Canadian pro smashes limit weighing 24-9 Sunday to slam the door on tournament and win $80,000 top prize
MASSENA, N.Y. (July 27, 2025) – Canadian pro Chris Johnston continued his strong track record on the St. Lawrence River with an impressive wire-to-wire victory Sunday at Tackle Warehouse Invitationals Stop 6 Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches. Johnston weighed in 76 pounds, 1 ounce over three days, making long runs nearly to Lake Ontario each day to seal the win in dominant fashion.
The victory marked Johnston’s second career win at the FLW Tour or Invitationals level, his first coming in 2018 on Florida’s Harris Chain of Lakes. With this latest triumph, Johnston earned an $80,000 payday and further solidified his reputation as one of the top smallmouth anglers in the sport.
While several other anglers cracked the 67-pound mark – including Hayden O’Barr, Banks Shaw, Brent Anderson, and Clay Reece – none could keep pace with Johnston, who pulled away from the field with a stellar Day 2 performance.
Though the Johnston family’s success on the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario may not be inevitable, this weekend made it feel pretty close.
Link to Photo Gallery of Day 3 Championship Sunday Weigh-In
Link to Photo Gallery of Day 3 on-the-water Highlights: Scooping up big St. Lawrence Smallmouth on Championship Sunday
Link to Video of Fish-Catch Highlights of Day 3 from the St. Lawrence River
After making a long run on Day 1, Johnston wasn’t exactly feeling the love from his favorite river early on.
“I went to some spots that were new to me, to be honest,” he said. “I found them in practice and made a long run to them, and they were pretty loaded in practice. I was pretty excited. And, I had four spots where I thought they were all 4 1/2-plus, and there were five to 10 fish per spot.
“Some of them were gone, some wouldn’t bite, and the wheels started spinning,” he said. “It was 11:00. I had two hours left to fish. And I’m like, ‘I’ve got to get out of this area.’”
Luckily, Johnston is long on experience on the St. Lawrence, and he had some good backup stuff in the tank.
“I went to a different section of the river, and I landed on a couple spots, and they were biting every spot,” he said. “I just stayed in the other zone where I caught them at the end of the day, and it produced every day. I probably shouldn’t leave that area again, to be honest.”
When his closest competition faltered on Day 2, Johnston was able to go into Day 3 with a solid lead. Though he didn’t immediately catch the winning bag, he wasn’t nervous for long.
“I’ve been super close many times on the St. Lawrence with MLF or FLW in the past,” he said. “I won my first Toyota Series here four or five years ago in Massena. This is my second time back, so it’s been good to me. I’ve led on the St. Lawrence probably four or five times and blew it on the final day, so there’s always a little nerves going out there, but catching a few early kind of took the nerves away and it made for a pretty good day fishing today.”
Fishing mostly familiar water, Johnston stayed fairly deep and drifted a lot and used LiveScope and a minnow some.
For drifting, Johnston mostly used a 3/8-ounce Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Tube, and he used a minnow on a 5.3-gram Gamakatsu Horizon Jig Head. Launching his baits on a Daiwa Tatula Elite with an 8-pound Seaguar Tatsu leader, he used 16-pound Seaguar PEX8 braid, which he thinks made a big difference in his presentations.
“It’s the best [braid] I’ve ever used, but the key is being able to get your bait a long ways away from the boat,” he said. “Even ‘Scoping, my LiveScope is set out to 100 feet. I still have to cast further than that because the current sucks my bait down. When it’s actually in the strike zone, it’s usually 70, 80 feet from my boat, but you’ve got to cast 130 feet to get it down there.”
Running close to Ontario every day, Johnston mixed old standards with some new places and tweaks to come out on top yet again.
“I hit a couple spots that have been good to me in the past,” Johnston said. “I saw boats on them in practice, and there weren’t any in the tournament, which shocked me. But that’s part of the reason is because they’re so hard to catch. So, just knowing they’re there and just figuring out a way to get them to bite was the key this week, and then, finding a couple new areas.
“I’d never caught them on a few areas where I caught them in this tournament,” he added. “So, it’s not just going to fish the same old water. You’ve got to relocate them every year, because it seems like if you find a new spot, they seem to bite a little better. They don’t necessarily live there all year, but if they’re there for a week and you can find them on that little staging point, you can put a little hurting on them.”
