Day 3 saw more phenomenal fishing on the Mississippi River. Keeping in mind that there were 43 fewer anglers on the water yesterday compared to Days 1 and 2, it may have been the best fishing we’ve seen all week. Naturally the 47 anglers that were still competing were on better patterns than the 43 that were eliminated, but even still it’s safe to say the fishing didn’t fall off at all. Let’s look at the official numbers coming from the scales the first three days of this event.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| Limits | 73 | 61 | 45 |
| Total fish weighed | 419 | 376 | 232 |
| Total weight | 1,038-04 | 946-13 | 634-13 |
Swapping over to BassTrakk, we can see if the best bite window of the day shifted at all from what we saw on the previous two days. There were 57 bass over 3-pounds logged into BassTrakk on Day 3.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 3-pounders | 60 | 60 | 53 |
| 4-pounders | 3 | 0 | 4 |
| 5-pounders | 2 | 0 | 1 |
Looking at the times these fish were caught, we see:
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 7 a.m. – 8 a.m. | 7 | n/a | 5 |
| 8 a.m. – 9 a.m. | 11 | 9 | 8 |
| 9 a.m. – 10 a.m. | 14 | 11 | 8 |
| 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. | 6 | 5 | 8 |
| 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. | 9 | 8 | 7 |
| 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. | 6 | 11 | 8 |
| 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. | 4 | 6 | 7 |
| 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. | 1 | 2 | n/a |
We saw, by far, the steadiest bite of the week when it comes to 3-pound plus fish throughout Day 3. Almost as even as you can get across the board. And, considering there were nearly half the anglers on the water for Day 3, it was impressive to see 57 3-pound plus fish caught, nowhere near proportionate per angler to the 65 and 60 we saw on Days 1 and 2 respectively.
The fishing has been fantastic this week, the numbers have backed that up.
