PARIS, Tenn. — David Walker had a good day on Kentucky Lake yesterday, but it was unlike any day he’s experienced over several decades of bass fishing on this 160,000-acre Tennessee River impoundment.
“The weights aren’t telling the story,” said the Sevierville, Tenn., pro who will be 53 on May 14. “I’m stunned by how good the weights are.”
Indeed, with Chris Zaldain’s 24-pound, 3-ounce bag leading and eight other anglers topping 20 pounds, the totals were good on Day 1 of the Berkley Bassmaster Elite at Kentucky Lake presented by Abu Garcia. But it was nothing like Walker has experienced here before.
Walker’s 5-bass limit weighing 19-10 put him in a tie for 12th place with Ott Defoe. Walker lost a 5-pounder that would have put him in the 23-pound range for the day. That’s the bad news. The good news is that he landed a 6-13 and had another 5-pounder in his bag. There’s little margin for error. He had eight bites all day.
“Always before the key to getting 20 pounds here was figuring out how to catch big numbers,” Walker said. “You had to keep culling and cycle through a lot of fish to get to 20 pounds. If you were only catching a couple dozen, that wasn’t enough.
“Now the weights are still good, but you’re only catching seven or eight. Everybody in (the weigh-in) line was saying the same thing, ‘I culled twice. I culled three times.’
“It’s a very strange dynamic. At this time of the year, under these conditions – overcast, rainy, first of May – if they aren’t biting now, I don’t know how you’re going to make them bite. We should be catching a lot of fish.”
Because the difference between success and failure is so thin, you will probably see a flip-flop on the leaderboard from Day 1 to Day 2, just like in last week’s Elite Series tournament on Grand Lake. But the struggle for consistency there had to do with weather. It appears there’s something else making consistency a challenge at Kentucky Lake.
“It’s going to be really, really hard to repeat what I did (Friday),” said Jason Christie, who is fifth with 20-13. “I’m thinking about going to a completely new area.
“I’ve been getting eight to 10 bites a day in practice, and that’s what I had (Friday). I’m just fortunate I got three big ones.”
Jacob Powroznik, who is 10th with 19-13, echoed those thoughts, saying, “If you get 10 bites a day, a few of them are going to be good ones. But it’s hard to get 10 bites a day. I think you’re going to see a lot of inconsistency.”
Ten bites a day on Kentucky Lake in early May under optimum fishing conditions – that’s not something any of these anglers are familiar with. As David Walker said, “The weights aren’t telling the story.”