The Lake Murray FFS-then-Neko pattern.

The 2025 Bass Pro Tour at Lake Murray was decided by a two-stage pattern almost every top angler ran: scope the schools during legal FFS hours, then switch to a Neko rig on hand-selected cover the rest of the day. Two presentations, two stages, same fish. Here's the pattern, why it worked, and — if you don't have FFS (like me) — how to fake the half that actually catches the fish.

The setup.

Lake Murray, South Carolina. May 2025. Warm spring water, post-spawn transitioning. The bass had finished bedding and were stacking on offshore structure — humps, brush piles, channel bends, and the kind of mid-depth (10–20 ft) cover that holds fish in summer.

Tournament rules: forward-facing sonar was legal for the first portion of each day, then restricted to non-FFS sonar only for the remainder. This rule alone forced the pros into a two-stage strategy. Single-mode anglers — those who tried to run one technique all day — got out-fished by the field.

Most of the field didn't realize this was the pattern until the leaderboard made it obvious.

Phase 1 — the FFS window.

In the legal FFS hours, the pros scoped offshore structure looking for arches — suspended bass holding on or near brush, rock, and bait schools. When fish were visibly present on the screen, they threw small swimbaits, scope baits, or weightless flukes at them.

This produced 2–4 quality fish per angler per hour in the right conditions. Not a limit-filling pace — but enough to set up the day. When the FFS window closed, most pros had a partial limit but not enough to win.

Phase 2 — Neko on selected cover.

Here's the part most casual viewers missed: the pros had already noted, via FFS earlier in the day, exactly where the brush, rock, and bait were holding. They built a mental map during the legal window.

Once FFS time ended, they ran straight to those exact spots and worked them with a Neko rig — 5" stick bait, 3/32 oz nail weight, slow vertical drop. The bass that wouldn't bite a scope bait — because of fishing pressure, mood, or angle — would still eat a Neko sitting on the cover.

Quality fish kept showing up in the bag through the entire back half of the day. Some pros caught more fish in phase 2 than in phase 1.

Why this worked.

The genius wasn't either phase by itself. The genius was the combination.

1. FFS gave high-resolution intel on exactly where the fish were holding — which brush pile, which rock, which channel bend.
2. The Neko converted the fish that wouldn't chase at scope speed. Different mood, different presentation, same fish.
3. Two completely different presentations covered two completely different bass moods — aggressive (scope bait) and selective (Neko).
4. Most of the field tried to run a single-presentation strategy and got out-fished. Either they scoped all day (and lost their lead-pipe spots to other anglers when FFS time ended) or they Neko-rigged blind (and missed the suspended schools entirely).

How to fake the FFS half without FFS.

This is what matters for the rest of us — the anglers without $4,000 in electronics and a Bass Cat to mount it on.

You can't see suspended schools in real-time without FFS. That part of the pattern is genuinely gone. But you CAN identify high-percentage cover with free tools:

1. Free mapping apps — Navionics Boating (free tier), Fishbrain, Google Maps satellite view. Look for points, channel bends, humps, brush piles marked by other anglers, isolated cover near deeper water.
2. Visible structure from the bank — laydowns, dock corners, exposed rock, weed-line edges. The cover you can see is real cover, and bass use it.
3. Pattern recognition — points adjacent to deep water, channel bends near flats, isolated cover within 50 yards of a creek mouth. These are the "high-percentage" spots that hold fish even when you can't see the fish.
4. Public lake data — many state agencies publish brush pile coordinates, fish attractor maps, and structure surveys. Free for the asking.

Spot it once. Mark it. Work it with the Neko. You won't catch the suspended schools the FFS pros caught — but the Neko half? Fully replicable.

The Neko half is the part that catches fish.

Here's the underrated insight: even at Lake Murray, with FFS legal for the first 90 minutes, the Neko bites were the difference between a Top 10 and a check vs. a 25th-place finish.

The scope bites are sexy. The scope bites make highlight reels. But the Neko bites — the slow, methodical "drop it on the brush and wait" bites — were what filled the bag.

You don't need FFS to fish a Neko rig on known cover. You need a Neko rig and known cover. Both are free or cheap. Both are accessible.

The bigger pattern.

Lake Murray wasn't a one-off. This two-stage approach — high-tech location + low-tech execution — keeps showing up across the 2025 BPT season. The pros are using FFS to find fish faster, then using traditional finesse presentations to catch them.

The translation for non-FFS anglers: replace "FFS to find" with "experience + mapping to find." Then run the same finesse execution. You give up some efficiency in the finding stage, but the conversion stage is identical.

A bank angler with strong pattern recognition and a Neko rig will out-fish a boater with FFS who can't slow down. Every time.

The TL;DR.

1. Lake Murray pros ran FFS-Then-Neko: scope suspended schools first, slow-fish known cover after.
2. Phase 1 (FFS) requires expensive gear and tournament context. Skip it if neither applies.
3. Phase 2 (Neko on known cover) requires a Senko, a nail weight, and known cover. Fully accessible from any bank.
4. Find the cover with free tools (Navionics, satellite view, pattern recognition) — work it with the Neko.
5. The Neko bites are the bites that win. The FFS scope bites are the bites that get views.

The pros figured it out. The bank angler with a Senko can steal half of it tomorrow.