Some anglers chase a pattern all week. Paul Marks has spent a lifetime living one, and at the Bassmaster Elite Series event on Lake Murray, South Carolina, that head start paid off with his second blue trophy on a blueback-herring fishery.
Marks grew up on Lake Lanier in Georgia, a famous blueback-herring lake, fishing it nearly every day. Lake Murray, he explained, plays by the same rules. "Number one thing I like about Lake Murray is it's a blue back herring fishery," he said. "They're very similar lakes. The lakes have similar characteristics. There's humps, points, drop-offs, blowthroughs, saddles. It's all very similar."
That familiarity showed in his temperament. While the leaderboard churned, Marks stayed level. "Consistency is probably my biggest weapon," he said. "Fishing herring lakes, running around, burning a ton of gas, I just felt right at home and never got rattled, nothing."
His weapon of choice was a Zoom Super Fluke, a soft-plastic jerkbait he has thrown his entire life, including a new colour he leaned on as conditions shifted. The challenge was not choosing the bait but decoding the daily, sometimes hourly, mood of the fish.
"The most difficult adjustment I had to make this week on Lake Murray was how they wanted me to work my fluke," Marks said. "It changed every hour. How they wanted it, the cadence, the speed, if they wanted it on the surface or down a little bit. But it changed every hour and I just had to figure it out."
In the gin-clear water, the first cast to every spot was everything. "My first cast every place I pulled up to was the most important by far, because the water's very clear on Lake Murray and they can see super far," he said. "You need to make sure your bait lands right where it needs to and you start working it immediately, because you don't want them to get a good look at it."
He even weaponised the splash. "Every cast I made, I was trying to put it where I thought that would be the best spot for the fish to hear the bait hit the water and react to it," Marks said. "I feel like them hearing that splash and the bait working over them triggers more of them."
The tournament had its turning points. A six-pound, 12-ounce fish at around noon on day two changed his event. "It definitely was a turning point for me, because I wouldn't have had much that day," he said. On the final day, with his two best morning spots producing only a three-pounder, he made the call that sealed it, picking up a baitcaster with a crankbait and pulling up on the bank.
"I caught two over five in, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes," he said. "That was definitely the biggest decision I made today that paid off."
Marks described the bite when it came as something out of a nature documentary, big bass reacting to the fluke "like they would eat a blue back herring, ferociously jumping out of the water." When his winning bag hit the scales, even he could scarcely believe it. "I was thinking that this might be a dream. How is it happening twice? But it sure was a blessing," he said, noting his mother was in the crowd on Mother's Day.
The second blue trophy also settled the matter of a nickname. "My second blue trophy definitely shows me that I know how to catch some herring bass," Marks said. "And I'm probably the herring king, because I fished two Bassmaster Elites that were on herring waters and got the win in both of them."