2-23-2025 Fishing Report

Had a couple of excellent trips on Murray lately. Water temps are back down in the high 40’s. Murray didn’t get nearly as much rain as the upstate did so this creates a situation where the main Saluda River is running muddy but the smaller side creeks have much cleaner water and the fish and bait load up in them. You can also run down lake and find where the mud/clean water break line is and find good numbers of fish. On cloudy days I prefer the cleaner water side of the break lines. On sunny days, the fish will often move into the stained water. Medium shiners will produce well for live bait fishermen. Threadfin imitating artificial baits are my go-to all winter. We were pulling baits and casting bucktails when we would see big schools come by and catching good numbers on both.

There has also been a great white perch bite deep in the cleaner water. This is a very consistent winter pattern. Right now I’m finding them in 50 to 70 feet mostly. I prefer cleaner water for them. In the stained water you will want to look much shallower.

Looking ahead, as we get warm ups in Late February and all of March, a lot of fish will start to come shallow. The warm water will just be a very thin layer floating on the surface with much colder water below. But wind blown banks and shallow clay and rock banks will heat up more if they have full sun. This is one of my favorite patterns. I break out the crappie gear and catch big numbers of Stripers/Hybrids, Spotted Bass, Largemouth and Crappie all in the same areas.