NEWS

Lake Martin Recap Story

Mark McCaig Tim Hurst With 14.65 Win ABT Lake Martin
By Jason Duran
The Alabama Bass Trail South Division made stop number two at Lake Martin in Alexander City.
225 teams competed for $15,000 for the first-place prize. The weather forecast was calling for
intense thunderstorms at blast-off time. However, storms moved through the area overnight a
little quicker than predicted and conditions improved at blast-off time. This provided a great
opportunity for teams to compete and catch lots of fish throughout the day. At the close of the
scales, the team of Mark McCaig and Tim Hurst led the day with 14.54 pounds.

Lake Martin is known well as the place to catch numbers. This event once again proves fish can
be caught a Lake Martin. 218 of 221 teams participating caught limits. The weights were really
tight and often just separated by ounces. The 40th place team caught 10.43 pounds and this
was the last team to catch a check.

Mark McCaig Tim Hurst 14.65 shared “We didn’t have a good practice. If this tournament had
been before the big rain it probably would have taken more. We knew the fish had moved up
and we probably wouldn’t have caught them because of our poor practice. Today we just went
out and fished the water in front of us. It worked out for us. Everything we caught today was in
a shallow pocket of some sort. The rain scattered the fish out in those pockets.” Mark and Tim
use a team approach to fishing and Mark throws moving baits typically and Tim spends the day
flipping and slower style fishing. “This lake is not normally known as a frog lake but the
conditions today made it great. There was a lot of pollen and trash on the surface and every
pocket has that after the rain and the water coming up about a foot overnight.” Their key baits
were a The Jig was black and blue Matt Herren Dirty Jigs , a Z man white Chatter Bait with a
Rapala Crush City Freeloader Trailer, and a Spro Poppin frog. This win, it gives Mark and Tim a
Third win on the ABT and their first in the South. Today they collected $15,000 plus a $8,000
Phoenix Fist Flight Bonus and a $300 Garmin Bonus.

The 2nd place team of Lucas Lindsay and Brendon Holt caught 14.28 pounds with a 6.26-pound
kicker. They started the morning “using a 8-inch Magdraft swim bait targeting fish using Garmin
Livescope. This is our favorite time of year to fish here using big swimbaits. We know this lake
well and have lots of history here. Livescope gives you the edge today and allows you to learn
on the fly. We had some docks in Parker Creek, we noticed the last day in practice the fish were
hanging out on the post of the docks. You could swim your bait by and you could get them to
follow it. However, today we notice they were literally on 1 out of 5 docks. The fish were really
spread out and very few and far between. We could have probably caught 9-10 pounds today
without Livescope but there was no way we could have caught the 6-pounder that came on a
Hinkle Shad. Livescope gives you the opportunity to know when to give the fish a reaction out
of the bait and make your bait act a certain way. We ran a lot of areas down towards the dam
today and used a half tank of fuel. A few of our areas we blown out today but we spent most of
the day targeting fish in less than 10 feet of water. These areas were close to pockets the fish
were up shallow earlier this week. In practice, we found water that was 68 degrees. The cold
rain overnight slowed down the fish movement and cooled the water off about 10 degrees and put them out a little deeper.” With the 2nd place and the 3rd place finish in the first event at
Lake Jordan, they now move to the top of the AOY Leader board with an 11-point lead. Today
they collected a $7500 payday plus another $1000 for big fish and an ABT Gear Bonus of $250.

Zack and Kristin Harrison finished 3rd with 13.55. Their game plan for this event was the same
as many others “show up on game day and give it all. We just went right the corner from blast
off to an area where the water was kind of stained. The main thing we were looking for was
trash and pollen on the top of the water blown up in the corners along the bank. We used a jig
and a frog all day.” On one of the first few casts Kristin caught a 5.18 largemouth that got them
off to a solid start. She was using a Spro Bronzeye Frog Jr in Killer Gill and Zack used it in
Midnight. They also used an unnamed “hand-tied small profile jig in brim color with creature
bait as a trailer. We caught about 15 fish all day.” Zach said he “felt like we had a decent bag,
but I didn’t think it was enough to keep us up at the top” Their style of fishing is to “show up
and fish hard from start to finish hard from start to finish with nothing flashy.” Kristin said it’s
“hard sometimes but today definitely paid off and we want that big check next” Today they
collected a $6,000 payday for third place.

The top ten standings are below for a complete list of standings please visit:
https://www.alabamabasstrail.org/lake-martin/results/

Download and listen to the ABT Podcast on your favorite Podcast app by searching for
“Alabama Bass Trail Podcast.” The Podcast is released each week on Tuesday.
For Live coverage of this event and others visit https://www.youtube.com/@alabamabasstrailtv
The 2024 Alabama Bass Trail Sponsors Include: Phoenix Boats, AMFirst, Landers – McLarty
Chevrolet, McGraw – Webb Chevrolet, Rapala, VMC, Crush City, Buffalo Rock, Academy Sports &
Outdoors, Jack’s, Garmin, Alabama State Parks, Halo Fishing, Snag proof, NetBait, Bait Fuel, TH
Marine Supplies, Power-Pole, Pro Guide Batteries, American Trailer Rental, Yamaha, Anheuser-
Busch, Big Bite Baits and FishAlabama.org