After three days of practice, several Elite Series anglers were asked to predict the four-day winning total weight for the SiteOne Bassmaster Elite at Cayuga Lake. The heaviest estimate was Seth Feider’s prediction of 83 pounds, 2 ounces, and most were in the 60- to 70-pound range.
After two days of tournament competition, it’s obvious that Cayuga Lake is fishing better than anyone expected and better than it has in the two previous Elite Series tournaments here.
“It’s going to take 22 ½ pounds a day. What’s that?” said Chris Zaldain. “Ninety pounds? Yeah, 90 pounds. Who would have thought?”
The top four anglers after two days are on pace for 90 pounds: leader Jeff Gustafson with 49-1, second place Zaldain with 46-0, third place David Mullins with 45-14 and fourth place Scott Canterbury with 45-2.
Feider, the most confident angler coming into this event, felt discouraged yesterday after finishing with 21-8 and 21-5 on Days 1 and 2 for a fifth-place total of 42-13.
“I was kind of hoping those guys would fall off a little bit (Friday),” said Feider, who moved up from ninth place after Day 1. “I figured those guys would go down a little bit, and I could 21 ‘em to death. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. So I’m going to go and try to catch everything I can (Saturday) and burn everything I’ve got to the ground.
“I’ve got no choice. If I don’t have 25 pounds, I don’t see me winning this tournament by any means.”