Texas pro catches 18 largemouth weighing 59-13 to lead after Day 1 on Lake Murray, full field to complete Qualifying Round Friday

COLUMBIA, S.C. (March 6, 2025) – Cold, windy, post-frontal conditions might have chilled the bite a tad from what some anglers expected on Day 1 of the Major League Fishing (MLF) Bass Pro Tour PowerStop Brakes Stage 3 Presented by Strike King . But Lake Murray’s healthy largemouth population still made its presence felt, with 21 of the 66 Bass Pro Tour anglers topping 30 pounds and doing so with a variety of techniques.

Bites seemed to come in flurries, and no one had a more prolific one than Jeff Sprague. The veteran Texan rocketed to the top of SCORETRACKER® when he stacked up nearly 40 pounds in a 90-minute span during Period 1. He maintained his lead for the rest of the day, totaling 59 pounds, 13 ounces on 18 scorable bass. That has him 9 pounds clear of Marshall Hughes in second. Brent Ehrler sits right behind Hughes with 49-15.

Lake Murray has been good to Sprague over the years. He finished 12th in the 2017 Forrest Wood Cup on the fishery and seventh when the Bass Pro Tour visited in 2023. Yet he admitted he didn’t take the water Thursday morning expecting to find himself leaving with the lead.

For one thing, Sprague heard the pre-tournament chatter about how many fish anglers were seeing during practice and figured the weights could get heavy in a hurry – especially for those anglers utilizing forward-facing sonar. He also didn’t hook many fish during practice, so he didn’t know just how productive his bank-oriented approach could be.

“The way I’m fishing, I would have potentially burned it up, burned fish that I don’t want to burn,” Sprague said. “So, once I figured out what they wanted to eat, I just kind of looked at the area and milled around and tried to find some other areas that set up similar to that.”

Turns out, while 45 anglers utilized forward-facing sonar during Period 1, Sprague outpaced all of them. He found several sweet spots in the same vicinity that produced multiple bass apiece. He totaled 42-1 during the opening frame, distancing himself from his nearest pursuer by more than 14 pounds.

“I had a starting area; I didn’t have a starting spot,” Sprague explained. “I was just fishing the conditions, and I knew where the fish were at. It’s just put the trolling motor down and go. Once you’re going, you could locate those fish in little groups on little turns and little rolls, then you’re able to Spot-Lock and make multiple casts and catch multiple fish off each one of those little special areas.”

From there, Sprague spent the rest of the day covering water and looking for more key spots. He turned his Lowrance ActiveTarget on during Period 2 but never deviated from winding around the shoreline.

While Sprague didn’t want to divulge many details about his technique of choice, he believes the groups of bass he found were fresh fish staging prior to the spawn. Quite a few anglers found the bass to be finicky, but Sprague said those that recently migrated from deeper water are willing to bite. He’s optimistic that more groups will move in, replenishing those areas as the tournament progresses.

“The fish are coming,” he said. “The fish are really starting to move in, to get there, and that’s the thing that’s the most intriguing. Guys are going to have to find the fish that are starting to move in and are fresh and haven’t been messed with at all.”

Sprague’s goal now is to finish atop the Qualifying Round standings, which would earn him a direct trip to Sunday’s Championship Round and his 14th career Bass Pro Tour Top 10. However, he did note that if he falls behind the pace Friday morning, he’s willing to ease off his best areas and spend the afternoon preparing for the Knockout Round.

“It’s great to get a strong start like that,” Sprague said. “It takes a little pressure off. But then it adds an additional pressure, because now you start to think about making it to the Championship Round if you’re able to put it together two days in a row and skip that Knockout Round. That’s kind of what we’ll shoot for in the morning. We’ll just see what the day gives us, and then we’ll make a decision on whether we lay into them and try to make that Championship or if we lay up and just go fish the Knockout Round and try to make it through that way.”

With seemingly infinite creek arms, coves and contour lines to explore, Lake Murray can be an intimidating place for a first timer. That learning curve is only exacerbated by the collective experience on the fishery for much of the Bass Pro Tour field and the fact that competitors had just two days of official practice.

Hughes addressed the challenge by picking one area to spend his entire first day of practice then another where he spent all of the second day. That seems to have paid off.

“It was like a maze trying to get around,” Hughes said of Murray. “It’s got all them little islands and pockets. I kind of picked an area the first day of practice and picked an area the second day of practice, and here we are.”

The BPT rookie found two distinct bites, one that he targeted during his lone period with forward-facing sonar and another that produced after he turned off his transducers. Fishing water protected from the wind, Hughes boated six bass for 19-5 while using his forward-facing sonar in Period 1. He then added 31-8 on 10 fish the rest of the day, bringing his total to 50-13.

Hughes actually expected the fish he targeted with forward-facing sonar to bite better. However, he was pleasantly surprised by his secondary pattern. He ended up using part of Period 3 to run new water and find more areas that set up the same way.

“I just kind of started hopping around,” Hughes said. “I had marked some different things in the lake that looked good, and I kind of figured one little pattern out, and I ran with it, and it turned out to be pretty good. I spent a lot of the last period idling around, looking for more of that, marking that kind of stuff.”

Hughes is optimistic that he can replicate his Day 1 success – although having never fished on Murray before, he admitted he’s not sure what to expect as conditions change. Like Sprague, his plan is to gauge where he stands midway through Day 2 and then decide whether to make a push for the Qualifying Round win.

“I’m going to see how tomorrow starts shaking out, and we’ll go from there,” he said.

