Despite the early clouds and stiff wind on Day 3, the Top 50 anglers went out on Lake St. Clair and wrecked them again. Over half the field (26 of 50 anglers) brought over 20 pounds to the scale, 33 of those 50 averaging over 20 pounds per day across all three days. Before we dive into the BassTrakk numbers, it’s important to again point out that less than half the field fished on Day 3 as compared to the first two days (50 vs 102). So, the numbers will look drastically different alongside each other. For quick math, we can double anything from Day 3 to see how it stacks up against Days 1 and 2. On Day 1, 998 bass were entered into BassTrakk. Day 2 saw 944. And on Day 3, there were 400. Even if we double that number to 800, the data still supports what we saw on Day 3, that the cloudy weather and strong wind did in fact hurt the fishing. Here’s the breakdown of those catches by time of day to see when the best bites came.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 92 | 130 | 61 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 187 | 178 | 102 |
| 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 187 | 183 | 81 |
| 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 141 | 129 | 43 |
| 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 131 | 109 | 40 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 83 | 64 | 32 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 70 | 74 | 25 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 64 | 55 | 16 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 43 | 22 | N/A |
| Total | 998 | 944 | 400 |
The best bite on Day 3 landed firmly between 8 and 9 am, with the bite dropping a little and then plummeting later in the day. This is a bit odd, as the sun started to shine later in the day. We have seen though throughout the week that anglers stop entering smaller fish as they get their limits, and only add culls to our system. So, this could be the cause.
Let’s look at the big bite numbers to see when the better bites came. Here’s the breakdown by size of the fish over 4-pounds entered into BassTrakk.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 4-pounders | 140 | 183 | 64 |
| 5-pounders | 10 | 12 | 9 |
| 6-pounders | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Total | 151 | 196 | 73 |
And here’s the breakdown of those bigger bites by time of day.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 7 | 16 | 4 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 10 | 22 | 11 |
| 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 21 | 24 | 15 |
| 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 21 | 28 | 7 |
| 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 26 | 19 | 12 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 17 | 19 | 11 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 19 | 29 | 8 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 21 | 22 | 4 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 9 | 17 | N/A |
| Total | 151 | 196 | 73 |
The total number of big bites again reflects that Day 3 was the toughest. If the fishing was as good on Day 3 as it was even on Day 1, then the total should sit closer to 90 as opposed to 73, since 52 more anglers would have been on the water and taking into consideration that it was the best 50 of the week that were left out there. There was an even steeper drop-off from Day 2 to Day 3.
The big bite suffered most between 10 and 11 on Day 3, which was one of the best windows of big fish activity on Days 1 and 2. Again, the early cloud cover that lingered is likely to blame here, making it harder for the sight-feeding smallmouth to see the anglers’ baits. Also worth noting, the big bite was actually as good or even better on Day 3 between 11 am and 1 pm, compared to Days 1 and 2.
The outlier of all this sun and cloud talk is the 9- to 10-hour on Day 3, when the biggest flurry of the day came. Double those 15 fish to 30 to compare to Days 1 and 2 and it was the best hour of big fish bites we saw all week.
