Pro-Am wins in Beaverton send Ontario fishing buddies to championship in Alabama this fall

A pair of long-time fishing pals didn’t get to fish together this weekend at the Major League Fishing Canadian Open Pro-Am in Beaverton harbour but they got to leave together as champions and will represent Canada at the series championships in Alabama this November.

Ashley Rae, a fishing writer and video content creator from Ottawa, and Erik Luzak, a 20-year pro angler from Fenelon Falls, have fished together for years but were separated at the Beaverton event, with Rae entering the amateur side and Luzak competing in the pro category.

Rae, whose fishing videos have attracted a huge following, has qualified for the Toyota Series Championships twice before via the international division and called the Beaverton event one of her “favourite tournament experiences.”

Rae said she “really wanted this one” after she and Luzak came close to qualifying the previous weekend on Cameron Lake in the Kawarthas, finishing second.

Paired with Evan King on day one and Austin Coady on the second day, Rae brought in 53.4 pounds of smallmouth bass on what she called an “incredible fishery” on Lake Simcoe to earn the top spot on the amateur side.

“I am SO thrilled to be heading to Wheeler Lake in Alabama this November for the Championship!”

Luzak has fished the Canadian Open many times but this was the first time he was able to “put it together” for the tournament win, and he did it in style with the two biggest five-fish limits in his career.

Luzak brought in 27.24 lbs on Saturday and 29.32 lbs on Sunday, including a 7.28 lb beast landed by his co-angler, Parker Lindsay.

Beaverton, which bills itself as the Smallmouth Bass Capital of Canada, hosted the Canadian Open Pro-Am August 3-4, with participants paired by random draw with a different partner each day of the event. All the anglers were hoping to book their ticket to the championship event November 7-9 on Wheeler Lake in Huntsville, Alabama.

Beaverton has been busy as a sport fishing port of call already this summer, hosting the Canadian Open June 29-30 and the Bronzeback Cup July 27-28. The Open was won by rising Bowmanville fishing star Cooper Gallant, who at 26 is already a veteran of 31 Bassmaster tournaments (he won the Bassmaster Southern Open in 2022) and $289,659 in career earnings, while Peterborough brothers Chris and Lynn Johnston took home the Bronzeback Cup.

The Pro-Am event utilized an in-water weigh-in system (developed at Queen’s University in Kingston), including properly regulated aerated tanks, water weigh-in scales and state of the art live release boats to reduce the mortality rate to less than one per cent to ensure the future of the sport.