You may recall that Brandon Card was the first angler to catch a limit yesterday. He had five keepers 42 minutes after the 6 a.m. start. But it could have been so much better.
“I made my first cast just to see if my jerkbait was running right,” Card said yesterday. “On my second cast, I had a backlash, and I picked that out. On my third cast, it was jerk, jerk, thump, and I’m like, ‘what do I have hooked?'”
It was a big smallmouth bass that jumped about 30 feet from the boat and spit the jerkbait.
“I’d say it was 5 1/2 pounds, conservatively, probably six,” Card said. “It was as wide as it was long. I was laughing. You can’t make this up.”
Card finished in 12th place on Day 1 with 16-4. But that 5 1/2- to 6-pounder would have replaced a 2 1/2 pounder that he weighed in. Card would have been over 19 pounds without the heart-breaker.
Card was boat #4 in the takeoff order yesterday, so he got there early to what he discovered was a “community hole.” He said there were about eight other pros fishing around him at one time or another.
Card left as boat No. 104 today. That’s on top of the one-hour delay in the start due to high winds. In other words, there won’t be an early bite for anyone today, especially Card.