A few days past the one year anniversary of his death, Ray Scott’s dream and vision of stadium bass fishing continues to come true.
Brandon Palaniuk, who held onto his Day One lead for another day at Lay Lake, is fishing one of the sport’s hallowed playing fields, the back of Beeswax Creek, the confined space where in 2010 Kevin VanDam claimed the third of his four Bassmaster Classic trophies.
As the field griped about the “grind” during practice, it’s almost a certainty that every angler knew about and likely checked out this little backwater. It’s remarkably close to the weigh-in. You could get there by trolling motor or in a kayak just as well as with the power of 250 horses. No long runs, no bucking big waves, no need to go “from one dam to the other” — just idle under the bridge, no tricks, jumps or controversial maneuvers needed.
“If there’s an amphitheater for bass fishing, it’s right there on the other side of the bridge,” said B.A.S.S. photographer James Overstreet. This is similar to what Scott envisioned when he came up with the Megabucks “hole courses” in which the anglers would be visible to spectators at all times. The folks standing on the bridge today and tomorrow may not be able to see 10 or 12 anglers, but they’re seeing one of the most popular, and clearly one of the best.
The back of Beeswax is a known commodity, but I don’t think it would be accurate to call it a “community hole.” In order to qualify as such, an area must be capable of holding a community of anglers – however that term is defined, by Palaniuk, VanDam, Mike Iaconelli, or anyone else – and this spot just doesn’t have adequate real estate for that.
So how does Palaniuk have it all to himself?
Part of it may be that the rest of the field thought this area too obvious for consideration. Another may be Palaniuk himself – given his status as the youngest elder in the sport, he commands respect. An unknown rookie in the same position might not receive the same deference or elbow room. Finally, the best anglers throughout the sport’s history just seem to know exactly how and when to commandeer a key stretch, or even a key cast, to themselves. Think back to when Palaniuk won an Open on Virginia’s James River in 2021 – he made an hour long run to the base of Walker’s Dam, a universally-known but remarkably small strike zone (where Randy Howell had won an earlier Open), passing multiple tournament launches along the way, and still had it to himself. Call it intuition, call it luck, but careers are built on those types of situations where the stars align.
Still, there are two main differences between VanDam’s win 13 years ago and Palaniuk’s path forward this week. First, KVD only needed his fish to last three days, as opposed to the four days of fishing involved in a regular season Elite tournament. Second, and perhaps more importantly, while there are certainly some resident fish in his area, and weekly deposits of tournament releases supplement them, when VanDam won the fish were moving toward him, while this week any fish in motion are likely heading away from Brandon.
Will it be enough? If not, does he have something else even close to as good?
Furthermore, can he temporarily leave to rest it without fear that someone else will come in and deplete his pets?
For a decision that seems so simple in hindsight, it’s starting to get pretty darn complicated.
There’s lots more fishing left to watch, but in the meantime here are my thoughts on the day that brought us to the halfway mark of the Elite Series season:
Another VanDam comparison – I always thought that one of VanDam’s strengths was his comfort in front of a camera or in front of a crowd. He came into the sport better at it than most and just kept improving. The more Day Fours you make, the more you know about how to make the audience work for you. Palaniuk has been similarly talented since Day One, and like Kevin, seems to chew up Day Fours like they’re Tic Tacs. On Bass LIVE today, it was evident how comfortable he was, and how very little seemed to faze him – even with a camera in the boat, a personal cameraman nearby, and a direct link to his graphs for the fans at home. On tough tournaments in particular, it’s about managing fish, maximizing landings and keeping your head level.
