Event Breakdown: Lake Murray

Video Transcript

Welcome to our Omnia Pro preview of the Lake Murray Bassmaster Elite Series event that kicks off this week. I've been pretty excited for this one for a while because it is nice to see a little switch up in the places that they go. I know they've been to Murray in the past, but Murray is a little bit of a unique fishery. In fact, it's in South Carolina. It is a blueback Hearing lake, which means that's the primary forage. There is traditional shad in there and there is some blue gills, they call it bream down there. There are a lot of different forage bases there, crayfish as well, but predominantly the forage of choice of the bass in that lake spotted. And large mouth bass would be the blueback carrying, which, fun fact, blueback carrying had more of a greenback than a blueback. I found that out the hard way. My first trip there, I bought a ton of baits with bluebacks on them, got there and discovered that the blueback Hearing has a greenback. So keep that in mind if you're ever going to one of these herring fisheries. But probably the main theme of this one is how far along is that herring spawn? And the herring tend to be in much more main lake type areas than other shad, where they'll push up against like sea walls and things like that nature in the back of canals and creek arms and things like that. Or, you know, up on rip-rap banks and things of that nature. The herring tend to be out on main lake points. So now you'd have the task of kind of creating a pattern around what main lake points are holding active feeding fish. So that's one of the cool things that we've been looking at as we dive in more with our pro features, is being able to look at this massive impoundment of Lake Murray like this and see how much main lake structure there is. It's incredible. If you look at all these immense amount of crick arms and points and little islands and everything out there, there's tons of main lake area for these blue back herring to kind of stage. So now you might be looking at in conjunction with like maybe your Navionics layer of what main lake points are out there, which have under water structure that runs way out. Are you looking for steeper ones for a more vertical cover off these points? Are we looking for windblown points or points out of the wind? So now you can layer in our wind layer there. And then maybe water clarity is playing a factor in that as well. I doubt the water temps are going to be as big of a player in this one, but you never know. I guarantee you these guys are going to find some spawners as well. So you're going to be looking at flats in the back of pockets, areas where some late spawners might still be around. And in some of those areas, once again, out of the wind. Wind's going to be a big factor in this tournament. Looking at the weather right now, anyway, as I look at it, if we get a lot of wind, that can really mess up some anglers' plans. So some of the baits are key techniques to key in on. If you're doing some of this main lake point fishing, as you've seen in the past, is sort of this jointed style hard bait. Now, I know the chromes and the green backs, as I said before, in the shad patterns will play bigger. This is a bait designed by Bro after some previous baits. It used to be out the Sabio Magic Swimmer, which is no longer manufactured anymore. It was a very popular bait in the Carolinas for these herring type fisheries. Anywhere that there's a lot of herring present, these segmented type hard baits are very popular. You'll also see chrome plastics quite a bit. These are even deemed by our friends at Striking as Carolina chrome being the color. Obviously, this is not matching a blueback herring perfectly, but for some reason, these fisheries tend to key in on the chrome. So fluke style baits, like a zoom fluke, or this KVD's perfect plastics, the caffeine shad, some hard shallow structure around it. There's some trees in the water, things of that nature. You'll see that. More open water you'll be looking at that hard segmented crank baits there. Next up would be this Jackal Riser. We've seen this bait play specifically in the Carolinas and around linear and stuff like that a lot. This is a perfect for schooling fish during those shad spawns to key in on these type of top waters, some more unique type of top waters. So I wouldn't doubt you see some of that. But then of course we have to talk about it because it's gonna happen. And that's gonna be some of these anglers are gonna key in on it with the min now. They're gonna figure out a way to get the bite offshore dialed in with the saka mata shads. You're seeing like these raid fish rollers here. A whole bunch of different minnows will play. I mean, you'd be remiss if you didn't talk about the free loader here from Rapala. These style baits are going to play no matter what going for period doesn't matter the time of year. Especially since we're gonna have fish now. If this shad spawns too far along where it doesn't become the predominant tactic, you're gonna be looking for schools of bait offshore. And there's gonna be anglers that find those fish offshore on different structure than maybe even the main point, something adjacent to it. And they're gonna deploy the old ball head jig here like these owner. The range roller here, which has been one of our most popular. And then you got the horizon head from Gamagatsu, which we like for the bigger style minnows for sure. This type of bait is going to play. So as you can see, there's lots of different structure to look at here on Murray. I do think the big story is gonna be is whether or not these main lake points are gonna play and what sort of pattern can emerge on these main lake points. If that does not end up being the player, who's gonna be the one to find something else offshore and find that post-spawn bite. It should be interesting. I'm looking forward to the Lake Murray Bassmaster Elite Event. And if you don't have pro already, as you can see, it's a valuable, valuable tool for all you anglers out there. And even check out some of the waypoint features coming down the pipeline. This stuff is super cool. Go check out Omnia Premium Pro now.