Paul Marks has captured his second Bassmaster Elite Series win, and both have come on lakes where blueback herring run the bait conversation. In a post-tournament breakdown filmed for Zoom Bait's Top Tackle channel, the South Carolina pro walked through exactly how he turned Lake Murray's herring-pinned fish into 20 keepers across four days.
"Just wrapped up the Bassmaster Elite Lake Murray. Got the win, got another blue trophy on a herring lake," Marks said. "It's a dream come true times two, I guess."
The bait did most of the talking. Eighteen of Marks's 20 weighed fish came on a Zoom Super Fluke in a new colour the company is rolling out as Chartreuse Herring - a hybrid that he says reads as a different bait depending on the cloud cover and sun angle.
"It kind of works in cloudy and sunny conditions," Marks said of the new colour. "Just the different colours that are in it."
His rig was equally deliberate. Marks ran the fluke on a 5/0 Gamakatsu offset worm hook, sized up for both penetration on the hookset and for keeping a faster retrieve in the strike zone.
"I use the 5/0 because it's a little bit heavier. It's a big hook, so I can work the fluke a little bit faster and it doesn't come up out of the water," he said. "It also is nano-coated and super strong, super sharp hook. I mean I could have used the same one the whole week and it still would have been just as sharp."
Marks paired that hook with a 7-foot medium-heavy Lew's Custom Lite, 15-pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon leader and 15-pound braid. The rod, he said, was built around the combination of a forgiving tip and the power to drive a thick 5/0 home on long casts.
"Using this rod I could feel like I could throw it way further and when one ate it, I was hooking them," Marks said.
"Every day I had to switch it up throughout the day on how I worked it in," he said. "Sometimes it was as fast as I could do it without it blowing out, and then sometimes it was just working it real slow and just a subtle little swim up through there."
The championship Sunday came down to a single, in-the-boat decision. After fishing his best two morning spots for just a single three-pounder, Marks made a switch.
"Made a game-time decision and picked up a baitcaster with a crankbait on it. Pulled up, caught two over five and really kick-started my day," he said. "And then ran to one of my starting spots and threw up there and caught a six on a fluke, and I knew it might be a wrap then, but I wanted to cull my last one that wasn't quite 4 pounds. And it worked out, obviously. What a crazy week."
The takeaway for the rest of the field, and for any blueback herring lake angler eyeing a new soft-jerk colour for May, is straightforward. Chartreuse Herring is now a confirmed major-tournament winner, fished on a heavy worm hook, on a finesse leader, in water that ranges from 20 feet to a foot of cover, with a retrieve dictated by the light at the time.
For Marks, the Murray result also doubles as a quiet statement of what the herring game has become. Twice he's stood on the blueback fishery's biggest stage. Twice he's left with the trophy.