Brandon Palaniuk’s bass fishing career has practically been a highlight film. His long list of accomplishments – including five Bassmaster Elite Series titles and two Angler of the Year crowns – has left him accustomed to success.
However, Palaniuk was struggling for perspective Friday evening, several hours after he had weighed-in a 34-pound, 10-ounce five-bass limit at Lake Okeechobee on Friday.
“I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” said the 37-year-old angler from Rathdrum, Idaho. “It was a pretty unbelievable day.”
The biggest bag of his career gave Palaniuk a 9-pound, 12-ounce lead over second-place Greg DiPalma going into Semifinal Saturday of the Champions Power Equipment Bassmaster Elite at Lake Okeechobee.
Professional bass fishing is a series of exhilarating highs and agonizing lows, sometimes minute by minute, but always day by day and tournament by tournament. How you manage the despair determines how quickly it will be replaced with euphoria.
Palaniuk caught seven bass Friday. Only seven, all day. He stayed on the canal spillway that he had successfully shared with DiPalma, Will Davis Jr. and Timothy Dube on Day 1, after which DiPalma was in first place, Davis in second, Palaniuk in third and Dube in 10th.
Palaniuk stayed there Friday after the others had left during a long lull.
“I’m not usually the guy that just fishes one spot and says, ‘Oh, I hope this works out,’” Palaniuk said. “I’m usually the guy making decisions and changes and adjustments. But really the only changes and adjustments I can make are like bait changes.”
Palaniuk simply didn’t find a hint of anything else in three days of practice that made him think about moving Friday. Finally, the bass started biting, anchored by two 9-pounders. Suddenly, from about noon until 1 p.m., he had 34 pounds.
“These are pre-spawn, staging fish,” he said. “Yesterday I caught one, maybe two that were post-spawn, but the majority are pre-spawn.”
Palaniuk recognizes that no lead is safe in the present conditions at Lake Okeechobee. David Gaston’s 11-pound, 8-ounce big bass Friday was a testament to that.
“The weather is cooperating and we will likely to see even more fireworks the next two days,” Palaniuk said. “And they could come from anyone. That’s the scary part about here.”
He noted that with a 24-7 lead over 10th-place Paul Mueller, he’s almost certain to be fishing on Championship Sunday. But that 9-12 lead over DiPalma? “That’s one fish here,” Palaniuk said.
Lake Okeechobee is part of the legend that is Palamiuk’s Elite Series career. In the second tournament of the 2017 season, he finished 105th in a 110-angler field with a two-day total of 16-8. After that epic failure, Palaniuk posted a win, two third-place finishes, a fifth and nothing lower than 29th place in winning his first Bassmaster Angler of the Year title.
Palaniuk is coming off another “epic failure” in his career. For the first time, he didn’t qualify for the Bassmaster Classic after finishing 48th in the 2024 Angler of the Year standings. He closed the season with an 89th-place finish at Lake Champlain and 95th at the St. Lawrence River, two sites of previous success in his career.
“I drove home from the St. Lawrence, and I parked my boat in my shop, and I didn’t touch it for a month,” Palaniuk said. “I didn’t touch tackle. I didn’t open a locker. And it wasn’t thought out. I didn’t think I just need to take a break from this. But looking back on it, I feel like I just needed it.
“Then I started spending time on the water, but doing things that I enjoyed. I took my parents pike fishing and we had a blast. I was just making sure that I remembered to enjoy it, because it’s so easy to make it feel like it’s a job.”
