MLF Select pro Scott Suggs is from Arkansas, but he can tell incredible stories about Lake Murray’s heyday back in the early 1990’s when the lake was full of elodea – a submergent vegetation that grows deep, similar to hydrilla.
“I used to drive all the way over here from Arkansas just to fish this lake,” Suggs recalled. “It was a long haul to get here but it was so worth it. That grass grew out deep into 12 to 15 feet on these long points out here. You could take a 1-ounce spinnerbait and roll it through that stuff and those big bass would rip the rod out of your hand – it was so awesome.”
Suggs’ recollected such fabled memories while sitting in the rain at the Larry Koon Boat Ramp on Lake Murray, getting his tackle ready for day two of the Elimination round of the MLF Challenge Select in Columbia, S.C. He already knew the fate of his fishing day would take place in a mid-lake zone that encompassed Shull Island and the surrounding areas, a place where the grass fishing used to be good.
“Those glory days went away with the grass,” Suggs said. “It doesn’t have grass in it like that anymore; now it’s all about the bluebacks (herring). So instead of hunting contours in the grass, I’ll be looking for bass schooling on bluebacks on those offshore places. This lake is a great example of how our bass fisheries change over time with different cover, forages and conditions.”
As MLF Select pro Cody Meyer slid on his rain gear, he said the day’s lake selection was going to give him an opportunity to settle a bitter score with Lake Murray.
“I fished a Forrest Wood Cup here a couple of years ago,” Meyer recounted. “On the first day I caught 15 pounds and was in second place. On the second day, I never got a single bite – all day – not a sniff. I zeroed that day in the Forrest Wood Cup – that memory still burns me a little bit, so I wouldn’t mind repaying the favor to this place by winning my day.”
Unfortunately, none of Meyer’s choice spots from that Forrest Wood Cup are in the zone for today.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I was fishing brushpiles out deep in that Cup. And even if I could find them, I wouldn’t touch them now because of how they left me high and dry last time. We have some rain this morning: perfect conditions to hit the bank with topwaters and keep an open mind, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Further down the line, MLF Select whiz Ott Defoe was hunkered under his rain hood, tieing on a couple of more topwaters.
He had taken a brief look at the zone and appeared unimpressed by what he saw.
“No creeks or ditches for the Otter to get into in this zone,” Defoe remarked, referring to his penchant for skirting shallow sandbars and traversing logs and shoals to reach the very back end of small creeks.
“They’re all dead end pockets – a zone full of Otter blocks,” he said with a laugh. “That’s okay, though. We have just about the best kind of weather you could possibly want for fishing a lake like this at this time of year: rainy, drizzly with dark overcast – and I think it’s going to do this most of the day. So it opens up an opportunity to just fish the day by the seat of your pants. This is one of those days where you could get on the bank and throw a topwater all day long. Sometimes you have to put where you are out of your mind and just try to capitalize on conditions.”