With a half hour remaining, some interesting stats are emerging on BassTrakk. The talk before the tournament had bites few and far between on Marion and Moultrie. We’re seeing that play out. Local Patrick Walters just caught his first fish of the day for instance, a 3-3.
Looking down the leaderboard, there are a dozen guys one or two fish short of a limit that are on a better than 3-pound average. Even the guys at the top of the leaderboard are getting very few bites, the top 7 anglers only having culled a total of 10 times.
The fishing has been a grind here on Day 1. A lot of the bites we have seen have come off beds and cypress trees, two prevalent patterns we expected. A few other things are happening, but they’re very spotty. Brandon Palaniuk, for instance, has caught some good fish on a jerkbait around brush piles. He has nearly 14 pounds doing this, but with only three fish.
The sight fishing bite is expected to fade as anglers pluck the obvious bass off bed today. No one is predicting a big wave of spawners to move shallow. But, you really only need a couple big females a day to do well here. So someone like Drew Cook, who has survived today, could stick with the bed fishing pattern and ride it to Sunday with a little luck.
