How Brandon Palaniuk smashed Okeechobee

Yep he smashed the fish, he smashed the field and I think at smashed least one coot…just kidding about the coots. Anyhow, wow, what a tourney he had. He found a magical spot,  but so did 3 other guys who all got there before him on day 1!

Here’s the deets about how he won his 6th Elite (plus an Open, plus the Nation Championship), which is pretty dang stout…for a kid from ID!

Going in and practice

> “I didn’t know what to expect. I knew that Okeechobee was different than it’s been in the past. It wasn’t the normal Okeechobee.

> “Last time we were here I found one of the areas that had the fish – it had the good vegetation, it had all the things and I had a decent finish [24th in 2023]. So my gameplan was to find that again.

> “The first day of practice was pretty nasty. I spent some time looking around at a lot of different water in the lake, and noticed a lot of it was really dirty. If you did find clean water, the wind was going to blow the opposite direction the next day. I don’t even think I caught a limit in all of practice in a single day.

> “The first day I caught one maybe close to 4, another one close to 3 – throwing a shallower crankbait – and a couple 12-inchers. The 2nd day I only caught 3 12-inchers.

> “The 3rd day I thought, Well I’ll launch at the main ramp and start in the river…look for something different. They were dropping the water so I wanted to try to find something off the bank that the bigger fish can hold on.

> “I found absolutely nothing…. I was actually on the phone with Justin Atkins and was telling him I was pretty nervous about this one and just want to survive it.

> “Then I make a cast and catch a 2-lber, at like 4:30 on Wed. It was the biggest one I’d seen in 2 days. I fire back out there and catch a 6. When I hooked that 6 I panned over with MEGA Live 2 and saw 3-4 more with it.

> “…this is where I’m going to start. I’d been looking all day for something like this. I thought, Maybe I can get a big one and maybe I can scrape up some 12-inchers. It turned out to be one of the most incredible places I’d ever found.”

The spot

> “It had a lot of angles and features to it. You’ve got a riprap bank that has a pretty steep drop, and then coming from that it goes down into a trough and comes up onto a hard ridge – a hard bottom ridge. Then it tapers back off into another trough to the other bank.

> “On that riprap side, the trough kind of made a horseshoe. The back of that also was a flat that came off the riprap and connected to that hard spot a little bit. And that little trough dumps into a 25′ hole.

> “[The spot] has a lot of angles and features that run through it. There was a 40-yard section where the fish wanted to live.

> “It was 150-200′ wide [bank to bank]. I could be on one bank and cast to the other with my crankbait….”

The average depth was 10′. I asked him where the fish would reload from:

> “They were coming from somewhere, but I but don’t know where from.

> “The first morning was really good and they ran the least amount of water of the whole time we were there…no water moving. The next 3 days both gates had water spilling over the top, which you would’ve thought would’ve made it better.

> “But the morning bites was never good as on day 1. They schooled on day 1, and I never saw that again.

> “Every afternoon a group of pre-spawn females would show up. I don’t know where they came from. I don’t know if they were past the buoys and signs where we can’t fish…mill around up there around the current, feed up there and then come back.”

Tournament

> Day 1 I roll up and those 3 guys [Will Davis Jr, Greg DiPalma and Tim Dube] are already sitting there. I kinda stopped short and worked my way to it, looking at it, analyzing it if I can even make a cast anywhere where I wanna be. I was talking to those guys, ‘I don’t know, it’s kinda tight for 4.’ They said, ‘Come on in, we’ll figure it out – we’ll make it work.’

> “It was pretty obvious where I wanted to start, so I just got between DiPalma and Tim Dube. Will Davis was on the other side and we all 4 went to cracking on ’em. Caught my first one on the prototype Megabass crankbait – which is actually a prototype, I’m not just saying that.

> “I think I weighed 1 on that, 1 on a Neko rig and 2 on a glide bait, and I had 6 bites total.

> “Our agreement was that once everyone got rid of their last 2-lber, you got put in timeout. Will Davis was the first one in timeout. He had 27, then DiPalma got rid of his last smaller fish and he had almost 30. I was the next guy – it put me at 23.5. I don’t think any of us caught more than 8-9 fish.”

I asked him if he thought the spot was burnt after that:

> “I had no idea…but I had nothing else. Okay Greg’s in the cut, Will’s in the cut, if I catch 1 fish tomorrow I’m probably gonna be inside the cut – that’s kinda how I looked at it. If I catch a [another] keeper…I’ll have a decent finish in FL. I’m not gonna bomb.

> “Day 2 [he was there first but] we all lined up exactly the same. I wasn’t gonna try to position myself for a better angle or anything. I said, ‘It looks like they’re on top a bit more, let’s stay back and line up how we were.’

> “It definitely was way slower. The rest of the guys ended up leaving. I had 3 when they left…then I caught a 3.5. I changed the [presentation] angle when the wind switched directions for my 4th one. My 5th was the first 9 [on that prototype crankbait], then I caught a 4.5-lber on the Kanata jerkbait.

> “Then I pulled out the Big M 4.0 and 15 minutes later caught another 9 on that. That culled out a 1 and gave me 29 lbs. Then I caught a 7.75 on the Big M that culled a 2.75-lber. So 2 came on the prototype crankbait, 2 on the Big M and one on the Kanata.

> “Day 3 Will Davis never even fished it. He came in and fished around the outside, and said he wasn’t gonna come in and beat on it. I only caught 7-8. I caught 1 on a Neko, 1 on the Kanata, and 3 on the prototype crankbait.

> “Day 4 I caught [I think he means weighed?] 2 on a Megabass Ito Shiner jerkbait, 2 on the Neko rig and 1 on a different glide bait.”

He also caught fish on 2 swimbaits: a KGB and a Clutch Boss.

Baits

> Megabass Kanata (kameyama ghost pearl – “it floats but I weight it so it suspends, it was the same one I was throwing at Santee”), 12-lb Seaguar Tatsu Fluoro, Daiwa Steez CT SV Reel, 6′ 10″ F Alpha Angler Slasher Rod.

> Megabass prototype crankbait (Megabass sexy shad – “[the bait] was actually soft-launched in it Japan, it’s the called IPX”), 12-lb Seaguar Tatsu Fluoro, Daiwa Zillion Reel (7.1), 7′ MH Mod Alpha Angler Rebound Rod.

> 5″ Megabass Big M 4.0 crankbait (PM/chart), 15-lb Seaguar Tatsu Fluoro, Daiwa Steez A Reel (6.3), 7′ 6″ MH Alpha Angler Mag-Rebound Rod.

Electronics

> “[Humminbird] MEGA 360 gave me the lay of the land. So I had a really good understanding of where the little nuances and sweet spots were within that area, and it gave me a good idea of what the travel routes were for those bigger fish.

> “MEGA Live 2 didn’t really play in targeting a specific fish – a couple glide bait and jerkbait fish it did. A lot of it was basically being able to scan around and see where those fish were actually showing up…in groups. If I was seeing them high in the water column, I knew which bait to pick up. If I was seeing them toward the bottom, I’d pick up a crankbait.”

> Talkin’ MEGA Live 2: “It’s way better than what version 1 was. I could tell the detail as far as what was a bass, what was a gar, what was a crappie. It had a lot had to do with how they were positioned and how they moved.”

Shoutouts

> “Greg DiPalma, Will Davis Jr and Tim Dube. For letting me come in on day 1, and they also made it really fun. It could’ve been really stressful trying to fish around 3 other guys in that small area, and they made it stress-free and super-enjoyable.”