Now it’s a 3-hour shootout

Four anglers within a pound of each other – that’s what the BassTrakk leaderboard showed at noon. Austin Felix, Bryan Schmitt, Patrick Walters and Destin DeMarion separated by 15 ounces. And the other six anglers in this Championship Sunday aren’t out of it, especially if the bite turns on this afternoon like it did yesterday. But right now, there’s a lot of head-scratching going on. The overcast skies and wind shift to the south have required some searching for clues.

Bryan Schmitt, who came in leading by 2-5, may have found the best clue. Yesterday he said, “I really feel like my largemouth are barren now. They’re gone.”

At noon on “BASS Live,” after landing a largemouth that helped him a bit, he said, “I feels like my places are reloading. Hopefully I can run all good stuff between now and weigh-in. We need a big bite. I don’t know what anybody’s got, but I know I don’t have enough right now.”