ORANGE, Texas — With a 2-pound, 1-ounce lead over his closest competitor, Chris Lane is definitely in the driver's seat going into the final day of the Bassmaster Elite at the Sabine River presented by STARK Cultural Venues.
But any type of bass fishing pattern established over the previous three days may be worthless on Sunday. The heavy rain and rising muddy water that came Saturday has created a blank slate for the finale.
"I told Chris, if you get a limit (Sunday), you're going to win," said Aaron Martens, who is in second place. "It's going to be hard to get a limit. It was hard today. It will be harder tomorrow."
Shaw Grigsby is in third place, 3-10 behind Lane. With a total of 11-10 Saturday, Grigsby gained 7 ounces on Lane, who had 11-3. But he could have been so much closer with a 5-bass limit. Grigsby only had 4 keepers.
"The thing that was really disappointing is that I watched a 2 ½-pounder come up and eat something where I'd just fished," Grigsby said. "I tried everything in the world to catch that fish and couldn't get it to hit anything."
The 12 finalists Sunday may have to try everything to get anything to bite. The lure patterns established all week will definitely change.
"Absolutely," said Grigsby. "I'll be throwing some moving baits, maybe a spinnerbait or a Pure Poison (bladed jig) because it's really muddy."
Martens will be doing some of that too, saying, "It's going to be a new ballgame. I may have to pull out my black spinnerbait again. I caught like 18 pounds here the first day of practice on a black spinnerbait. I'll do something weird like that."
Lane didn't want to show his hand, but he hinted that he may have found a winning pattern at the end of the day.
"I had a couple of last-minute flurries which might completely change my game plan all together," Lane said. "Right before weigh-in I got a plan B.
"But because of the conditions that have occurred today, anything could happen."
Although everyone in the final 12 outside the top three is at least 6-11 behind Lane, it wouldn't be out of the question for someone like Mike McClelland to rise from fourth place and win. That's especially true for McClelland since he is doing something completely different to begin with.
For the third straight day, McClelland made the 114-mile run from Orange across Galveston Bay. He had the heaviest bag of the top four – 12 pounds even.
McClelland is fishing in two dead-end canals, which don't have muddy runoff flowing into them.
"It has crossed my mind," said McClelland of making a big comeback. "But I don't know that my stuff will stay any cleaner. If my spots do stay cleaner, I think I do have a shot to give these guys a run.
"But I'm down over six pounds. On a body of water like this, where you don't have a lot of six-pounders, to come back and win is going to be pretty tough."
It's going to be pretty tough just to make that long run again. McClelland's buddy, Jeff Kriet, found that out the hard way Saturday. A shivering cold Kriet got to check-in 20 minutes late, and couldn't count any of the 7-plus pounds (on three fish) that he'd caught.
"When I left out of Galveston Bay, I guess I broke a battery strap," Kriet said. "I had no electronics. I had to run 20 miles across Galveston Bay with no GPS. It was really bad rough. Three- and four-foot chop, just chop, chop, chop, chop.
"There was no visibility. I had to wait until I saw a tanker. That's brutal. You don't want to do that, run the shipping channel."
So, yeah, anything could happen Sunday. But Chris Lane is the clear favorite to close out this tournament.
And that might be the only clear thing left on the Sabine River.