COLUMBIA, S.C. – How do you catch bass in the middle of August on Lake Murray?
It’s a mystery that many avid bass anglers would like to know more about. And over the next week, that mystery is going to be solved by the work of 77 top bass pros and as many co-anglers at the $2 million Forrest Wood Cup in Columbia, S.C.
The pro who comes up with the best answer will win a possible $1 million cash for his efforts. But finding the answers will not be easy.
As past tournaments indicate, Lake Murray is a tremendous bass fishery. Much of that track record, however, is rooted in the spring when bass are shallow and tournament trails are in full swing around the Carolinas.
Sometime around July, though, bass leave the bank, the lake becomes the property of pleasure boaters, and bass tournaments turn into a nighttime activity.
Very little is known about how bass behave in Murray during the white-hot days of August when surface temperatures reach the 87-degree mark. So in the coming days, it will be interesting to see what patterns the Forrest Wood Cup qualifiers come up with to contend for the Cup.
As for the practice round, a lot of pros have been left scratching their sweat-soaked caps. Summertime bass in the Southeast are known for being roamers, which has only been magnified by several factors at Murray.
For starters, the deep offshore grass beds of elodea, which used to exist in the lake years ago, are now gone.
Toss in the fact that blueback herring have found their way to Murray, and things really get interesting.
Bluebacks are a tasty baitfish to bass, but they are also nomadic by nature. According to locals on lakes like Lanier and Hartwell, where bluebacks have existed for some time, largemouth bass on those lakes have taken on more of a wandering behavior in open water in search of the savory nomads.
And making things even more complex at Murray this summer is a higher water level, producing plenty of shallow cover.
Murray has been high all spring, and a lot of “gator grass” has bloomed along the banks, providing thick cover. What’s more, willow trees, lay-downs, riprap, seawalls and docks all have ample water around them to give bass a myriad of shallow-water addresses to inhabit.
The practice round has been a tossup of techniques for pros, ranging from shallow flipping to deep drop-shotting and everything in between.
Local favorite Anthony Gagliardi of nearby Prosperity, S.C., sums up Murray’s fishing right now as nonduplicative.
“There are some big bags to be caught out there, but the patterns are just not very duplicative,” Gagliardi offered. “It’s hard to explain, but basically I’ll find fish doing one thing, and then search high and low for that same pattern other places and catch nothing. And by the time I return to where I originally found the fish, they’re gone too. It’s like chasing ghosts, and it’s pretty frustrating.”
Gagliardi says the `pattern-ability’ of Murray is a far cry from when he won here in February 2006.
For one thing, that was a cold-water tournament, and the water was down some 15 feet from what it is now.
“Once I found what to look for in that tournament, it was like clockwork,” Gagliardi explained. “I could go to every place I knew of that had a certain kind of bottom and catch fish. Other guys who did well in that event found the same thing.”
This time around, however, bass do not seem to be following any kind of script.
“The fish are so hard to pinpoint,” the Folgers pro added. “Another thing, too – I’ve seen the fish do some weird things here the last two summers. I’ve seen them roaming around in big packs in the shallows – I don’t know if it’s the herring that’s made them that way or what, but it’s strange. I’ve tried to find some predictability to that behavior in terms of timing or location, but it’s just so random. There’s no telling when a group of bass is going to swim into a pocket and start eating everything in sight.
“Somebody, somewhere in this tournament is going to be at the right time and right place when that happens, and they’re going to get well in a hurry. But, like I said, I don’t know if it can be duplicated from day to day or place to place.”
Former Forrest Wood Cup winner Brent Ehrler of California has found Gagliardi’s opinion to be true.
“You can fish just about any way you want to here – flipping shallow cover, drop-shotting out deep, shaky-heading around docks – and it seems like the results are all pretty much the same, with just a bite here and a bite there,” said the National Guard pro. “Trying to pattern something or make sense of it is difficult.”
Kellogg’s pro Clark Wendlandt of Texas has also had mixed results in practice.
“It’s been a little slower than I had anticipated,” Wendlandt said. “I know it’s summer, but this lake is full of fish, and I really thought I’d find them biting a little better than they are right now. The lake is higher than I had expected it to be, and each day I’m finding out just how much shallow-water cover is available to the fish. Coming here, I thought this event would be won deep, but more and more I’m starting to think this might turn into a shallow-water, up-the-lake kind of event.”
The Forrest Wood Cup officially begins Thursday at 7 a.m. at Lake Murray Marina and Yacht Club, located at 1600 Marina Road in Irmo, S.C.
With 77 of the world’s best pros in the hunt and a million dollars up for grabs, one thing is for sure: By the time this week is over, a few of Lake Murray’s summertime secrets will be revealed.