With Day 3 winding down, it’s time to turn our attention to the Top 10 cutline. Early on Day 1, we started to get an idea of how tough it is on the Sabine River this go round, and the pundits began to pull back a bit on their pre-tournament predictions of the weight needed to make it to Championship Sunday.
Prior to the event, many thought it would take 10 pounds a day to fish on Sunday. That bar was barely met on Day 1 however, with Mike Huff in 10th with 10-8. After Day 2, Hunter Shryock sat in 10th with 18-10 (9 pounds, 5 ounces per day). Day 3 has seen a really strong bite, so adding another 9-5 to the bottom line seems fair, and 27-15 makes for as good a guess as any when trying to pinpoint what the anglers will need to fish tomorrow.
With less than two hours remaining, only four anglers estimate having this much or more: Brock Mosley (33-12), Keith Poche (28-14), Matty Wong (28-0) and Clark Wendlandt (27-15). All of these anglers likely have a little more than they’re showing on BassTrakk, and should be safe to fish tomorrow.
Kenta Kimura, Alex Wetherell, Hunter Shryock and Matt Robertson are all within a pound of this supposed mark to make. And, again, most of these anglers are likely a little closer to 28 pounds than they are predicting, and one more bite at most will likely lock them in.
The six anglers in the bubble area right now are Jacob Powroznik in 9th (26-9), Kyle Welcher in 10th (26-8), Chad Pipkens in 11th (26-6), Matt Herren in 12th (25-14), John Crews in 13th (25-2) and Kyoya Fujita in 14th (25-2). A heavy 2-pounder for any of these first three will likely put him safely in the cut, since they all have less than 7 pounds in the boat. The other three anglers are hovering around the 10-pound mark today, and so they’ll need a 3-pound-plus fish to really make a run at it.
