16
Tactics
15
Tactics
BRANDON McMILLAN
CLEWISTON, FLA.
22 LBS, 12 OZ
by Sean Ostruszka
Brandon McMillan is a shallow-water angler at heart, and
he stayed in the skinny water during the Cup. He’d located 30
to 40 bream beds in the mid-lake section of Lake Murray dur-
ing practice where he found some quality bass hanging
around. Unfortunately, fishing pressure and the moon might
have pulled many away.
“I think being on the backside of the full moon, those big
fish left the shallows,” McMillan says.
On day one, he still was able to pull seven keepers off
bream beds, but by day two, all those fish were gone, com-
pelling him to burn the banks faster than he’d ever fished
before.
“I burned through six batteries on day two,” McMillan
says. “My foot never came off the trolling motor other than to
put on a new bait or take off a fish.”
ANDREW UPSHAW
TULSA, OKLA.
23 LBS, 15 OZ
by David A. Brown
A 4x4 Buzz Bait Extreme with a Zoom Horny Toad was
McMillan’s one and only tool for the Cup. He modified the
buzzbait by swapping in a smaller blade.
“This way it was still heavy enough for me to skip it, but I
could then burn it even faster with that small blade,” says
McMillan. “I actually taught myself how to skip docks at this
event.”
When it was sunny, he used a white Horny Toad and
switched to grey ghost when it was cloudy.
In practice, Andrew Upshaw found success with a shallow
frog bite and by drop-shotting shallow grass. However, his
tournament came down to a mix of fishing topwater for
schoolers and fishing docks. The key was adjusting to chang-
ing conditions.
“Throughout practice and the last couple of weeks [before
the tournament], the water had been dropping a lot, and I
figured out that the shallow bite was dwindling,” Upshaw
says. “The fish were moving off the banks and going up under
the adjacent docks.”
Upshaw developed a sub-pattern for his dock fish, noting
the better action came on docks with multiple boats tied up, a
boat lift or any built-up structure that cast more shade. Lake
Murray’s regulations limit dock size for new structures, so older
docks with more substantial structure proved most attractive.
“By the end of the second day, I was just running big
docks,” Upshaw says. “I’d catch a fish off every one of them.”
For his topwater bite, Upshaw focused on long, flat points
where bass chased blueback herring. He found that the bass
would position shallower than stripers, so he’d find the latter
first and then move in closer for his target species.
Baits
Baits
80
Upshaw caught his fish on a Rat-L-Trap StutterStep 4.0 in
the silver surfer color, a green pumpkin Gene Larew Bass
Shooter rigged on a 1/8-ounce weighted hook, a green
pumpkin stick worm wacky rigged on a 2/0 hook and a green
pumpkin Gene Larew Three-Legged Frog rigged on a Mustad
double frog hook.
FLWFISHING.COM I OCTOBER 2017