The fish bit fairly well on Day 1 at Pickwick Lake, with 658 reported fish catches from the 91 Elite Series anglers in the competition. And that number comes from catches that were logged into BassTrakk, so it’s safe to say the real number of catches was likely closer to or maybe even exceeded 800. As the day wears on, there are a lot of smaller fish caught that won’t cull, and so marshals and camera operators choose not to enter them into BassTrakk, since those fish have no bearing on the game and are quickly tossed back.
Regardless, even at 658 that’s an average of a little better than 7 fish per angler, and likely closer to 9 per if you factor in the catches not accounted for.
But the real interesting thing that we’ve been eager to see from Day 1’s data is if the current really made the difference it was expected to. On Day 1, the generation of water through Wilson and Pickwick dams increased from around 30,000 units to closer to 60,000 units between 9 and 11 AM. The assumption was that the bite would pckup throughout the day, as the current continued to position the fish better and better. But let’s look at what the numbers actually showed us.
This is the breakdown of when the fish were caught:
7-8: 75
8-9: 119
9-10: 108
10-11: 70
11-12: 82
12-1: 73
1-2: 43
2-3: 57
3-4: 31
There were 170 fish over 3-pounds caught on Day 1. The breakdown looked like this:
3-pounders: 123
4-pounders: 36
5-pounders: 9
6-pounders: 2
Interestingly, the initial breakdown shows that the best bite occurred between 8 and 10 AM, when the water first started to pickup a bit. But then it appears to drop off for a midday lull and then really slow down later in the day. However, there are three important things to remember when dissecting the information from the evening hours: (1) the smaller fish weren’t likely being reported, (2) starting at 3PM the first flight was due in so there wasn’t a full field on the water after that and (3) over half the field likely started making the long run back to weigh-in even before then. So, it’s understandable that the reported numbers in the afternoon would be a little lower.
So, taking all of that into account, let’s only look at the fish catches over 3- pounds that were reported. Breaking the day straight down the middle at 11 o’clock. Of the 170 fish over 3- pounds caught, 93 of them were caught before 11 o’clock, with only 77 coming later in the day.
This is not what we expected to see when we got the data back. The anglers constantly talked on Day 1 about how they were waiting for the evening bite, but by and large the evening bite wasn’t the best for the majority of the Elite competitors.
There were some critical fish caught late thought that are worth noting. Day 1 leader Matt Robertson, AOY leader Brandon Palaniuk and Jason Williamson all made critical culls late. Williamson reported five catches between 3- and 4- pounds all after 3 o’clock, accounting for the majority if not all of his Day 1 weight of 17-4 which has him sitting in 18th place. Robertson caught a 3- pounder and a 4- pounder just before 3 o’clock, which were both likely a pound bigger than his estimated weights since his Day 1 BassTrakk weight was off by about 2-pounds compared to his actual weight measured by Bassmaster’s scales, coming in at 22-6. Palaniuk, who ended the day in 4th, also had a couple critical catches after 3 o’clock, reporting a 3-10 and a 5-0 just before he was due in.
So the afternoon bite was critical for a handful of anglers, but it wasn’t the widespread phenomena we expected to see from end to end on Pickwick. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers after Day 2, to see if the bite really does stall mid-morning and become more widespread later in the day like anglers expected here this week. The predicted generation schedule is similar to Day 1, so we’ll see how it goes here on Day 2 and report back tomorrow.
