Day 2: Arkansas River
1:31 p.m. — Brandon Palaniuk just caught a near 5-pounder that helped him make a massive cull, going from an also-ran up into the top 10. Two days in a row he’s had a fish take the words out of his mouth as he semi-pleaded for a big bite. That’s a superpower you can’t buy.
1:29 p.m. — Jason Christie is heading back to the lock. He doesn’t know it but he’s unofficially in 13th place. “If we can catch a big one we might scare someone,” he said. “We’ll be in position to scare someone, I might say.”
12:46 p.m. — Jason Christie, who had dropped out of the top 10, has gone on a mini-tear. One bass missed his buzzbait, he pitched another lure back in and hooked up. He’s convinced it wasn’t the same fish, though. The one he landed culled out a 1-8, but he was certain that he’d seen a giant in the first instance. He then caught a second decent keeper, but still not the giant. "I still think there's another one there that's 6 or 7 pounds," he said.
12:28 p.m. — For the first time in a long time, we have a new leader. With a nearly 6-pounder, Jacob Foutz has topped 18 pounds for the second straight day and has surged past Fisher Anaya by half a pound.
12:08 p.m. — We went from Caleb Hudson scoping up a giant from the clearer water to seeing Austin Felix catch a kicker – albeit not quite as big – on a popping frog. That fish, estimated at 5 pounds, culled out a 1-4. It brings him up near the lead but still a couple of pounds behind leader Fisher Anaya. Felix still has an hour and a half to fish before he’ll need to make the run to the lock.
11:58 a.m. — Another angler making a move today is “Aussie/Okie” Carl Jocumsen. He was 56th yesterday, but only 5 ounces outside of the cut. Today he’s trying to leave no doubt about whether he'll be competing on Saturday. With an estimated 17-3 in the livewell today, unless something goes horribly wrong he should be fishing again. This is where he first qualified for the Elites back in 2014, it’s the state where he earned his lone Elite win, and he lived here for a while.
11:51 a.m. — Chase Sansom reports that conditions at the lower end of Kerr are pretty sporty.
“I would guess 3 foot waves are pretty consistent,” he said. “A lot of guys here in Vian Creek are going to need to leave a bit early to navigate through the waves and make it back to the locks on time. We may see some torn up equipment when they return this afternoon.”
11:33 a.m. — Caleb Hudson, who caught a 5-4 yesterday, just caught one a pound heavier. He played it gingerly, got it into the boat, and the worm fell right out of his quarry’s mouth. That’s living right. It was his fifth fish and now he’ll have to work on culling because he’s still behind unofficial leader Fisher Anaya by over 3 pounds – with a couple of others in between them.
11:24 a.m. — Shane Durrance reports that he caught up with Jeff Gustafson this morning, but this time above the lock. Gussy said that locking through would just take too much time, so he called an audible. He certainly isn’t “moping” today. Instead, he is throwing a soft plastic toad with a tungsten weight attached to give it a little more casting ability. On the retrieve it dips just blow the surface. He said that everyone’s throwing the same type of bait and he wanted to do something a little bit different.
11:05 a.m. — Dalton Tumblin reports that Bob Downey has worked his way up the leaderboard this morning sharing the same creek arm as a large group of anglers, although “he’s about as far back in this creek as you can go. He pretty much has the back of this creek to himself and it’s paid off well. Downey is fishing a swim jig and Texas rig through grass lines along the bank.”
10:55 a.m. — Chase Sansom found the rising Chris Zaldain in Vian Creek alongside Randy Howell and a few other anglers, fishing a windblown stretch. He said that the water in this area is clearer than most of the other sections of Kerr he’s visited.
“I only had 11 pounds yesterday,” Zaldain said. “My scale says 17 and a half, I think I made the cut. I have had a blast fishing here this morning.”
10:41 a.m. — The wind is gassing, which adds a little more to the decision-making process for anglers making the long run to Kerr. Sustained winds are blowing out the south at 11 to 15 mph, with cuts to 27 mph, on the lake. That means the lake is likely rough as a cob, so anglers will have to add some extra run time to the already long haul back to weigh-in.
10:39 a.m. — Craig Lamb continues his magical drone work, capturing the layout of Fisher Anaya’s current locale from above.
10:31 a.m. — Matt Arey, who has suffered this morning from an abundance of company and has therefore contemplated leaving his main area, just got a reason to stay: an approximately 4-pounder that ate his creature bait.
