Typically on Day 2, there’s a great deal of shuffling from the top of the leaderboard to the bottom. This is not the case today, with 8 of the anglers who started the day in the Top 10 still holding serve. This is particularly impressive considering the start of today’s competition came some 36 hours after the scales closed on Day 1. And it speaks to how the Elites are catching them this week.
It’s been talked about ad nauseam already, and we’re just two days into this, but almost all of the anglers at the top of the leaderboard are chasing around schools of suspended smallmouth in 30-to-50 feet, and some even deeper. These fish are hard to pressure because there are so many of them and they are so far below the surface. Even with several angler fishing in the same area, new pods of smallmouth keep showing up out of the 100-plus feet of water nearby.
The anglers that landed on these best areas on Day 1 are continuing to catch them on Day 2, and it doesn’t look like this trend will stop anytime soon. These fish aren’t subject to move like shallow spawners would in the spring. No, they’ve settled in for the time being, and they’ll be back at the buffet come 7 a.m. when the Elites get the go-ahead again tomorrow. And you can go ahead and count on 6 or 7 of today’s Top 10 fishing on Sunday.
