Keep multiple lures ready for Lake Murray bass

College fishermen say fishing windy coves, making lure adjustments, is a key to good catches

Largemouth bass are biting on Lake Murray, and as long as anglers don’t mind casting a variety of different lures, they should be able to catch them throughout the day. Finding coves with a little wind blowing toward the shoreline, concentrating baitfish, will help.

Gettys Brannon of the USC bass-fishing team and Jacob Reome of the Clemson bass fishing team – both of whom are from Gaffney – have been using lures that range from swimbaits to jigs and everything in between. On a recent trip, they had a dozen or so rods on deck, each rigged with a different lure. This pays off throughout the day when a fish will short-strike one lure, prompting the anglers to immediately cast something totally different, which often results in hooking that fish.

On a recent outing, Reome watched a 5-pounder closely follow his 7 Fifteen swimbait to the boat, but not bite. He confidently said, “I’m going to catch that fish.” He put his rod down, picked up another one with a weighted soft-plastic bait, peered through the water, cast directly to the fish, set the hook and reeled in the fish.

The only problem these two have encountered lately is keeping stripers off their lines. Many of their trips have started off with them catching a dozen or so stripers before putting the first largemouth in the boat.

“The stripers stay ahead of the largemouth as far as their movements, especially in the mornings,” said Brannon, “so if you’re catching stripers along the banks, you’ll find the largemouth on secondary points. Once the sun gets up and the water in the coves gets warm, the stripers will move deeper, and the largemouth will head into the coves. As long as the wind gives the water a little chop and keeps the baitfish pushed toward the banks, sea walls, and blowdowns, you will find largemouth willing to bite,”

When you notice a lull in the bite in these coves, Brannon and Reome have two different ways of staying on the bite.

“Some of these fish will hold tight to docks for shade and protection, so I’ll skip jigs as far under them as I can get,” said Reome.

Brannon said once that slows down, he likes to head to deep, open water and use Carolina rigs with soft plastics.

“You can catch fish all-day long this time of year, but you can’t get stuck on fishing just one spot or on using just one lure,” he said.