It’s all about the big bite. You can say that about any bass tournament, of course. But in Florida the big bites are bigger. For instance, Pat Schlapper’s second-place bag of 22-15 included three 2-pound-class bass. The bulk of his weight came from two big bites – an 8-8 and a 7-pounder. Eighty-nine of the 94 anglers in this field caught five-bass limits yesterday, and eight of those limits weighed less than 10 pounds. The lightest was Matty Wong’s 91st-place 6-8.
It’s early, but at 10 a.m. Brandon Palaniuk had those exact numbers, a limit weighing 6-8, according to BassTrakk. After practice, Palaniuk was on the pessimistic side of what it would take to win this tournament, predicting a winning weight of 75 pounds. After Day 1, even though he weighed 21 pounds and tied for 7th place, Palaniuk hadn’t changed his tune.
“I still think (75 pounds to win) because I don’t think it’s going to get a lot better,” he said. “Yeah, we have one more day of warming, but a lot of sight fish got caught today. Speaking for myself, I kind of got lucky and had two big bites I didn’t expect. Those were the difference-makers. One was about a 7 and the other one was over 5. Both came in the afternoon. That was way more than I was expecting.”