The top 20 pros after Day 1 on Lake Murray are:

1st:          Jeff Sprague, Wills Point, Texas, 18 bass, 59-13
2nd:        Marshall Hughes, Hemphill, Texas, 16 bass, 50-13
3rd:        Brent Ehrler, Redlands, Calif., 17 bass, 49-15
4th:         Drew Gill, Mount Carmel, Ill., 17 bass, 43-3
5th:         James Elam, Tulsa, Okla., 13 bass, 41-8
6th:        Anthony Gagliardi, Prosperity, S.C., 15 bass, 39-14
7th:        Bryan Thrift, Shelby, N.C., 14 bass, 37-14
8th:        Wesley Strader, Spring City, Tenn., 11 bass, 37-13
9th:        Colby Miller, Elmer, La., 11 bass, 35-15
10th:      Matt Becker, Ten Mile, Tenn., 11 bass, 35-15
11th:      Justin Lucas, Guntersville, Ala., 12 bass, 35-13
12th:      Mark Davis, Mount Ida, Ark., 11 bass, 34-3
13th:      Terry Scroggins, San Mateo, Fla., 12 bass, 33-10
14th:      Alton Jones Jr., Waco, Texas, 10 bass, 33-7
15th:      Nick LeBrun, Bossier, La., 10 bass, 32-9
16th:      Mark Daniels Jr., Tuskegee, Ala., 11 bass, 32-9
17th:      Ott DeFoe, Blaine, Tenn., nine bass, 32-0
18th:      Jesse Wiggins, Addison, Ala., 11 bass, 31-11
19th:      Marshall Robinson, Landrum, S.C., nine bass, 31-9
20th:      Britt Myers, Lake Wylie, S.C., 10 bass, 30-15

A complete list of results can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.

Justin Lucas of Guntersville, Alabama, earned the Day 1 Berkley Big Bass Award Thursday with a 7-pound, 4-ounce largemouth that he caught on a crankbait in Period 3. Berkley awards $1,000 to the angler who weighs the heaviest bass each day.

The full field of anglers compete in the two-day Qualifying Round on Thursday and Friday. After the two-day Qualifying Round is complete, the pro with the highest two-day total advances directly to Sunday’s Championship Round. Anglers that finish 2nd through 20th will advance to Saturday’s Knockout Round. In the Knockout Round, weights are zeroed, and the remaining anglers compete to finish in the top nine to advance to Sunday’s Championship Round. In the final-day Championship Round, weights are zeroed, and the highest one-day total wins the top prize of $150,000.

Anglers will launch at 7:15 a.m. ET each day from Dreher Island State Park, located at 3677 State Park Road in Prosperity. Each day’s takeout will be held at the same location, beginning at 3:45 p.m. Fans are welcome to attend all launch and takeout events and also encouraged to follow the event online throughout the day on the MLFNOW!® live stream and SCORETRACKER® coverage at  MajorLeagueFishing.com.

The MLFNOW!® broadcast team of Chad McKee and J.T. Kenney will break down the extended action live on all four days of competition from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET. MLFNOW!®  will be live streamed on  MajorLeagueFishing.com, the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) app and Rumble.

On Saturday and Sunday, March 8-9 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. MLF welcomes fans of all ages to visit Dreher Island State Park for the MLF Fan Experience & Watch Party. Fans can watch the pros live on the MLFNOW!  big screen, enjoy free food, participate in casting contests, enter to win hourly giveaways, listen to live music and cheer on their favorite pros. The first 50 kids 14 and under will receive a free Abu Garcia rod and reel each day. The event also includes a meet and greet with Paw Patrol’s Skye and Marshall and a youth fishing derby. The Bass Pro Tour anglers will be on hand both days to meet and greet fans, sign autographs and take selfies.

The PowerStop Brakes Stage 3 at Lake Murray Presented by Strike King is hosted by Capital City/Lake Murray Country Regional Tourism Board and features anglers competing with a 2-pound minimum weight requirement for a bass to be deemed scorable. The MLF Fisheries Management Division determines minimum weights for each body of water that the Bass Pro Tour visits, based on the productivity, bass population and anticipated average size of fish in each fishery.

The 2025 Bass Pro Tour features a field of 66 of the top professional anglers in the world, competing across seven regular-season tournaments around the country, for millions of dollars and valuable points to qualify for the annual Heavy Hitters all-star event and the REDCREST 2026 championship.

Television coverage of the PowerStop Brakes Stage 3 at Lake Murray Presented by Strike King will premiere as a two-hour episode starting at 7 a.m. ET, on Saturday, Oct. 4 on Discovery, with the Championship Round premiering on Sunday, Oct. 5. New MLF episodes premiere each Saturday morning on Discovery, with re-airings on Outdoor Channel.

Proud sponsors of the 2025 MLF Bass Pro Tour include: 7Brew Coffee, Abu Garcia, Athletic Brewing, Bass Force, B&W Trailer Hitches, Bass Pro Shops, Berkley, BUBBA, E3 Sports Apparel, Fishing Clash, Grizzly, Lowrance, Mercury, MillerTech, Mossy Oak Fishing, NITRO, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Power-Pole, Ranger Boats, Rapala, Star brite, Suzuki Marine and Toyota.

For complete details and updated information on Major League Fishing and the Bass Pro Tour, visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF’s social media outlets at Facebook , X, Instagram and  YouTube.

About Major League Fishing
Major League Fishing (MLF) is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, producing more than 250 events annually at some of the most prestigious fisheries in the world, while broadcasting to America’s living rooms on CBS, Discovery Channel, Outdoor Channel, CBS Sports Network, World Fishing Network and on demand on MyOutdoorTV (MOTV). Headquartered in Benton, Kentucky, the MLF roster of bass anglers includes the world’s top pros and more than 30,000 competitors in all 50 states and 20 countries. Since its founding in 2011, MLF has advanced the sport of competitive fishing through its premier television broadcasts and livestreams and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for bass through research, education, fisheries enhancement and fish care.