at this level.
They came from near and abroad to compete on a world stage
And, finally, this event proves just how amazing, how outstanding, and how phenomenal the bass fishing on the Saint John River in New Brunswick Canada actually is.
There’s a world-class bass fishery here for all Bass enthusiasts to enjoy for many years to come.
Man, what a place… congratulations everybody.
The Saint John River, from Fredericton to Nackawic, is the place for you!
Links to Some of the Competitors:
Adam Foster – Strike Back Sportfishing TV – YouTube
