Elite

Dock Talk from Lake Murray

Posted on
Photography by
Andy Crawford
Captions by
Craig Lamb
Welcome to the Lake Murray edition of Dock Talk. Today is April 19, 2023, and Andy Crawford and myself are set up at Dreher Island State Park, also weigh-in venue for the Marathon Bassmaster Elite at Lake Murray. 
Today is like the past few days, with sunny skies, warming temperatures and calm winds. The water temperatures are ranging in the mid- to upper 60s. Preliminary reports have the spawning cycle leaning more toward postspawn. As the anglers arrive back at the ramp, we’ll do what we do best. Which is ask them about their practice, and how they expect the tournament to play out. We report, and you decide if what they said is truth or Dock Talk. 
David Fritts
“I think about half of them are still on the bed, and another group are lethargic. It’s going to be all about timing, being in the right place at the right time,” Fritts said. 
“I think you can be around a lot of them and come back two hours later and catch 20 pounds,“ Fritts said.
Mike Huff
“The bass are biting on anything you want to throw at them. You can catch them shallow, there are herring and shad spawns going on. It’s a really good time to be fishing here.”
“All that variety means you have to choose one pattern and run with it, given the time constraints of the tournament,” Huff said. “I’ve been running a lot of different patterns; I’m going to narrow it down to where I have bigger, quality fish that I can depend on.” 
Derek Hudnall
“A lot of the herring bite is going away. The bass still are there; I just think the bass are getting into that textbook postspawn funk where they are going toward a lethargic stage.” 
“It’s going to be a timing deal if you are on a herring bite, Hudnall said. “They are hanging on the herring spawn for that postspawn feeding phase. It’s going to be a moving target way of reacting to that bite.”
“It will be a timing game. You will be running a lot of spots without catching anything, then pull up on the right area and the herring bite will turn on, and you could catch 20 pounds.”
Jacob Foutz
“I don’t know what to expect because the bites have been totally random. The bass are doing a lot of different things, and success will come down to timing on being where they are biting, feeding on the herring.”
“There are fish everywhere; you can catch them deep or sight fishing,” Foutz said. “There is not one specific pattern that you can run without feeling guilty about running something else that might be more productive,” 
Taku Ito
“Taku like Lake Murray. I can fish deep and that is my specialty.”
“My plan is to use Japanese drop shot tactics,” Ito said.  
Skylar Hamilton
“When you have a very large population of bass active in all phases of the spawning cycle, then it makes it difficult to decide which way to catch them. They get spread out without the herring spawn.” 
“That is an early bite, and it only lasts so long, then you must have another page from the playbook to count on,” Hamilton said.
Ray Hanselman
“Obviously, the herring bite is key. It’s best in the morning, but you can catch them throughout the day.”
“There are a lot of bass up spawning, but I just didn’t see any that I could catch,” Hanselman said. There are fry guarders and fish in between spawning waves.” 
John Soukup
“If it were a smaller lake then I’d have a real crisp, accurate summary of what to expect, but because it’s such a big body of water, you can’t cover everything given the time we have in practice.”
“You either have some experience here, have a good guess, or you understand how the lake fires,” Sokup said. “This is my first time here.” 
“You go do everything you can, from shallow to deep, but for me, what I see going on, that anything could happen. It could be all bedding bass, or it could be fish out deep. I’m going to stick to my strengths; that could be bedding bass or not,”

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