If Brandon Palaniuk was a teapot on a stovetop, he’d be whistling loud enough for the neighbors to hear him right now.
A miserably tough tournament on Oahe had Palaniuk feeling immense pressure heading into the final stop of the season. He had miraculously maintained a strong lead in AOY, by the rare chance of those closest to him at the start of Oahe stumbling as well. This rare happenstance did little to sooth Palaniuk’s frustration though I’m sure, as he hates leaving things to chance.
As competition dawned on the Mississippi River, Palaniuk was talkative, but obviously tense. One of the nicest guys on the planet, much less the tour, Palaniuk does a fine job of being approachable and keeping a level head through the highs and the lows. All that being said, those of us that have watched him fish for years could tell there was a storm raging behind his cool and calm demeanor this morning.
We just got to watch the facade fall, as Palaniuk turned what could have been a near miss right at the boat into one of the most epic fish catches of the season. As a nice bass came up behind his swimbait, Palaniuk took his hand off the reel and pushed his rod tip out as far as he could to figure 8 his bait, in hopes that the bass would commit.
Commit it did. Palaniuk boat flipped the short lined big one and preceded to lose his mind, in a beautiful way. His excitement was uncontainable as he celebrated this crucial fish catch. “That was so freaking rad!” — one of the dozen phrases that spewed out of BP as he put one of the fish he knows he needs into the boat. These are the kind that will win him his second AOY if he can get a limit of them, no matter what the rest of the field catches.
And those are Palaniuk’s pressure valve wide open exact intentions, to leave nothing to chance here this week.
