Jacob Powroznik had the third-place bag of 24-14 Thursday. He didn't mind going into detail about his game plan, and it might help explain why the early morning hours are key for so many anglers.
"There's a shad spawn going on in the grass," he said. "In practice, if you sat out there long enough, (bass) would come up schooling. But (Tuesday and Wednesday) night it got pretty cold and kind of killed it. It should get better the rest of the week.
"(The shad) are actually spawning at night. Then they just kind of lay over for a couple of hours (in the morning). That's where the bass are.
"You just got to find the bait. Where the shad are spawning on those hard walls on that grass line. When you run into them, then you settle down and fish right there."
Powroznik didn't seem to mind talking about it because so many other anglers are doing the same thing.
"We are getting lots of bites – 30, 40, 50 a day in the mornings," he said. "It will last for a couple of hours, then I'm just going bed-fishing."
That's also why boat number was so important Thursday. J Todd Tucker had No. 16 for Thursday's takeoff, and caught the second-place bag of 25 pounds. He caught them in 45 minutes.
"It's the fastest I've ever caught that much weight," Tucker said.
His boat number was 92 today. We just found him, and he's struggling.
"If you don't catch 'em early, it sucks," said Tucker, who has 3 keepers that weigh "about 7 or 8 pounds."
The early hours weren't crucial for everyone yesterday. But you had to have a backup plan for after the shad spawn bite died.