Even though Lake Murray is my home lake, I’m not so sure I’d like to be on the water in the middle of this month when some of my buddies are there.The Forrest Wood Cup, the championship of the FLW Tour, will be held on Murray from Aug. 14-17. I won the tournament back in 1998, when pros were able to fish both the FLW and Bassmaster tours, and a shot at the kind of money that will be up for grabs at Murray is certainly enticing.
But we’re talking about the middle of August here. It’s the toughest part of the toughest month of the year. If the tournament was two weeks earlier or two weeks later, it would be a lot better. As it is, it will really test the pros. It will be a challenging tournament, to say the least.
A few years ago, when we had grass in Lake Murray, August was still a good month to fish. Now, without the grass, it’s tough to catch quality fish out there.
Somebody asked me the other day, what do I think it will take to win the tournament, how will most of the pros catch their fish, and what will the winner likely be doing?
The Bassmaster Elite pros fished Lake Murray this past spring, but it’s a different lake in August, so everything that worked back then won’t work now. We were catching a lot of bass that were feeding on blueback herring. That won’t be the case this time.
I think the tournament will probably be won on the lower end of the lake. Catches on the lower end have been larger, on the average, over the past 15 or 20 feet. If you fish the lower end, you have a better chance to win about 90 to 95 percent of the tournaments fished there. This past spring, the Bassmaster Elite tournament was won up in the river, but I think that was mostly because about 90 percent of the fishermen were on the lower part of the lake. They divided all the fish up. They were pressured a lot, and they scattered out.
This time, however, I think a lot of fishermen will pile into the upper end of the lake, into the rivers, looking for cooler water, more current and more oxygenated water — and shallow fish. They may catch some fish up in the rivers, but the winning fish will probably still come from the lower end. There will be too much pressure on the fish on the upper end.
So, your better fish are on the lower end. The problem is, they have a tendency to live really, really deep. They can be hard to locate, to catch and to figure out. There will be guys fishing 35 to 40 feet deep. When fish get that deep, they get tough to catch.
When we had grass in the lake, it was much easier. You just found the grass and fished the inside and outside edges, and you caught fish. This time, I think brush will play a major factor in who wins the tournament. There’s a lot of brush in the lake that crappie fishermen have put out, and a lot of the pros who’ll be fishing will have put out their own brushpiles to attract and hold bass.
If I had to take my boat off the trailer on the first day of the tournament, I’d probably go out looking for fish on deeper brushpiles. I’d drag a Carolina rig a lot of the time, because I think most of the fish will be too deep to reach with a crankbait. I would be looking 25 to 30 feet deep.
The tournament will last for four days, and I think it will take about 50 pounds to win. I don’t think you’ll have to catch 13 or 14 pounds a day; 10 or 12 pounds will put you right in the thick of things.
Somebody will probably catch a 17- or 18-pound stringer one day, but you’ve got to be consistent for four days. To average about 12 pounds a day for five fish, I think that will put you right there. The fisherman who does can do that will have really had a good tournament.
If you think about the weights in a lot of the Bassmaster Classics when they were fished in August in the 1980s and 1990s, the guys who really contended for the championship averaged 11 or 12 pounds a day: Guido Hibdon, Rick Clunn and Hank Parker on the James River, George Cochran on Lay Lake, Dion Hibdon on Lake Logan Martin, Brian Kerchal on High Rock Lake. They won with anywhere from 30 to 35 pounds or so over three days.
Those kinds of weights will be right there at Lake Murray.
Davy Hite is a 43-year-old native of Saluda who lives in Ninety Six. He has fished professionally since 1993. He was the BASS Angler of the Year in 1997 and 2002, and he won the 1999 Bassmasters Classic and the 1998 FLW Tour Champion-ship. He is sponsored by Triton boats, Evinrude outboards, All-Star rods, Pfleuger reels, Berkley Trilene, Yamamoto baits, Owner hooks and Solar Bat sunglasses.
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