Day 3 of the Minn Kota Bassmaster Elite as St. Lawrence River was eventful to say the least. Our 2023 AOY race was decided, with Kyle Welcher coming out on top. Several anglers learned their fates pertaining to 2024 Classic and Elite qualifications. And the field was cut to the Top 10 for Championship Sunday.
Let’s take a look back a Day 3’s data collected through BassTrakk to see the fish catches that factored into all of that. We had only the Top 50 anglers fish on Saturday, as opposed to the full field of 102 on Day 1 and 2. As always, this has to be taken into consideration when looking at the numbers below. Doubling the Day 3 numbers is the easiest way to do this. There were 552 bass entered into BassTrakk on Day 1, 550 on Day 2, and 391 on Day 3.
Doubling that number to 782, the fishing looks to have been astronomically better yesterday. Here’s the breakdown of those catches by time of day.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 39 | 24 | 17 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 89 | 91 | 76 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 69 | 91 | 96 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 106 | 88 | 81 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 53 | 82 | 54 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 69 | 65 | 37 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 65 | 53 | 23 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 48 | 38 | 7 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 14 | 18 | n/a |
| Total | 552 | 550 | 391 |
Let’s bring in the numbers we gathered from weigh-in each day, to double-check this data.
| Limits | # of Fish Weighed | Total Weight | |
| Day 1 | 101 | 509 | 2012-10 |
| Day 2 | 99 | 499 | 2100-08 |
| Day 3 | 49 | 249 | 1084-12 |
These numbers were far more consistent day to day. Double the total weight and number of bass weighed on Day 3, and you’ll get roughly what we saw the previous two days. Let’s look at the big bass (those over 4 pounds) entered into BassTrakk each day. Here are those catches by size.
| | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 |
| 4-pounders | 132 | 164 | 113 |
| 5-pounders | 38 | 33 | 34 |
| 6-pounders | 5 | 2 | 5 |
And here are those catches by time of day.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | |
| 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. | 15 | 5 | 4 |
| 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. | 24 | 25 | 24 |
| 9 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. | 18 | 25 | 28 |
| 10 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. | 31 | 32 | 28 |
| 11 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | 16 | 23 | 25 |
| 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. | 19 | 28 | 23 |
| 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. | 25 | 24 | 16 |
| 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | 21 | 23 | 4 |
| 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. | 6 | 14 | n/a |
| Total | 175 | 199 | 152 |
These big fish numbers were again a lot higher when doubled to 304. This discrepancy in Day 3 numbers can most likely be accounted for by these two factors: the 50 anglers who were catching them best were the ones still on the water and there were far more anglers on average that had marshals reporting on Day 3 than there were on Day 1 and 2.
Regardless, isolating the Day 3 numbers, we can see that again the mid-morning bite was the strongest when it came to numbers. The big bite was a little steadier a little longer on Day 3, which again paralleled what we saw on Day 2 in particular.
