If not for a livewell mishap on Day Two, Tommy Biffle could be at least 3 pounds closer to the lead than the 8 pounds, 11 ounces he trailed by entering Sunday. Biffle has been camped in the Fox River, just below De Pere Dam. He caught 17-1 there Thursday and had 16-10 Saturday.
The disaster occurred Friday when Biffle had a five-bass limit in his livewells before noon. That's when he noticed that an electrical short had burned a fuse in his livewell aerating system, and his three smallest bass were dead. B.A.S.S. rules call for a 4-ounce penalty on
every dead fish, and, of course, you can't cull a dead one either.
So Biffle was essentially done for the day, unless he could catch something bigger than the two good ones he had alive in his livewell.
"I thought it's stupid to fish at this point," he said. "But it's even stupider not to fish."
Biffle finished with 13-12 Thursday, which wasn't bad considering the circumstances. But it left him a deficit unlikely to be overcome today.
"I would need for the wind to blow and make it tough on those guys going north," Biffle said. "I'm not catching the 20-pound stringers they are."
But Biffle may have gotten an unexpected break from the weather today, since the wind is barely blowing at all, and that has made fishing tough to the north. Biffle and 10th-place finalist Stephen Browning are the only two anglers in the Fox River today, so they've got more room to work than they've had all week.