10:26 a.m. — Chris Zaldain has now culled up to an estimated 17-7, pushing him beyond the projected cut weight after ending Day 1 tied for 89th. Which other members of the bottom quartile will make a similar jump? With so many anglers out of range or otherwise not reporting, expect some surprises today. Seth Feider and Carl Jocumsen were both outside of the cut and have 15 or so today, but will likely need more to fish tomorrow.
10:04 a. m. — Jason Christie came into this event as the undisputed favorite — but he just admitted his fellow Elites "took it out of me" after what he thought would be secret spots turned out to not to be so secret.
"I spent a lot of time on the river, because it's changed with the grass and floods," he said. "So I spent a lot of time out here during before the cutoff. I had five spots I would have bet the house no one would find. You know how many I have left?
"These guys find everything."
Christie is still unofficially in 11th right now, according to BASSTrakk, with a limit weighing 6-8.
10:02 a.m. — Comeback alert: Chris Zaldain was tied with Mike Iaconelli for 89th place after Day 1 with 11 pounds even. Per BassTrakk, he has an estimated 16-5 already this morning, which puts him on the verge of hitting our estimated 27-10 cut weight. He might already be there if the weights go down. Either way, he has a lot of time left to fish.
9:59 a.m. — If you are a fishing freak and not watching Live now, drop whatever you are doing and tune in. There’s aerial coverage of Jason Christie’s big grass flat and even from a distance the strikes are unmistakable and heart-stopping. Whatever you think of the rise of technology in fishing, “being there” has never been better.
9:49 a.m. — River events like the Gamakatsu Bassmaster Elite at Arkansas River are all about decisions. Do you maximize your time in pool 16 (takeoff pool), or do you lock down or up?
Fisher Anaya was faced with that decision on Day 2 after catching part of his bag in pool 17 and the other part in 16. Late on Day 1, Anaya locked back down to pool 16 and did a lot of damage in a short amount of time catching fry guarders. Today, he made the decision to start in the same area that he ended up yesterday.
Unfortunately, the big largemouth appear to have moved out and the spotted bass have taken over. Anaya is still off to a solid start with nearly 12 pounds in the boat, but he knows he needs a couple of big largemouth to stay in contention for the rest of the day. The Elite Series rookie has made a move in hopes of doing just that.
9:44 a.m. — Dalton Tumblin reports that Austin Felix has started in an increasingly popular area today. The Minnesota pro has been moving around a good bit and seems to be struggling to find a stretch of bank to himself.
“I'm seeing a boat on just about every stretch of bank around me and anglers are basically playing leap frog around one another,” Tumblin said. “Felix is having a slower start as he only has one fish for about 2 pounds.”
9:40 a.m. — Chase Sansom reports that Brandon Palaniuk is experiencing a rather slow start this morning compared to yesterday morning. He’s locked down and is fishing in Kerr this morning next to the dam.
“Much slower start this morning. Didn’t get a bite on my stuff that I caught them off of yesterday before I locked through”
9:36 a.m. — “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team,’ but there’s an “I” in “fishing,” said Fisher Anaya. Actually there are two of them, but given what he’s already accomplished in the sport, and what he’s doing today, there’s no need to quibble. The kid is educating us all today.
9:20 a.m. — Jacob Foutz, currently in 2nd, is an angler who would substantially benefit from a top 10 finish. He was 71st in the points last year, at one point missing five cuts to Day 3 in a row. His last top 10 came early last season at Okeechobee after earning two apiece in 2023 and 2024.
9:08 a.m. — Jason Christie started today in the same spot where he started yesterday and quickly got on the board. Somewhat surprisingly, he started with the buzzbait, the lure that produced smaller fish for him yesterday, not the Spook which produced better quality. Then he switched and quickly added a second fish. It’s game on. At least for now he has the area to himself.
8:34 a.m. — If it seems like a slow start to the morning, that’s because much of the field has yet to make a cast in their preferred areas. The downstream lock has just opened and they’re headed into Kerr. Some still have long runs to make.
8:02 a.m. — One hour into the day and Anaya has a limit. He also has a decision: stay or go? “I’m going to give you an opinion,” Mark Zona said. “He’s going to burn it all down.”
7:56 a.m. — Anaya’s fourth fish is a 2-pounder that likely puts him inside the cut. “He’s about one good one away from not locking through,” Mark Zona commented.
7:47 a.m. — With spotted bass number three, Fisher Anaya revealed his strategy: He’s going to catch a limit of spots to calm his nerves and then go hunting for bigger largemouths. His trio total 6 pounds 12 ounces. “I need 2 more pounds and I make the cut,” he said.
