With the deluge of rain that cam overnight I wanted to know just how much that would influence the early morning strategies. That screen grab from my phone is what it looked like this morning around 4:00 a.m.
This morning when it was announced the takeoff would be delayed until 7:25 a.m. I posed this question to the anglers while shooting BASSCam videos.
What will the delay do to the early bite?
The reason why is the shad spawn that is underway. Judging the wide assortment of big swimbaits on the front decks of the boats the answers were predictable. You can watch those comments on the video page.
One angler said the lake had come up at least 7 inches overnight and there is more runoff to come. Today and even more tomorrow. Pressure comes next. You can bet that most, if not all the field headed to the shorelines this morning to make the best of what remained of that shad spawn. Plus, there are bass guarding fry, and some have not yet spawned.
Mark Menendez said it best about the merry go round rotation of anglers cycling through the shoreline.
“In practice I caught a ten pounder and it was as arbitrary as anything. There is a big luck factor involved this week, because there is so much pressure on the shorelines. Get on the right rotation in front of someone and you can come in with 35 pounds. Get in the wrong rotation, behind someone, and you can come up with 15 pounds. If a big fish comes into shallow water it’s going to get caught, and you never know who that might be.”