Day 1 of the Gamakatsu Bassmaster Elite at Lake Seminole saw plenty of fish catches, with the 104 Elite Pros registering 780 fish onto BassTrakk. Here’s what the breakdown by the hour looks like.
| Day 1 | |
| 7:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 14 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 122 |
| 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 120 |
| 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 147 |
| 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 111 |
| 12 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 99 |
| 1 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 79 |
| 2 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 46 |
| 3 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 35 |
| 4:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. | 7 |
| Total: | 780 |
There was a strong and steady bite all day, versus a lot of the more defined feeding windows we saw on Lake Okeechobee for the season opener last week. It appears as though the bite trailed off after lunch, but remember that very few anglers and marshals add the smaller fish to BassTrakk as the day goes on. Those small fish get entered in as the anglers put together their limits early, but often only the fish that cull get added later.
With this considered, the bite from 8 AM when the anglers reached their starting spots to around 2PM when some anglers had to start working their way back to the ramp was very consistent. Let’s take a look now at only those fish caught over 3 pounds, to get a better gauge of when the bigger bass that made it into the box bit.
There were 149 bass over 3 pounds registered into BassTrakk on Day 1. Here is what that looked like by weight class.
1
| Fish caught over 3-pounds | Day 1 |
| 3-pounders | 95 |
| 4-pounders | 36 |
| 5-pounders | 10 |
| 6-pounders | 6 |
| 7-pounders | 1 |
| 8-pounders | 1 |
| Total: | 149 |
And here’s the breakdown by the time of day of those 149 fish caught over 3 pounds.
| Fish caught over 3-pounds (time of day) | Day 1 |
| 7:30 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 2 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 21 |
| 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 25 |
| 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 27 |
| 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 20 |
| 12 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 14 |
| 1 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 24 |
| 2 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 7 |
| 3 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 7 |
| 4:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. | 2 |
This data actually backs up what we saw in the total number of fish caught. There was, in fact, a better bite in the first half of the day than in the latter half. What might account for part of this, is that several anglers had fish found on bed during practice that they went and plucked off to start the day. That likely accounts for several of those 3- pound- plus bass caught between 8 and 10 AM.
But there was obviously a good casting bite as well, as there was no doubt a spawner stumbled on a few more times throughout the day but those wouldn’t account for all the 58 big bass caught between 10 AM to 1 PM.
The sun seems to be playing a key role as it pertains to big bites here on Day 2. With the fog and clouds lifting around 8:30, Big bites started pouring in for the next 30 minutes. We’ll see how all the Day 2 data supports that tomorrow.