7:40 a.m. — Anaya got on the board with a nearly 3-pound spotted bass, then landed a smaller one on the next cast. He’s side-eyeing another competitor in the area, noting that there aren’t enough fish in the confined space to split and still succeed.
7:16 a.m. — Austin Felix, entering Day 2 in 4th place, is a remarkably consistent angler who has made five of the last six Classics – but he’s done it by cashing checks, not necessarily with top tens. His last one was at Lake Champlain in August of 2023. His last one before that was a year earlier in South Dakota when he won at Lake Oahe.
7:10 a.m. — Brandon Palaniuk has seven professional wins with BASS across six different states. New York is the only one represented twice. Oklahoma is not on that list – yet. The closest he’s come was 2nd in the 2013 Classic on Grand Lake, where Cliff Pace beat him by 3 pounds 4 ounces.
7:04 a.m. — Two anglers within just a few ounces of the cut to watch: Lee Livesay and Greg Hackney. Other known river rats and power fishermen with a bigger gap to make up: Brock Mosley, Kyle Welcher, Bill Lowen, John Crews and Seth Feider.
7:02 a.m. — Anaya said he’s going out with four rods on the deck today: a frog, a swim jig, a vibrating jig and a jerkbait. He may have some sort of dice or minnow in the rod box, and indeed others are likely using them, but for now it’s all about power fishing. He learned a lot from one of the greatest junk fishermen in history – Gerald Swindle – and while there aren’t a dozen sticks ready to go, he looks to fish by feel and circumstances today.
6:56 a.m. — This is Fisher Anaya’s 13th professional event at BASS, to include Opens, EQs, the Classic and Elite Series. Through 12, the two big stumbles have been Elites at Guntersville (65th) and Tenn-Tom (85th), but other than that he has been stellar: All 10 other finishes in the top 25, with 8 of them 11th or better and six in the top ten. That includes an Elite win and he also won the Team Championship, which is how he got to the Classic.
Day 1: Arkansas River
2:00 p.m. — With an hour left to fish we have 71 anglers reporting, 68 of them with limits. The estimated cut weight (50th place) will be over 12 pounds. It takes an estimated 15+ to be in the top 10, but that weight should creep higher as the additional anglers enter the mix and the sandbaggery is evened out. Right now the big question is whether we’ll see a 20-pound bag.
12:40 p.m. — And just like that Garrett added number five. Not a big fish, but when the points are tallied at the end of the season it could prove to be huge.
12:32 p.m. — John Garrett, who entered the tournament in the lead for Angler of the Year, is struggling today with four small keepers, despite being close to the unofficial tournament leader on the water. It’s not that Garrett can’t do well here – he was 2nd in the 2020 Open – but he needs to make a move to hold serve.
12:00 p.m. — At noon, with 69 anglers reporting (unofficially), 10th place is 14-4. Twenty-three anglers have 12 pounds or more and 41 have 10 pounds or more. Time is running somewhat short for those anglers who need to lock back up or down.
11:31 a.m. — Shane Durrance reports that Classic runner-up Trey McKinney is off to a strong start. The young pro has caught somewhere between 15 and 20 fish this morning with his biggest being a 4-pound kicker. He caught a 2-pounder and a 4-pounder before heading into the lock and has continued the damage with a wide variety of baits to accumulate an estimated 14-plus pounds.
11:28 a.m. — Luke Palmer is now sharing Christie’s formerly lonely backwater and immediately culls with a solid fish that appears to be prespawn.
11:19 a.m. — Dalton Tumblin is watching Brandon Cobb gradually moving up the leaderboard, but a 4-pounder – resulting in a 2-pound cull – will be big for him. That puts him around 14 pounds as he follows a grass line looking for bass on obvious ambush points.
11:03 a.m. — Blake Capps: “That bite should go on Shark Week right there.”
11:00 a.m. — As the day comes into focus and those who locked through are catching up on missed fishing time, the quality of the fishery is starting to reveal itself. Of course BassTrakk is unofficial and incomplete, but we have nine anglers at 14 pounds or more and 29 with 10 or more – and that’s with about a third of the field not reporting.
10:53 a.m. — Grant Moxley is following unofficial 2nd place angler Cole Sands north of the take-off, where he is focusing on eddies and small pockets, targeting spawners. Sands said if he can call one more he’s going to find more spots. This is area is less crowded than the downstream sections, so he has a lot of it to himself, with room to expand.
10:48 a.m. — Girl dad Lee Livesay, who made the pink vibrating jig famous at the Ray Roberts Classic, is rocking a pink buzzbait today and eliciting vicious strikes. It is not, as the Live team surmised, a pink Helicopter Lure.
