Bassmaster Classic

John Murray – Day 2
Sunday, February 21, 2010

> Day 1: 4, 7-12
> Day 2: 3, 4-09 (7, 12-05)

I was never really on anything worth fishing. I got five bites a day and I lost two of them today and one yesterday, and getting those five bites was pretty tough.

Today all my bites came over a 2-hour stretch, and I caught three and lost two. All of them came out of the same tree in the back of a clear-water creek. I caught a 4-pounder in practice out of there.

I threw a little bit of everything today. I tired a wacky-rigged Senko, I flipped and I threw Traps, but I never got a single bite anywhere else.

John Murray – Day 1
Saturday, February 20, 2010

> Day 1: 4, 7-12

I only caught four with one 3-pound spot and one really small largemouth. I had my fifth fish on with about an hour left in the day, but it came off.

I mostly fished real slow around brushpiles with a 1/2-ounce Omega jig. I was in 5 to 10 feet of water out on the main lake, and I just struggled the whole day.

I don't really know what to do tomorrow – I'm sort of struggling with that, too.

John Murray – Practice
Thursday, February 18, 2010

The first day of practice there was a blizzard, so it took a while just to get acclimated to getting back on Lay Lake after 3 years. Despite the snow, from the minute I launched I thought it would be like 3 years ago – that I'd catch a lot of fish. So after about 2 or 3 hours and just one flipping bite, I really started to think that I didn't know what I was doing out there. I ended up fishing some areas that I know the fish are in and caught a nice 4-pound largemouth in the blizzard. Other than that, I couldn't figure out how to catch them.

After that, I sort of found out that everybody was having a tough time. So I adjusted and opposed to getting 20 to 25 bites a day, I started looking to get five or six bites a day. I changed my gameplan as far as my expectations. The last 2 days of the weekend practice were sunny and cold, and I did a lot of running around as far as looking for new water colors and temperatures. Again I got about one really good bite a day, but not much else.

After that we were off for 2 days. Then for the final practice day, yesterday, I went out to some areas I hadn't been to, because there were still a lot of areas I hadn't fished. I ended up eliminating all of them.

The sum total is I found one area up the river where I can catch some fish, but the size isn't there to win, so the area where I caught my bigger fish is probably where I'll end up spending the whole tournament – trying to get as many big bites as I can get. It's a downlake area.