2 EARLY STORY LINES
1. The New Grass
According to T-H Marine FLW Bass Fishing League stick
Joey Sabbagha, who lives on Lake Murray, there’s more
grass on the lake this year than in 2014.
“You’ve got some gator grass [alligator weed], water
willow and now there’s some dollar pads coming up along
the shore,” he says. “That’s something we haven’t had in a
long time. There’s an abundance of shoreline grass, and
that’s going to be a major player in the Cup.
“When Michael Bennett won it down here [in 2008],
that’s when we had a lot of gator grass. Then the gator
grass went away for whatever reason, and now it’s back,”
Sabbagha adds.
Sabbagha suspects that the new grass will set up a
strong frog bite, and in 2008 Mark Rose caught 20
pounds, 2 ounces on day one of the Cup by punching a
heavy jig into thick emergent grass. The greenery will cer-
tainly get a lot of attention from the pros.
2. The Schedule Change
In a departure from the norm, the 2017 Forrest Wood
Cup will be a three-day event with a four-day official prac-
tice period. An extra day to scout the lake could be
tremendously valuable to some anglers, but it’ll also put
more pressure on fish that can be pretty cranky to begin
with in late summer.
Tournament-wise, a three-day Cup at Murray might
force some pros to reconsider the schooling pattern,
which is a slow-and-steady approach that can outlast the
shallow bite over a four-day period, but might not be able
to keep up for just three days.
“Usually when you get on those schooling fish down
there, it’s a lot of 2 1/2-pounders, and you’ll get some 3s,
but it’s hard to compete unless the tournament is
stretched out because a guy could catch 17 or 18 pounds
in a day in the shallows,” says Sabbagha. “That’s hard to
do for several days, but someone could catch two big bags
up shallow, with one decent bag – I’m talking a 10-pound
bag – and win.”
JULY 2017 I FLWFISHING.COM
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