3rd Place Lake Murray Tournament Recap! | Bailey Eigbrett

Video Transcription

What's going on guys? Bailey Eigbrett here. We just wrapped up the Bassmaster Kayak series event on Lake Murray and we're going home with some hardware. We got top three, finished third place. Got a nice blue trophy for the Kayak series event. And we're gonna tell you guys how we caught up. So in practice, there was a bunch of different things I was targeting, but I was really trying to find those wintering bass that were moving up to the next staging area to get ready to go and eventually spawn. So what I was really focusing on was more of the clear water being northern in me. I was looking for clear water, but also bigger creek mouths where those fish would find the points off the creek mouths that they could use as a staging area to eventually move back into those creeks. That's what I was focused on there, but I ended up actually finding that some of my fish pulled off deeper as the temperatures got colder throughout the event. I had some brush piles and some grass that was located off these deeper saddles on the lake. And notice that my fish had pulled back off to those.

So there's a few different baits that I used throughout this one. I'll show you guys, but those are the two primary areas where I was finding these fish that were trying to stage up and get ready to move up for the spring time. There's a few main baits that did a lot of the work for me throughout this tournament, looking at those creek mouths. A lot of the fish I caught were on an A rig, just a Hog Farmer, five blade A rig. I got some Picasso swimbait heads on here. Keitech Easy Shiners, and I do have a Strike King Rage Swimmer in the middle to kind of give that different swimbait. In the middle, something for them to key on, put a little chartreuse here on the belly . And the A rig did a bunch of damage for me, especially day one. Lost a good one on it day two. I was able to clean up with a couple baits that I'll show you next, but was able to target groups of fish, brush piles, grass stumps, things like that on that point with that A rig.

In addition, I was able to target some fish with a damiki rig or a jig head minnow. There's so many names for it now, pinging a minnow, cricket tickling. There's so many different things that you can call it, but nonetheless, I love it because I'm able to, before facing sonar, I used a Humminbird MEGA Live. I was able to identify structures. Even if I couldn't see the fish that well, I could target stumps, things like that, and slowly hover that bait up above that cover and watch those fish come up and eat it. This bait definitely came up clutch and caught me one of my biggest fish on day two, a 20 and three quarter [inch] was five pounds, ten ounces. This thing is very versatile, and it was definitely clutch and catching fish all throughout the lake, shallow, deep. On both day one and day two, I did catch some fish that were up shallow crankin' and I tried to keep that on, be it the springtime, some of these fish are wanting to move shallow, and there were some nice rip rap banks moving into these creek mouths.

Lake Murray definitely seems to be plentiful with those nice banks that are perfect to get up shallow and crank, and I caught a really nice fish, a 19 incher, on day two that kind of led me down the wrong path, but was a key catch for me on day two that helped me get there, that is a Berkley Clickin' Frittside. It's the Clickin' version there's a normal and there's a clickin', it's louder, it's got the rattle on the inside. This is the Ghost Red Craw, it's a 5 size, the 5 Biggun' size. My favorite one to throw, it's a little bit deeper than a normal 5. Was burning this up shallow and that thing absolutely muched it.

Last but not least when I noticed my fish had pulled deep, I didn't notice my fish going shallow, spent a couple hours, unfortunately not finding them there, decided to pull back. When I did, I'm glad that I did, because when I did, I noticed on side imaging that there were fish on those grass and those saddles. I was able to then put down the MEGA Live and key on them with that. Jig head minnow like I told you guys, but caught my biggest fish in the tournament, tied it for big bass of the event. Unfortunately, I lost a tiebreaker, but was key in getting me in third place because of 23.5 inches or 7 pounder. That was on an underspin. The Buckeye Lures quarter ounce underspin with a Strike King Rage Swimmer. What was nerve-wracking about this one is I was throwing both of these baits because the bite was actually relatively challenging for some of these fish. You could tell they were pressured. I was throwing them both on 6 pound fluorocarbon. I was able to get me the bites that I needed, finessed them up, got them to eat , and I was able to take home the hardware.

You can grab all of these and more at Omnia Fishing, check out some of the map layers that were pretty clutch for me this week. Looking at where the clear water was going to be throughout the lake, that water clarity layer paired with the water temperature layer, was absolutely clutch in helping me with minimal practice time, be able to figure out what my high percentage areas were going to be. Being the northern that I am, being comfortable around clear water, that was a big advantage for me in practice. Check out more at Omnia Fishing. [Music]