The size of the playing field – The pundits have talked and written quite a bit this week about Lay’s limited dimensions. It’s only about 12,000 acres, which makes it less than a tenth the size of the last Elite venue, Santee Cooper, and substantially smaller than average for the tour. This morning, though, as I watched Bob Downey “moping” offshore, I started wondering if 12,000 acres means the same thing as it did a generation ago. Back then, no one would have been doing that; they might not have even been fishing that zone, meaning that the field would’ve been confined into fewer areas. New techniques, and in particular the advances in sonar, have expanded the playing field. At the same time, they’ve also made it easier to eliminate water, enabling anglers to rule out large areas or depth ranges. So I don’t know if 12,000 circa 2000 is the same as 12,000 circa 2023, but it feels like today’s field is fishing more precise spots from a broader range of possibilities.
Range of emotions – Every bass angler who has ever lost a critical fish at boatside cringed when Bernie Schultz landed an estimated 5-2 at 7:21am by grabbing the buzzbait. It seemed to be a recipe for disaster, but didn’t result in any problems. Schultz himself seemed remarkably relieved once he actually got the bass inside of his boat, repeating, “We’re in. We’re in. We’re in.” Bass world likewise collectively exhaled.
Schultz poised for success – Bernie Schultz has struggled over the past several years of Elite competition, finishing in the bottom half of the AOY race in every season since 2016. Heading into today he was in 19th place overall, and is poised to move up as his position at Lay Lake rose today from 5th to 3rd. He has every reason to expect to improve upon that, too. In 2015, when he finished 18th overall, he helped his cause by finishing 15th, 6th and 27th in the last three events. The first and third of those were held at the St. Lawrence River and Lake St. Clair, respectively, two venues that remain on this year’s schedule. Since the beginning of the Elite Series competition in 2006, Schultz has 28 Top 20 finishes 10 of them In New York, plus one in Green Bay.
Happy roommates – Schultz’s traveling partner Cliff Prince, with whom he shares information, was 80th with 8-14 yesterday, but today he nearly doubled that amount with 16-10, including the day’s big bass of 6-4. With 25-08, he’s in 21st place and easily lived to fish again another day.
Cut weight math – The traditional formula of estimating the cut weight by doubling what it was on Day One and adding a pound would’ve put the cut weight at 23-12. It ended up being 21-9, just about a pound less than doubling the Day One weight. Today on Live, Ronnie Moore said that the traditional formula only applies when a lake is fishing well, and that when it’s fishing poorly the formula should be to double and subtract a pound. By that metric, it was almost dead-on.
Big bag buffet – Yesterday there were 35 bags of 12 pounds or more, including seven over 15 pounds, and three over 17. Today the field again produced two bags over 17 but the number of bags over 15 grew to 12. The number over 12 pounds grew by one to 36.
Feels like the first time – Okeechobee and Seminole produced first-time B.A.S.S. winners before Drew Benton broke the streak at Murray. First-timer Luke Palmer made it three of four after Santee Cooper. Will Davis Jr. (2nd), Bernie Schultz (3rd), Justin Hamner (4th) and Matt Herren (8th) are the four anglers in the top ten for whom a victory this week would be their first professional win with B.A.S.S.
Mixed bag – Reigning Classic champ Jeff Gustafson weighed in five spotted bass yesterday and five largemouths today. Odds are strong to very strong that he won’t weigh in five smallmouths tomorrow, but if anyone can do it, it’ll be Gussy.
Alabama improves – After Day One, Will Davis Jr. was the highest-ranked Alabama angler in 7th, one of two in the top ten, while there were three below 90th. After Day Two, Davis moved up to 2nd, one of four Alabamians now in the top ten, while only one of their fellow home-staters finished below 90th.
International match play – It was a tough event for the non-American-born anglers, with only three of nine making the cut, including two Japanese pros (Kenta Kimura in 25th and Kyoya Fujita squeezing into 50th) and one Canadian pro (Jeff Gustafson, 27th). The average finish for the four Canadians was 52nd and the for the four Japanese pros it was 63rd. Carl Jocumsen, the only Australian, finished 62nd.
Justin Hamner, who jumped from 29th to 4th on the strength of his 17-14 limit – “I’ve got my eyes on that blue trophy on this pond….We ain’t even hit the good stuff yet.”