The top 30 pros at the Invitationals Stop 6 at the St. Lawrence River Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches finished:
1st: Chris Johnston, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, 15 bass, 76-1, $80,000
2nd: Hayden O’Barr, Scottsboro, Ala., 15 bass, 68-8, $30,000
3rd: Banks Shaw, Harrison, Tenn., 15 bass, 67-14, $20,000
4th: Brent Anderson, Kingston Springs, Tenn., 15 bass, 67-9, $18,000
5th: Clay Reece, Lexington, Ky., 15 bass, 67-3, $17,000
6th: Nick Hatfield, Chuckey, Tenn., 15 bass, 66-12, $16,000
7th: Brett Carnright, Plattsburgh, N.Y., 15 bass, 66-7, $15,000
8th: Mitchell Robinson, Landrum, S.C., 15 bass, 66-4, $14,250
9th: Lane Olson, Forest Grove, Ore., 15 bass, 65-14, $13,000
10th: John Murray, Spring City, Tenn., 15 bass, 65-16, $13,000
11th: Jacob Walker, Springville, Ala., 15 bass, 65-5, $10,750
12th: Jon Canada, Helena, Ala., 15 bass, 65-5, $10,000
13th: John Levesque, Nashua, N.H., 15 bass, 65-4, $10,000
14th: Brian Latimer, Belton, S.C., 15 bass, 65-4, $10,000
15th: Jordan Wiggins, Cullman, Ala., 15 bass, 64-9, $10,000
16th: Shaw Grigsby, Gainesville, Fla., 15 bass, 63-15, $10,000
17th: Ethan Greene, Eufaula, Ala., 15 bass, 63-12, $10,000
18th: Marty Robinson, Lyman, S.C., 15 bass, 62-10, $10,000
19th: Bradley Roy, Lancaster, Ky., 15 bass, 62-7, $10,000
20th: Keith Poche, Pike Road, Ala., 15 bass, 62-2, $10,000
21st: Keith Carson, DeBary, Fla., 15 bass, 61-8, $9,000
22nd: Kyle Cortiana, Broken Arrow, Okla., 15 bass, 61-8, $9,000
23rd: Chris Lane, Guntersville, Ala., 15 bass, 61-8, $9,000
24th: Blake Smith, Lakeland, Fla., 15 bass, 61-1, $9,000
25th: Joshua McGeary, Mount Pleasant, Pa., 15 bass, 60-10, $9,000
26th: Andrew Nordbye, Guntersville, Ala., 15 bass, 58-5, $9,000
27th: Marshall Hughes, Hemphill, Texas, 14 bass, 57-10, $9,000
28th: Drew Gill, Mount Carmel, Ill., 15 bass, 56-12, $9,000
29th: Bobby Lane, Lakeland, Fla., 15 bass, 56-11, $9,000
30th: Gary Miller, Colborne, Ontario, Canada, 15 bass, 54-9, $9,000
Complete results for the entire field can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Overall, there were 149 bass weighing 620 pounds, 15 ounces caught by the final 30 pros on Sunday. The catch included 29 five-bass limits.
Although the season-long points titles were decided on Saturday, the final day of competition at Stop 6 of the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals was needed to solidify the full roster of anglers earning Bass Pro Tour invitations. Pro Banks Shaw of Harrison, Tennessee, capped an outstanding rookie season by winning both the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year and Polaris Rookie of the Year titles – a rare and impressive double crown.
Joining Shaw in the final points top five were pros Mitchell Robinson, Jacob Walker, Bobby Lane, and Dustin Smith. All but Lane – a current Bass Pro Tour pro – secured invitations to fish the 2026 Bass Pro Tour season. Should they accept, the new class of anglers brings a wealth of talent and momentum to the league, with several poised to make an immediate impact at the sport’s highest level.
The three-day MLF Tackle Warehouse Invitationals Stop 6 at the St. Lawrence River Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches was hosted by the Town of Massena and featured professional bass anglers competing for a top prize of up to $115,000 and valuable points to qualify for the 2025 Tackle Warehouse Invitationals Championship in September. The full field of anglers competed in the two-day opening round on Friday and Saturday in a five-fish, weigh-in format. Only the top 30 pros, based on their two-day cumulative weight, advanced to the final round on Championship Sunday.
Television coverage of the MLF Tackle Warehouse Invitationals Stop 6 at the St. Lawrence River Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches will air as a two-hour episode, premiering at 9 a.m. ET, on Saturday, Nov. 1 on CBS Sports Network.
The next event for Invitationals anglers will be the MLF Tackle Warehouse Invitationals Championship at the Mississippi River in La Crosse Presented by Phoenix Boats, set for Sept. 5-7 in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Proud sponsors of the 2025 MLF Tackle Warehouse Invitationals include: 7Brew Coffee, Abu Garcia, Athletic Brewing, B&W Trailer Hitches, Berkley, Bubba, Deep Dive, E3 Sport Apparel, Epic Baits, Fishing Clash, Grizzly, Humminbird, Lew’s, Mercury, Minn Kota, Mossy Oak, Onyx, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Phoenix Boats, PirahnO2, Polaris, Power-Pole, Precision Sonar, Strike King, Suzuki Marine, Tackle Warehouse, T-H Marine, Toyota, VOSKER, WIX Filters and YETI.
For complete details and updated information visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular Tackle Warehouse Invitationals updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow the MLF5 social media outlets at Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.