Steve Morgan has released his Day One highlights from the 2026 Humminbird round of the Wilson BARRA Series on Lake Monduran, and the vlog is a clinic in late-session tournament pressure. Fishing the two-day event, Morgan filled his five-fish scoring limit with "the final cast of the night" at 11:38 pm — a full 22 minutes before the lines-down buzzer — to end Day One sitting in eighth place overall.
"We finally got a limit on the first day of the Monduran 2-day event at 11:38 p.m. when the finish was at 12:00 and in fact we wanted to be in by quarter to 12 to process results," Morgan recounted in his video notes.
The day hadn't started smoothly. Morgan and his partner Cole spent the afternoon "frogging up in the shallows throwing the 6-inch Rapa Crush City Heavy Hitter weedless", chasing surface blow-ups that never came. "No joy, and the one boil-up the back of Insane Bay," was how he summed it up. With Monduran's shallow bites refusing to cooperate, the team pulled the pin on the frog pattern and made the long run to the other end of the lake.
"Then we moved down the lake to the timber and to the channel near where we fished in the overnighter," Morgan explained. "Ended up getting eight bites, landing five fish, sitting in around eighth place. Caught fish on a variety of baits. Some on a jerkbait, some on the Prolure hybrid shrimp 93 mil and one fish on a Freeloader strolling."
The variety of fish-producing techniques is telling. Monduran sits at the end of a long summer where the Wilson BARRA Series fleet has been squeezing deep fish out of the trees, and Morgan's answer was to cycle a jerkbait (the Redic DS80), a weighty 93 mm Prolure Hybrid Shrimp and a Lucky Craft-inspired Freeloader glide through the same timber edges. That the strolling bite finally loaded up on the last cast hints at how hard-won the bag was.
Morgan's own commentary during the highlights reel confirms the pattern of undersized fish. "Little baby 84," he called one. "Oh, I haven't caught a barra in eight days," he joked when another modest fish ate his jerkbait. The biggest moment was saved for Cole, who landed the kicker — a 104 cm barra hooked on the outside of the chin on the Freeloader. "What a surprise that he ate it. Oh, he's a good one. He's going to lose his mind soon… Boom, that's a dollar. 105. I reckon it is. Cole is 104. She's the boss."
Day One of Monduran has rarely ended with a limit secured at the siren, and Morgan's eighth-place position reflects how competitive the 2026 BARRA Series field has become. The bait mix — a midsize jerkbait, a hybrid shrimp plastic and a glide retrieved under the electric — is a useful snapshot for anglers trying to bridge the gap between Monduran's classic summer topwater bite and the dam's pressured late-season fish. Day Two will tell whether Morgan and Cole can close the eight-bite gap and trade eighth place for something with weight behind it.