COLUMBIA, S.C. — The ample largemouth bass that call Lake Murray home are spread out all over the 50,000-acre Saluda River impoundment. As a result, the Bass Pro Tour anglers duking it out for PowerStop Brakes Stage 3 Presented by Strike King have found a wide range of ways to stack weight on the scales.
SCORETRACKER INSIDER™ powered by Strike King tells the story of a diverse, healthy fishery featuring bass in various stages of the prespawn, with some fish still roaming in deep water, some moving onto staging points and others on the banks preparing to make beds. There’s been scorable bass logged from 0-5 feet deep to 20-plus. Combined with the Bass Pro Tour’s forward-facing sonar rules, which limit pros to one period per day in which they can utilize the technology, that’s made for an event in which, at least through the first two days, it’s still unclear what the winning tactic will be.
Jeff Sprague, who currently sits atop the leaderboard, has locked one rod in his hands and made it work. Sprague has caught every single one of his scorable bass through a day and a half on a shallow-running crankbait. While he has turned his Lowrance ActiveTarget on during Period 2 each of the first two days, he’s never deviated from that approach.
Meanwhile, Jacob Wheeler, whose furious opening period on Day 2 rocketed him from 27th place into second, has employed a combination of patterns. Like many in the field, Wheeler has used his forward-facing sonar in Period 1 each of the first two days (45 anglers did so on Thursday, then 43 on Friday). No surprise, he’s paired a jighead minnow with the technology with great success. He caught 17 scorable bass for 53-14 during the opening period alone on Day 2, all of which ate a jighead minnow. In the later periods, he’s rotated between techniques but caught most of his fish on a crankbait.
While starting the day with forward-facing sonar has been the popular play, not everyone has done so with a jighead minnow in hand. Both Marshall Hughes and Brent Ehrler, who sat in second and third place, respectively, after Day 1, have primarily caught their first-period fish on a drop-shot. Hughes has also mixed in a jig both during and after his period with forward-facing sonar.
Other techniques that have produced for several anglers this week include jerkbaits – the technique that landed much of Matt Becker’s Day 1 weight – and wacky/Neko-rigged worms, which the likes of Drew Gill and Mark Daniels Jr. have employed during their periods without forward-facing sonar. We’ve seen a smattering of bladed jigs, spinnerbaits and swimbaits, too. The old ball-and-chain has even made an appearance. Mark Davis wrangled a 7-2, the biggest bass of Day 2 so far, using a Carolina rig.
Keep watching all the action from Lake Murray live on MLFNOW! from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET each day through Sunday’s Championship Round and track every fish catch – including the bait used to catch it, the depth, the time and whether or not forward-facing sonar was involved – with SCORETRACKER INSIDER™.