Fish were caught, and caught by the droves on Day 1 of the 2023 Marathon Bassmaster Elite at Lake Murray. Anticipation abounded after a tough practice. Anglers had found some fish on bed, and had seen signs of lingering shad and herring spawns. But it was hard to catch fish “just fishing”. The field was optimistic as a whole however.
Once the pace car got out of the way and anglers could start to really lean on what they had found, the scoreboard lit up. The official tally after the weigh-in showed the 103 anglers that went out brought in 97 limits. Five hundred and six fish hit the scales. They combined to the tune of 1,710 pounds and 5 ounces. That’s 506 fish that weighed more than 3 and 1/4 pounds on average.
Looking at the less accurate but perhaps more interesting data we gathered from BassTrakk, there were 782 keepers caught on Day 1. The prior disclaimer is necessary, considering anglers don’t log every fish catch, especially once they get their limits. And, some of these guys tend to sand bag, underestimating their catches. But all this taken into account, BassTrakk still offers a nice barometer of sorts to gauge how the fishing is going, and at worst it’s typically an underestimate of the actual fishing.
Of the 782 fish caught on Day 1, here’s the breakdown by hour.
| Day 1 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 82 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 107 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 125 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 109 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 122 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 87 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 66 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 50 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 34 |
| Total: | 782 |
This data shows a strong bite between 8 a.m. and noon, which is actually a little surprising. Considering the shad and herring spawns are most active the first hour, and that several anglers no doubt started on bass they had found on bed, it seems as though those first couple of hours would have been some of the most productive. In addition to this reasoning, several anglers mentioned catching their bigger fish later in the day. So, this mid-morning sustained bite is a little surprising.
Let’s look at the breakdown of big fish caught, to see if the window shifts. We often look at 3-pound-plus fish to determine the best big bite windows, but the fishing is too good for that. There were 301 bass over 3- pounds logged into BassTrakk, that’s nearly three per angler. Of those 301, 221 were in the 3-pound range. We’ll remove those from consideration and look only at the 80 bass caught over 4- pounds.
Here’s the breakdown by size.
| Day 1 | |
| 4-pounders | 64 |
| 5-pounders | 12 |
| 6-pounders | 4 |
| Total: | 80 |
Here’s the breakdown by the hour of those 80 bass over 4 pounds.
| Day 1 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 6 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 4 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 9 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 12 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 17 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 10 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 7 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 8 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 7 |
There was a slight but significant shift in the big bite window as compared to the overall feeding times. The better concentration of bigger bites came between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., as compared to 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. when the majority of the overall bass were logged.
This makes sense though if you’ve been listening to Bassmaster LIVE this morning. Several anglers have commented that they have to be patient, that the little ones are up there early and the bigger ones show up later in the day.
We’re quickly approaching that better time frame. Let’s see if the patience pays off.
