COLUMBIA, S.C. (June 21, 2021) – Major League Fishing (MLF) pro Marty Robinson of Lyman, South Carolina, caught 11 bass totaling 22 pounds, 15 ounces, to win the Championship Round of the 2021 MLF Wiley X Summit Cup Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches on Lake Murray, which premiered Saturday on the Outdoor Channel. It was the first MLF Cup win of Robinson’s career.
“It wasn’t pretty, but I got it done and I’ll take it however I can get it,” Robinson said in his post-game interview. “It’s still kind of a little surreal. I live about an hour and a half from here, so I’ve got a little bit of knowledge about Lake Murray. But I’ve seen it so many times before where you think you know what to do and try to fish that way and it can bite you. I really tried to fish this event open-minded and let the fish tell me what they were doing, and I think that was the biggest key in me getting it done.”
Robinson credited just two baits as being crucial to his success.
“The two baits that got it done for me this week was a homemade flat-side crankbait and a standard green pumpkin jig with a twin tail trailer on it,” Robinson said. “I threw the crankbait down the sloping gravel banks and wound it with a medium retrieve. Then, when I would come up around the boat docks with a little bit of cover on them, I’d reach for the green pumpkin jig and flip it in there and just work it through the cover as slow as possible.”
The final eight anglers at the 2021 Wiley X Summit Cup Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches on Lake Murray finished:
1st: Marty Robinson, Lyman, S.C., 11 bass, 22-15
2nd: Bryan Thrift, Shelby, N.C., seven bass, 17-3
3rd: Mike McClelland, Blue Eye, Mo., five bass, 15-5
4th: Shinichi Fukae, Osaka, Japan, five bass, 14-10
5th: Bobby Lane, Lakeland, Fla., seven bass, 13-1
6th: Bradley Roy, Lancaster, Ky., five bass, 12-13
7th: Justin Atkins, Florence, Ala., two bass, 5-13
8th: Jacob Powroznik, Prince George, Va., one bass, 3-6
Complete results from the event can be found at MajorLeagueFishing.com.
Overall, there were 43 bass weighing 105 pounds, 2 ounces caught by the final eight pros during the Championship Round of competition on Lake Murray.
Fukae caught the Berkley Big Bass of the day – a chunky 4-pound, 2-ounce largemouth that came on a shaky-head rig in Period 3.
The 2021 Wiley X Summit Cup Presented by B&W Trailer Hitches was hosted by Capital City/Lake Murray Country and premiered on the Outdoor Channel as six, two-hour original episodes each Saturday afternoon debuting on May 15, 2021, and running through June 19, 2021.
All six episodes of the event are available for viewing on the MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) streaming app.
The event was shot over six days in early February 2021, in Columbia and featured 30 MLF pro anglers competing in different areas each round on Lake Murray. The areas are unknown to the anglers – they do not learn where they are competing until they arrive to the launch ramp each morning of competition.
For complete details and updated information visit MajorLeagueFishing.com. For regular updates, photos, tournament news and more, follow MLF’s social media outlets social media outlets at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
About Major League Fishing
Major League Fishing (MLF) is the world’s largest tournament-fishing organization, producing more than 250 events annually at some of the most prestigious fisheries in the world, while broadcasting to America’s living rooms on CBS, the Discovery Channel, the Outdoor Channel, CBS Sports Network, the World Fishing Network, the Sportsman Channel and on-demand on MyOutdoorTV (MOTV).
Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with offices in Benton, Kentucky, the MLF roster of bass anglers includes the world’s top pros and more than 30,000 competitors in all 50 states and 13 countries. In 2019 MLF acquired FLW and rebranded it as MLF BIG5, which expanded its portfolio of catch, weigh and immediately release events to include the sport’s strongest five-biggest-fish format tournament circuits. Since its founding in 2011, MLF has advanced the sport of competitive fishing through its premier television broadcasts and livestreams, and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for bass through research, education, fisheries enhancement and fish care.