Elite Series Pro and South Carolina native Brandon Cobb lives less than two hours from Columbia, the host city for the 2023 Marathon Bassmaster Elite at Lake Murray.
Sitting in 4th place in the Progressive Elite Series Angler of the Year race, it’s safe to say that nothing would please Cobb more than to collect his second home-state Elite title this week. He could sandwich the new hardware nicely between his first blue trophy from his April 2019 win on his home waters of Lake Hartwell, and its twin that he received for his Elite win on Lake Fork just one month later.
We caught up with Cobb midway through official practice to get his take on how things are shaping up for the third Elite event of the 2023 season.
“In high school and college, I spent a lot of time on Murray,” Cobb said. “But since I started fishing professionally, I haven’t spent much time over there.”
To venture over to Lake Murray, Cobb would have to forgo fisheries like Lake Hartwell and Clarks Hill, as well as several others. So the 48,000 acre impoundment in the heart of South Carolina has been neglected as of late by Cobb.
Getting back going on Lake Murray has taken a little recalibrating, as there are a few major differences between how this lake fishes, when compared to the other South Carolina fisheries he visits more often.
No spotted bass
“Number one, you don’t have any spots.”
While there are a few spotted bass that swim around Murray, they are nowhere near as prevalent or big as they are in Lake Hartwell and other surrounding fisheries. This means that targeting spotted bass is a futile endeavor here.
But there’s un upside, the largemouth seem to like having the herring and cover to themselves. The second difference between Murray and other lakes in the area is evidence of this.
“It seems like the biggest fish in the lake are herring oriented here, normally. At Hartwell and Clarks Hill, the herring fish are a good average fish to win tournaments. But your truly big fish live shallow.”
Here on Murray, the big ones live offshore, relating to the blue back herring. Herring are a nomadic type of bass forage that roam around and seek shelter in whatever cover they can find.
“A prime example, Murray is the only place I’ve ever caught 6- to 7- pounders on cane piles relating to herring.”
Cane piles are man-made structures built out of, you guessed it, cane. and Clusters of cane poles, with fanned out tips sticking up 20- feet off the bottom, offer refuge that herring prefer to the traditional brushpiles that anglers sometimes sink.
On other lakes, the solid largemouth and big spots roam around, targeting herring that look to the cane for safe haven. But Cobb believes the presence of spotted bass in other herring fisheries discourages the largemouth from hunting offshore.
“I think a lot of the bigger largemouth don’t want to compete with those spots, and at Murray they don’t have to.”
Don’t think shallow
Knowing this, anglers have to shift their mindsets from going shallow to target kicker largemouth, like they would on surrounding lakes. This can be challenging, as Murray is loaded with shallow cover.
“It actually has better shallow cover than a lot of the other lakes around here. It’s got a lot of docks. And they’re pole docks. Some have floating parts. But for the most part they’re pole docks, not floating docks.”
These docks create a lot of allure for the anglers’ eyes. And docks are just part of the temptation to stay shallow.
“Normally, Murray has a whole bunch of bank grass. I call it peanut grass or gator grass. It’s coming back but it’s not as thick as I have seen it out here.”
An abnormal drawdown last winter has Murray looking a little different this year too. The lake was nine feet lower back in January as compared to where it is today. This low water decimated the shallow vegetation.
Though the technical full pool of Lake Murray is set at 360 feet above sea level, the lake is usually held a couple feet below that number. But when most anglers think of a lake being full, we’re thinking of the normal level at which the water is held.
“It’s actually a little over full I think, looking at the docks and stuff. It looks a little high.”
The water is in fact about 6- inches higher than it is historically this time of the year. But this isn’t the only abnormality on Murray the anglers are facing this week. There’s something far more unusual going on.
A spring turnover?
“It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever see. It’s actually like there’s a lake turnover going on right now. The water has that fall black look to it, and I think it’s because the water got so hot, and then we had prolonged cold.”
As summer fades away each year and the water temperatures begin to drop, many fisheries experience what’s known as a fall turnover. The water along the surface gets colder, and therefore denser than the water beneath it. This heavier water then sinks, and the warmer water below rises, bringing along with it sediment from the bottom.
The lake has then gone trough a turnover. This clouds the water and wrecks the oxygen level, throwing the fish into a funk. Cobb says there’s something similar happening on Murray and the surrounding lakes right now, and it’s not good.
“It’s the weirdest look I’ve ever seen on Murray. And I went to Hartwell last Thursday and it was the same way. Like that black fall, turnover look.”
This cold snap didn’t just effect the water quality. It’s also disrupted the spawning processes of the shad and herring that inhabit the lake. Though Cobb hasn’t been able to fish Murray due to the mandatory off-limits period, he’s spent some time on the surrounding fisheries and reported a strong herring spawn happening three weeks ago.
“Then it got down to 30- something degrees and frosted for 3 or 4 nights in a row and it basically made the herring quit spawning. And I thought they would start back by now, but they really haven’t. There are dwindling herring still spawning, but not like what I know a herring spawn looks like when it’s really going on.”
What’s all this mean?
Taking all of this into consideration, Cobb believes that the same patterns will prevail here this week that anglers would have been preparing for. The cold temperatures have simply shaken things up a bit leading into this one, and Cobb is hoping things will settle out and begin to stabilize in the coming days. Those he’s hesitant to be too optimistic.
“I wore my jacket and pants all day on Day 1 of practice. It was cold. The wind blew 25 miles per hour all day. The rest of the week looks normal, but I don’t know if it’s going to be too little too late.”
“I think the biggest problem right now is that turnover looking water. If it doesn’t get warm enough to make that water get back normal, I don’t know. I just don’t know how long that takes to get back right, because I’ve never seen that in the spring. Not one time.”
Though Murray looks quite unusual right now in multiple ways, it’s the same playing field for all 103 Elite anglers that will be competing here this week. And Cobb knows someone will still catch them.
“I think you’ll see a few fish caught off bed. But I think whoever wins, it’ll be 80- to 90- percent herring and shad spawn fishing. Catching post-spawn fish anyway. But they might have a big one or two on bed.”
Cobb believes twenty pounds a day is a doable guesstimate, so the inevitable winner will likely amass 80 pounds or more across all four days of competition.
Will the lake reset before the start of the 2023 Marathon Bassmaster Elite at Lake Murray on Thursday? This remains to be seen. But it’s likely the fishing will at least evolve from day to day. And someone will be crowned champion on Sunday, no matter what.
