Started around 6am Saturday morning in the first cove just east of the dam. Decided to start in the back but didn’t see any signs of life and was only marking a little bait here and there. As I was working my way out I noticed some fish crashing near the tullies by the fishing dock. Huge shad balls with fish underneath em kept showing on the down imaging. Couldn’t get em to react to a crank or chatterbait, so decided to go finesse and throw a 3in swimbait on the underspin and nothing either. The water was super clear, so threw that same bait on a regular jig head and was bit first cast. Got one more outta that school and then the bait and bass disappeared. It was pretty crowded everywhere else I wanted to fish so I pushed all the way back to the cove near Baltimore and worked my way back out to the main point with no signs of life nor anything showing up on the sonar. Followed that shoreline to the next deepest cove on the reservoir and got two more fish about 3/4 of the way to the very back on tullie lines. All the fish I caught were better quality than I had been catching the past couple weeks, about 1-3lbs. Water fluctuated from 63-67 by the end of the day, so it seems that there’s a mix of spawning and post spawning fish.

I feel like the fish at Murray are finally starting to wake up a bit. Started my morning around 6am at the same main point from Baltimore street where I caught that solid 6 pounder last weekend. My game plan was to start a bit deeper off the point since the weather was up a bit the last couple days and suspected they might be out a little deeper. My suspicion was correct, as I hooked a decent 2 pounder on a 6xD crank in about 15 feet of water and only 1 more on the crank afterward. I worked the same point for another 30 mins with various techniques and got 1 more biter on a drop shotted worm and decided to try some other areas. I moved to the next secondary point near the baseball fields, in hopes that maybe these fish have started to move into the coves for the spawn but didn’t have any luck. I moved out to the main point from those same baseball fields with a more shallow diving square bill crank and didn’t have any biter’s but noticed a lot of small shad schools swimming by, so I decided to try a finesse swimbait to match the shad. After tossing a 3inch keitech easy shiner I had 2 bites on fish around a pound and my third was a hefty one, especially on 6 pound test. After about a five minute battle I finally got what looked to me like a solid 7 pounder to the net. It was safe to say that this was another aggressive female that has been gorging on shad and possibly the stocked trout (on account of protruding belly). I feel like this one outweighed my last week’s catch by a pound or two, and I think it’s safe to say that Murray is shaping for a decent spawn bite, but it seems to me that these fish are still are out on the main points and haven’t yet moved into those secondary points or coves yet. Good luck to every getting out this week.