After a bearable fog delay this morning, the Top 50 are all out on Lay and the action is in full swing. Leaders Brandon Palaniuk and Will Davis Jr are having a slow start to the day, Palaniuk with two small keepers for 2-4 and Davis still looking for his first fish.
Jay Przekurat has had the best morning thus far, with a small limit of 9 pounds. He raced up the leaderboard and settled in on top for a few minutes, but Palaniuk has since regained the lead with his two squeakers. Though Palaniuk’s two and two of Przekurat’s are all less than two pounds each, all bites are good on Lay right now. They either give an angler a limit filler fish or two, or a clue as to what’s working at minimum. Justin Hamner in third and Alex Redwine in fourth have a few of these confidence builders in the boat as well. Davis sits in fifth with zero on the board for now.
Though every bite counts in this one, it’s those bigger ones that make or break your day. Jeff Gustafson has one such fish pushing 4 pounds, and it has propelled him up from 27th to 6th. He has a couple of 2-pounders to go with his kicker and is now two good bites away from a really solid day. Seth Feider sits in 7th with a couple of keepers, and Bryan New with a 3-8 and a small keeper sits in 8th at the moment. Brandon Cobb has a couple of 2-pounders and then Bernie Schultz rounds out the Top 10, with nothing to show for the morning so far.
Palaniuk has been telling us all week that he doesn’t know if or when he’ll get another bite, so it’s not all that surprising that he’s having a slow morning. But a slow morning certainly doesn’t mean he won’t catch them by day’s end. It is surprising that Schultz hasn’t caught anything on his buzzbait, and perhaps more alarming as this bite should only get worse as the day wears on. And Will Davis Jr may have his work cut out for him as well, with less than stellar current scheduled for today. But if anyone knows how to adjust here, is Davis. Keep an eye on Hamner too, he’s figuring them out as this tournament progresses. After weighing the second-fourth biggest bag of the event, Hamner said on stage yesterday that he hasn’t even hit the good stuff yet.
