COLUMBIA, South Carolina – As he took his first look at the official competition boundaries for Elimination Round 2 at the 2018 MLF Challenge Select in Columbia, South Carolina, Missouri pro James Watson was matter-of-fact about how he thought his day would go: “Boy, this is going to be a struggle today.”
The day’s competition waters on Lake Murray limited Watson, Russ Lane, Mark Rose, Cody Meyer, Ott Defoe, Scott Suggs and Zack Birge to a section of the lower end of the lake stretching east of the Larry Koon ramp on Shull Island (most of it on lake’s southern shoreline). While most of them had competed on Murray multiple times throughout their B.A.S.S. and FLW careers, none of the anglers fishing the round had ever logged a Top 10 on the lake, and none had fished it in early summer.
And for the first half of the day, Watson’s early-morning prediction was accurate: heading into the last 45 minutes of Period 2, he hovered around the cutline with two fish for 3 pounds, 2 ounces. But as the final 45 minutes of the period ticked down, Watson added three fish to SCORETRACKER and started to capitalize on what would prove to be the winning pattern.
“I’d seen some fish (feeding) on top, but I didn’t know if they were bass or stripers,” Watson said. “I needed to cover that water and find out what those fish were, but I couldn’t fish a walking topwater because it’s too slow, stripers will eat that every time.”
Watson instead opted for a Strike King Wake Shad, a 4-inch wake bait that he could burn across the surface through mixed schools of stripers and largemouth. It paid off to the tune of four fish for 7-6 in Period 2, and a single fish in the third period, a 1-9 that ultimately gave Watson the heaviest total of the day with 12-10.
“That Wake Shad deal was all about making fast, repetitive casts wherever baitfish were being chased by stripers and largemouth,” Watson said. “Once I started fishing that bait, I just stuck with it. I was scared to change it.”
Birge finished second with 11-5, Suggs third with 10-12, and Defoe claimed the final Sudden Death spot with 7-13.
Watson’s winning gear
Watson caught all of his scorable