Event: Lay Lake 2023
What I faced: With the mid-March event bringing warm, stable conditions, Palaniuk found a diverse array of options. He would directly leverage some while indirectly benefiting from others.
As Palaniuk explained, opting to forego a top-shelf temptation in favor of a time-sensitive strategy rewarded him with greater-than-expected opportunity. Unfortunately, an unforeseen mishap plus a regrettable decision ended up costing him dearly.
“I didn’t have a great practice; I had only found one area that I felt had enough for one day,” Palaniuk said. “I was gonna try to ride that first day and just hopefully cut a check.
“That’s what I thought after practice, but there ended up being more fish in that area than I’d thought, and I found myself in a position to win.”
Palaniuk described his main area as a small backwater close to takeoff. With an inflowing creek, a mostly flat bottom sprouting grass and occasional hard spots, Palaniuk caught his fish in 1 to 3 feet of water.
The region, he said, has typically held a good population of fish, so he felt comfortable making this his starting spot. Beyond that, he entered the tournament with a big question mark.
“It was kind of a last ditch effort in practice,” Palaniuk said of his soon-to-be-impressive spot. “It opened my eyes to how many fish can live in a small area.”
Palaniuk said the fish were mostly postspawn, but he had found a wave of the last few spawning fish. Adding in the occasional fry guarder broadened the opportunity.
“Also, we were on the Coosa River, which is the Holy Grail of shad spawns and swimming a jig. I felt like that helped me, because it pulled a lot of guys to go do that first thing in the morning. That allowed me to be able to go and fish in that area without a lot of pressure.”
Palaniuk got off to a strong start with a Day 1 limit of 19 pounds, 7 ounces, which put him in first place. For the next two days, he’d remain in the top spot with successive bags that went 16-5 and 15-11. Day 4 yielded a significantly lighter bag, 11-3, and Palaniuk’s four-day total of 62-10 fell just 2 ounces behind that of tournament winner Will Davis Jr.
What I did: While most of the field tried to jump-start their day on the shad spawn, Palaniuk went right to a 6-pound bed fish he had marked in practice. Catching that kicker put the wind in his sails.
“That fish was pretty obvious,” Palaniuk said. “I was Boat # 65 and I know some of the guys had been in this area during practice, but I didn’t see another boat for a couple of hours. I had 19 pounds before I saw another boat.”
Palaniuk continued bed fishing each day and caught most of his fish on a drop shot with an XZone Deception Worm. The key point here is the bait’s neutral buoyancy kept it above the soft bottom.
“That allowed me to fish it all over the place,” Palaniuk said. “I could fish it in grass, I could pitch it to stumps, or whatever I saw. It allowed me to be efficient, but also, if I needed to fish slowly, I could drag it across the bottom.”
Palaniuk also caught a few of his fish on a Booyah Pad Crasher Jr. And when he started spotting bream beds the final day, he threw a Megabass Vision 110 jerkbait.
“After having a big bag on Day 1, the next 3 days, I just kept making laps in there. It was like fishing a backyard pond.
“After that first day, I didn’t know where my bites would come. I thought, ‘No way it will last four days,’ but every day, it kept me in the hunt. There was so much going on, with fish coming and going.”
What made the difference: Looking back, Palaniuk sees both positive and negative forces influencing his outcome. First was that shad spawn’s magnetic appeal.
“A big impact for me was the shad spawn pulling a lot of guys,” he said. “I had found those fish in practice, but on Day 1, when I got a late boat draw, I thought it would be too late by the time I got there.
“When they got close to calling my boat number, I noticed that no one was going in that direction. If we hadn’t had the shad spawn, more guys would have gone in there early.”
What ended up biting Palaniuk was the timeless angling adage: “Don’t leave fish to find fish.” In this case, Palaniuk went against his own logic when he found himself in a tight spot.
“The final day was my toughest day, and I felt like I needed one more good bite, one more 3-pounder to secure the win,” Palaniuk said. “I had spent the previous three days and most of the fourth day in this one small area, so I felt like my best chances were to leave that area and go fish some other stuff that I really hadn’t put pressure on that week.
“What I didn’t realize was that, while I was doing that, my livewell divider had come loose.”
With no way to anticipate or perceive such a mishap, Palaniuk was unaware that one of his lip-mounted cull tags had gotten pinned by the displaced divider and due to the decreased mobility, one of his fish had expired.
“When I got to the weigh-in and started pulling my fish out, I found that dead fish,” he said. “I ended up with a 4-ounce dead fish penalty, and I lost by 2 ounces.
“In hindsight, if I would have not left that area, I already had enough to win and that fish most likely wouldn’t have gotten stuck in the divider.”
What I learned: Palaniuk does not dodge the reality of how leaving his spot proved unnecessary and counterproductive. Moreover, after that tournament, he switched to a different culling system.
“I now use DD26 Cull ID tags that clip to the dorsal fins of the fish, so there’s really no chance of that happening again,” Palaniuk said. “I’ve been running those for a couple of years now and the fish seem to do a lot better.
“That was a heartbreaker. I knew it was gonna be close, and I had no idea until I reached in there to get that fish.”
Despite the disappointment, Palaniuk harvested wisdom from the experience and filed the memory according to a competitive principle that he holds dearly.
“I’d like to say, ‘I’d like to do it over again,’ but part of me also thinks that it just wasn’t my time to win,” he said. “That’s Will Davis’ home lake, and he ended up being the one to win.”