10:43 a.m. — Shane Durrance reports that JT Thompkins just culled for his first time this morning with a 3-pound largemouth. He started on a shad spawn where he expected to run into a kicker that never came. He’s at around 10 pounds and needs to keep on culling.
Shallow-water maestro John Cox told Bassmaster photographer Andy Crawford he had trouble finding backwaters he could actually access without fear of getting stuck.
“I saw Jason Christie coming out of one, and he was running it,” Cox said before Day 1 takeoff. “He can have it; he obviously knows how to run it.
“I could see the mud in his prop wash.”
10:09 a.m. — We’ve seen lots of buzzbaits and topwaters this morning, but Dalton Tumblin reports that Tristan McCormick is bucking that trend, working a Texas rigged craw slowly through the grass. “He’s really taking his time to pick it apart,” Tumblin said. McCormick is making it work, putting a 4+ pounder in the boat and then immediately catching two more to complete his limit from this stretch of bank lined with water willow grass.
10:04 a.m. — Chase Sansom is following Hunter Shryock, who has already boated two good ones thus far fishing a bank where there is a massive shad spawn going on.
“It’s been slow this morning and I promise I’m not one of these guys, but the barometric pressure is the highest it’ll be all day,” Shyrock said. “So to get a bite like that when the pressure is high is huge for this week. I’ll come back through this same stretch around noon when the pressure drops out and I bet I’ll catch a bunch more”
10:00 a.m. — Forward facing sonar is allowed this event, but a couple of young anglers known as top scopers told Bassmaster photographer Andy Crawford that it likely won't play a major part in this event.
Pake South, who has won two Opens this year, said he found it really ineffective during practice.
"There are so many trash fish that it doesn't really help," South said before takeoff this morning. "And there's tons of baitfish, but they're not ganged up. So the screen just sparkles."
Trey McKinney, who goes into this event in second place in Progressive Bassmaster Angler of Year points, said the current also has made FFS less effective.
"They're running a lot of current, so the fish are holding tight to cover," he said. "So I can't see the fish. I can see them when they bite, but I can't see them before they move away from the cover."
9:46 a.m. — Jason Christie made a slight bait change and got the bite he needed, a definite confidence-builder. “I was about to lose confidence in my hole,” he said.
9:31 a.m. — Jason Christie is getting consistent bites, but he’s also spending a lot of time with his measuring board. “I can’t believe I’m having to measure fish,” he said.
9:13 a.m. — Photographer Andy Crawford captured the pre-tournament scene this morning. Click here to check out his gallery.
9:07 a.m. — Mark Zona: “There is nobody within miles of Jason Christie.” They can probably hear that buzzbait click-clacking wherever they are, though. He’s getting healthy in a hurry in this isolated zone.
8:51 a.m. — Photographer Dalton Tumblin reports: “The lock finally opened down here on Kerr lake and it looks like 90% of the field came through. It looked like a shotgun blast off coming down the lake.”
8:14 a.m. — Fishing fans who have Jason Christie on their Fantasy Teams and are panicking over his “slow start” needn’t worry. He’s locking down, as is much of the field. The lockmaster has apparently made concessions or guarantees to the anglers that’ll ensure them a maximized fishing day even if they sacrifice time by leaving the launch pool.
8:10 a.m. — Pake South has unsurprisingly jackrabbited out to an early lead. That’s still critical because despite winning two Opens, neither qualified him for the 2027 Classic. That’s because he didn’t fish the full schedule in either slate. He started this tournament in 23rd in the AOY race, and will need to keep his foot on the gas all season.
7:40 a.m. — Dakota Ebare has been on a tear lately, up to and through the birth of his son Bowen. Now a month old, Bowen is attending his first Elite event. The “baby pattern” has historically been an accelerant of success on this trail.
7:30 a.m. — The oldest cliché in the books about Oklahoma’s sometimes volatile weather is “wait five minutes and it’ll change.” Today, as the Elite Series field took off under increasingly drizzly skies, it went one step further than that – move 50 feet and you’ll find new conditions. Some clear skies could be seen in one direction and dark clouds in another. The Muskogee area has been buffeted by some violent storms the last couple of nights, but they’ve been localized – with small tracts getting hammered and others unscathed. It remains to be seen how that will affect the fishing, if at all. Most anglers were remarkably positive on the dock, saying that this portion of the Arkansas River has a lot of fish, but there should be heavy pressure in certain key areas.