As Todd Faircloth said Wednesday, "The wind is your friend on these clear-water lakes."
So these won't be friendly skies for the Elite Series anglers over the next four days, if the current weather forecast holds up. It's predicted to be cloud-less and essentially calm through Sunday, with only a 10 percent chance of rain on Saturday. The wind forecast is less than 10 miles an hour and from a different direction each day.
But after this long hot summer, the rest of the forecast is a breath of early autumn air – highs in the mid 80s and lows in the 60s every day.
Every angler I talked to yesterday and this morning before launch mentioned that Oneida Lake was fishing tougher than it had in the four previous Elite Series events here. Keep an eye on the catch-rates at BASSTrakk as the day goes along. That early-morning bite that Todd Faircloth and others have capitalized on today may be the key to the tournament. As the sun gets higher, those tough practice days everyone mentioned may become the norm in this tournament as well.