Santee Cooper Lakes have been getting a bit of a bad rap the last few days, by the anglers and members of the coverage team alike. We were all still a little hungover from the smashfest that happened on Lake Murray last week. But looking at the data coming in from BassTrakk, the fishing isn’t all that bad. In fact, it’s fantastic when it comes to big bites.
We’ll get into the big bass data in a minute, but let’s start by looking at the official results that we saw on stage. There were 72 limits brought in on Day 1. A total of 450 fish were weighed to tally 1,465 pounds, 12 ounces.
There were 520 fish catches reported on BassTrakk, including culled bass. Here’s the breakdown of those catches by time of day to see when the better bite windows came.
| Day 1 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 39 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 71 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 66 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 77 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 66 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 59 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 66 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 55 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 21 |
| Total: | 520 |
Looking at the above chart, we can see and very consistent bite throughout the day. This is a little surprising. The assumption was the shad spawn and bedding bass that had been found in practice should have produced bigger numbers early. But thinking back to what we watched on LIVE yesterday with anglers like Drew Benton and Drew Cook, the bedding bass were very hard to get to bite. And Steve Kennedy started his day on a shad spawn but had to fish it hard for hours to generate multiple bites.
Let’s look at the bigger bass logged into BassTrakk to see if the bite window shifts at all. Seventy-seven bass over 4 pounds were logged into BassTrakk on Day 1. Here’s the breakdown of those by weight.
| Day 1 | |
| 4-pounders | 30 |
| 5-pounders | 28 |
| 6-pounders | 16 |
| 7-pounders | 2 |
| 8-pounders | 1 |
| Total: | 77 |
Here’s the breakdown by the hour of those 77 bass over 4 pounds.
| Day 1 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 7 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 16 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 7 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 9 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 7 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 10 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 7 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 9 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 4 |
Now we see some interesting data start to emerge. Sixteen bass over 4 pounds were logged between 8 and 9 a.m. on Day 1. This hour was nearly twice as productive as all others, with the second-best big bite coming between 12 and 1 p.m. This data likely supports the expectation we had coming into the event. After reaching their starting spots and having a few minutes to get dialed in, anglers were able to catch a few big ones relating to the shad spawn and pester a few of the big bedders into biting.
Day 2 is reaching the midway point now. The total number of big bites seems to be falling off a little, with a lot of the bedders having already been caught on Day 1 and the shallows not replenishing as we make our way into the post-spawn. We’ll see what the Day 2 BassTrakk numbers show tomorrow.
