![](https://www.bassmaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/BTS_Day3-22-1.jpg)
We have three days of data to work with now, thanks to our BassTrakk system. On Days 1 and 2, we saw 780 fish entered into our system each day by 104 anglers. Only 50 anglers went out on Day 3, but we saw an even stronger day of fishing, with half the anglers entering better than half that total number of bass. The tally for Day 3 came out to 455 bass.
With less than half the anglers on the water on Day 3, let’s shift our metric of measurement to percentages to help us get a better visual of how Days 1, 2, and 3 compare to each other. These are the percentages of bass caught by the hour each day.
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
7:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 1.8% | 2.8% | 4.4% |
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 15.6% | 14.5% | 19% |
9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 15.3% | 21.3% | 20.4% |
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 18.8% | 15.6% | 14.5% |
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 14.2% | 13.8% | 11.9% |
12 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 12.7% | 10.6% | 10.1% |
1 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 10.2% | 9.6% | 9% |
2 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 5.9% | 6.8% | 9.5% |
3 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 4.6% | 3.2% | 1.2% |
4:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. | 0.9% | 1.8% | N/A |
Total: | 780 | 780 | 455 |
We’ve seen a strong midmorning bite all week, and we saw that again on Day 3. Notably, the best bite window for numbers has tightened up from throughout the morning, to the 8 to 10 AM window. Day 1, this 2-hour window saw 30.9% of the day’s catches. Day 2, there were 35.8% of the fish caught between 8 and 10 AM. Day 3, this best bite window climbed to 39.4%.
Let’s look at the bigger fish catches to see if we can tell more about what went on the last three days. There were 149 bass over 3- pounds caught on Day 1, 167 on Day 2, and 116 came in on Day 3. Remember too that those last 116 fish were caught by only 50 anglers. If you doubled that number to get more of an apples-to-apples comparison to the first two days, you’d see a significant upward trend in the big bites: 149, 167, 232.
Here are the percentages of big bass caught by weight across the first three days. Lots of bass in the 3- to 4- pound range on Day 3.
Fish caught over 3-pounds | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 |
3-pounders | 63.8% | 64.7% | 75% |
4-pounders | 24.2% | 22.8% | 13% |
5-pounders | 6.7% | 10.7% | 6% |
6-pounders | 3.9% | 1.2% | 3.4% |
7-pounders | 0.7% | 0.6% | 1.7% |
8-pounders | 0.7% | 0% | 0.9% |
Total: | 149 | 167 | 116 |
Now looking at the time frame of these bigger fish catches, we can identify the best big bite windows of the week. An all-out whack-fest broke out in the 8 to 9AM window on Day 3, with over 1/4 of the big bass caught in an 1/8th of the time allotted for the anglers to fish.
Fish caught over 3-pounds (time of day) | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 |
7:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 1.3% | 1.2% | 3.4% |
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 14% | 10.8% | 26.7% |
9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 16.8% | 21.6% | 12.1% |
10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 18.1% | 13.8% | 11.2% |
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 13.4% | 13.1% | 9.5% |
12 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 9.4% | 10.8% | 13% |
1 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 16.1% | 10.8% | 10.3% |
2 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 4.7% | 7.7% | 12.1% |
3 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 4.7% | 7.2% | 1.7% |
4:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. | 1.3% | 3% | N/A |
We’ve seen a repeat of this early morning bite here on Championship Sunday, with Pat Schlapper leading the pack, catching over half a dozen bass in this 3-pound-plus range by himself alone. Multiple other anglers in today’s top 10 boated big bass as well this morning, with our leaders Joey Cifuentes, Tyler Rivet and Greg Hackney ironically having the toughest starts to the day. One thing is for sure, if you’re planning to venture out onto Lake Seminole the next few days, get out there early. They’re biting and biting quick.