In this edition of ADVBassStats (Advanced Bass Fishing Statistics) event reviews we’re revisiting the numbers from the 2022 Guaranteed Rate Bassmaster Elite Series at Lake Oahe, Aug. 18-21 out of Mobridge, S.D.
It’s just a river – how big could it be? Oahe is not a regular stop on the bass tournament rotation, so we’re not real familiar with it. Thirty-one anglers on the 2022 Elite Series roster had fished in the only previous Bassmaster event in 2018. Several anglers scouted the lake in the summer of 2021 and found the fish to be very cooperative, setting an expectation for bags in the 23- to 25-pound range. On the map Lake Oahe is just a river, but it’s a really long, really wide river. I pulled together some research to compare it to several better-known lakes around the country.
Day 1 Results
The pre-tournament practice feedback wasn’t as optimistic as the 2021 scouting trips had indicated, but Day 1 results were better than most of the anglers seemed to be expecting. They brought three bags over 20 pounds and nine more over 18 pounds on the first day, led by Brandon Card’s 21-10. The average Day 1 bag was 12.45 pounds and there were 78 limits out of 90 anglers.
Day 2 and 3 – Felix takes control
After an average Day 1, where he finished more than 7 pounds behind the leader, Austin Felix defied the winds on Day 2 with the biggest bag of the tournament, then took the overall lead on Day 3 with a solid 18-pound bag. Heading into the final day, we only had one angler — Matt Robertson — on a three-day improvement trend and three anglers on a three-day decline — Chris Johnston, Patrick Walters and Taku Ito. The other six were up and down, leaving the question of whether anglers had fish coming to them or going away and if momentum was going to be a factor on the final day.
Bassmaster LIVE – Anglers on the Mic
During the Day 4 broadcast, Lee Livesay and Brock Mosley were discussing the “dead period” of late morning to early afternoon, and Livesay commented that the anglers who made it to Sunday had continued to catch throughout that dead period, unlike the rest of the field. This image compares the Saturday BassTrakk catchtimes from 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., split into eventual places 11 to 47 on top and one to 10 on the bottom. You can see the differences in the averages and the clustering of fish sizes. During this time block, the Top 10 (nine reporting) outweighed the next 37 (33 reporting) by 12 pounds. That was some astute announcing!
Day 4 results
Austin Felix went out on the final morning with a lead of approximately 3 pounds over Robertson, approximately 4 pounds over Johnston, approximately 5 pounds over Marc Frazier and approximately 6 pounds over Taku Ito. Ito, Johnston and Frazier all finished with bigger Sunday bags than Felix, but not by enough to make up the gap and overtake him for the trophy.
All-time Top 10s
One of the topics that came up during live coverage at Oahe was angler Top 10 rates. Here’s a visual of all current Elite roster anglers with at least a 25% Top 10 rate in either Elite Series events (blue bars with values) or all B.A.S.S. events (red dashes). In terms of Top 10 rate, Cory Johnston led everybody in both categories at the time — best in the Series for both Elite and overall (tied with brother Chris, but the tie wouldn’t last long — Chris got another Top 10 at the Mississippi River the next week to pull ahead in overall).
In compiling this data it was striking how many of the names I recognized from very recent stats work — six of the Oahe Top 10 are on this all-time list. That seemed like an unusually large concentration, even for anglers with a track record of Top 10s.
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