For anyone who wasn’t able to watch the start of Bassmaster LIVE here on Day 3, the anglers absolutely wrecked them this morning. We saw the best bite on Day 1 come during the latter part of the incoming tide, which was happening as the boats left the dock on Day 1. Day 2, we expected to see something similar, we’ll dig into the BassTrakk data from Day 2 in just a moment to see if that actually happened. But this morning, the bite was definitely on fire for the first two hours of the day.
Day 2 was definitely tougher than Day 1, we could all tell that based on the coverage on Bassmaster LIVE. The actual numbers from BassTrakk show the same story, with the total catches logged into our unofficial, on-the-water leaderboard dropping from 684 to 558. Here’s the breakdown of those catches by the hour.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | |
| 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. | 42 | 57 |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 121 | 86 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 125 | 89 |
| 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 91 | 60 |
| 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 88 | 61 |
| 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 66 | 67 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 48 | 42 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 50 | 47 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 28 | 33 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 21 | 13 |
| 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | 4 | 3 |
| Total | 684 | 558 |
The morning bite window wasn’t quite as productive on Day 2, as compared to Day 1, though the bite between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m was again the strongest of the day. The numbers in the 7- to 10- window dropped almost evenly by hour from Day 1 to Day 2. But then we saw almost identical catches from Days 1 and 2 between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Looking at the better bites from Days 1 and 2, we can see that the total number of bass over 2-pounds drop as well. Here’s the breakdown of those bass by size.
| | Day 1 | Day 2 |
| 2-pounders | 63 | 35 |
| 3-pounders | 12 | 15 |
| 4-pounders | 1 | 0 |
| 5-pounders | 2 | 1 |
| Total | 78 | 51 |
And here’s the breakdown of those better bites by time of day.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | |
| 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. | 0 | 4 |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 6 | 8 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 14 | 6 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 12 | 3 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 14 | 3 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 7 | 7 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 11 | 4 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 5 | 10 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 5 | 5 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 2 | 1 |
| 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | 2 | 0 |
Interestingly, the better fish were scattered throughout the day more on Day 2 than they were on Day 1. Thursday, most of the big bites came in the same midmorning window as the bulk of the overall catches. But Day 2 saw better fish caught off and on all day.
What does all of this look like when comparing it to the tidal chart? The tide is advancing 45 minutes or so each day, which is stretching out the incoming tide bite in the morning and helping the anglers have a little more time to catch them before the high tide peaks a little later every day. When that tide tops out and the water goes slack, the bite falls off dramatically. This bodes well for the morning bite to continue to play the biggest role tomorrow.
