We’ve taken a deep dive each day into the data gathered during the previous day of competition on Lake Oahe. But as we do this once more on Championship Sunday, there are a few things to keep in mind. With 43 fewer anglers on the water yesterday compared to the first two days, the actual numbers we have to work with will obviously drop drastically. To account for this, we’ll apply percentages in some places.
And when looking at BassTrakk numbers, there are a couple things relative to marshals to consider as well. Days 1 and 2 saw 40ish marshals scattered across 90 anglers. With only 47 anglers on the water for Day 3 and presumably the same number of marshals as Days 1 and 2, more anglers had a marshal to report their catches into BassTrakk on Day 3. This could make the fishing look a little better than reality simply because more data was being gathered.
Let’s look at the actual numbers from each day’s weigh-in:
| Day | #Limits | #Fish | Weight |
| 1 | 78 | 428 | 1120 pounds, 3 ounces |
| 2 | 69 | 406 | 928 pounds, 6 ounces |
| 3 | 39 | 217 | 530 pounds |
Once we factor in the different number of anglers competing each day, we can see that 87% of the field had a limit on Day 1, while 77% did on Day 2 and 83% did so on Day 3. It’s interesting to note that there were fewer limits on average on Day 3 than Day 1. In theory, Day 3 should have been the most productive day considering those 47 anglers had had the best weights across Days 1 and 2.
In addition, Day 3 had fantastic weather compared to Day 1, which should have further swung the Day 3 numbers to the good. But by the numbers, Day 3 was worse than Day 1. The math backs up what the anglers said on stage all week. That being consistent on Oahe is all but impossible.
Let’s look at the numbers from BassTrakk to see when the best bite windows were across all three days. Here’s the breakdown of the 56 fish over 3-pounds caught each hour.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 6 a.m. – 7 a.m. | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 7 a.m. – 8 a.m. | 17 | 3 | 2 |
| 8 a.m. – 9 a.m. | 21 | 8 | 9 |
| 9 a.m. – 10 a.m. | 24 | 9 | 8 |
| 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. | 15 | 24 | 14 |
| 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. | 17 | 10 | 9 |
| 12 p.m. – 1 p.m. | 10 | 11 | 1 |
| 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. | 9 | 3 | 8 |
| 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. | 4 | 0 | n/a |
| 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. | 0 | 1 | n/a |
| 4 p.m. – 5 p.m. | 0 | n/a | n/a |
The best bite came between 10 and 11 yesterday, with a fairly steady bite from 8 all the way through noon. And an abrupt drop in production between 12 and 1 was followed up by a few good last-minute bites in the final hour of fishing.
Interesting to note, despite a variety of conditions this week, the 10-12 window has been the best for big bites throughout this event. We’re smack dab in the middle of that window now, and the pattern is holding as we’ve just watched several anglers boat solid fish the last half hour.
