March 5, 2025 • Mitchell Forde • Bass Pro Tour

Just about every bass fishing tournament field includes a local favorite – an angler who lives nearby or has a track record of success on the fishery. But there’s local favorites, and then there’s Anthony Gagliardi on Lake Murray. 

Gagliardi’s history on Murray, which will host PowerStop Brakes Stage 3 Presented by Strike King starting Thursday, has been nothing short of dominant. The last time the Bass Pro Tour visited the fishery, in 2023, he won. That marked his third tour-level victory on the lake to go along with a 2014 Forrest Wood Cup and 2006 FLW Tour event.  

In all, Gagliardi has contested seven tour-level events on Murray and finished among the top 11 six times. He’s notched five top 5s, one runner-up finish and three wins for a grand total of $867,000 in earnings. 

It might be easy to dismiss Gagliardi’s success on Murray as a product of his familiarity with the Saluda River impoundment. He grew up fishing there and still lives on its shores in Prosperity, South Carolina. But even by home-pond standards, his dominance stands out. Consider this: Only one other pro has ever logged at least three national-level wins in MLF/FLW competition on his “home lake” – Bryan Thrift on Lake Norman. (Interestingly, two anglers have won three time apiece on fisheries outside their home state: Scott Martin on Lake Champlain and Jordan Lee on the Kissimmee Chain). 

Prior to the start of official practice for Stage 3, we caught up with Gagliardi about what has made him so good on Murray and his outlook on his chances of adding another major win on the lake this week. 

Many Murray memories

Of all his triumphs on Murray, Gagliardi said the most memorable was his 2014 Forrest Wood Cup win. Photo by Brian Lindberg

The first time Gagliardi competed on Murray, he was 11 or 12 years old, when he started fishing local team tournaments alongside his father. Even though he went to high school in the Upstate area and college at Clemson, his family always had a home near Murray, so Gagliardi would come back on weekends and during breaks from school so he could fish. 

Gagliardi’s first chance to showcase his expertise on the fishery for a national audience came in 2003, his third season competing as a pro on the FLW Tour. He struggled on Day 1 with only 11 pounds but charged back with 23-15 on Day 2. That put him in 11th place – 1 ounce shy of making the Top 10 cut. 

He’d get some revenge when the FLW Tour returned in 2006. That time, Murray sacked up 26-14 on Day 1, which had him in second place. He remained in second after Days 2 and 3, then blasted 28-4 – the heaviest limit of the tournament – to clinch the victory en route to winning the Angler of the Year title. 

While Gagliardi remembers that first Tour win on Murray fondly, he pointed to his triumph in the 2014 Forrest Wood Cup, in which he edged Scott Canterbury by a single ounce to earn $500,000, as his favorite moment on Murray. 

“That was the biggest tournament by far,” he said. “They’ve all been special. Obviously, my first (win) here in 2006, that was a special one. And then the MLF a couple years ago as well. They were all special in their own way. But definitely the Cup stands out the most.” 

Interestingly, Gagliardi noted that each of those wins came doing something out of the ordinary for a Murray local. Case in point: He won the 2023 Bass Pro Tour event after switching to a drop-shot to target bass chasing blueback herring off points. While the local playbook typically says to use herring-imitating baits like jerkbaits, swimbaits or topwaters in shallower water, Gagliardi used the drop-shot to bypass the striped bass that were also hunting the same forage and give the largemouth a different look. It accounted for all of his weight on the final day, including an 8-pound kicker that anchored a limit of 26-13. 

Gagliardi attributes his tendency to zig from local tendencies to the fact that his schedule doesn’t allow him to fish the lake like a local anymore. 

“I don’t fish here all that much,” Gagliardi said. “That’s honestly the truth. I don’t spend a whole lot of time out there. I know the lake really well, but with us fishing on tour, I don’t really have a lot of hours every year logged on this lake. So, I may not necessarily know the bites – like the local bites – because I just don’t really get to fish that much. So, whenever I do get here and fish, sometimes I think I just end up doing something a little bit different than a lot of the people around here might do.” 

A new challenge

Bucking local trends paid off big when Gagliardi used a drop-shot to catch the winning weight – including this 8-pounder – at the 2023 Bass Pro Tour event on Murray. Photo by Garrick Dixon

This week, just about everyone considers Gagliardi the angler to beat … except Gagliardi himself. The veteran pro admitted he never takes the water confident he’s going to win, even on his home lake where he’s had so much success. 

“I never feel good about it going in,” he said. “Even though I’ve done well, I’m always leery,” 

One reason for Gagliardi’s concern is the fact that he’s never fished an every-fish-counts tournament on Murray before. The 2023 event featured best-five-fish scoring (Gagliardi totaled 47-12 across the final two days to claim the trophy). He said fishing for numbers of bites rather than average size will necessitate a different approach. 

“That’s where local knowledge really, to me, doesn’t come into play as much,” he said. “Because all my hours and days out here on this lake have not been fishing toward everything counts, like just trying to get numbers of bites. And that has to do with areas of the lake. There’s maybe areas of the lake that I typically don’t go to that are prone to numbers, but they’re not prone to big fish, and so I never spend much time in those type of places.” 

Still, Gagliardi’s decades of experience on the fishery have to count for something. He acknowledged that he’ll start practice with more of an idea of where to run and what to throw than he would at a normal event. 

“I guess I have more of an idea of what I’m at least going to try to figure out at first,” he said. “When I show up to most lakes, I ain’t got a clue which direction I’m going – deep, shallow, I don’t know. At least here I’ve got somewhat of a plan that I want to implement for a little while, and if it doesn’t work, it’ll be back to square one like pretty much every other tournament.” 

Gagliardi admitted he feels some pressure as the home-lake favorite. It’s not so much that he’s worried about proving he can catch them on Murray – his track record there speaks for itself. However, he wants to make sure he requalifies for the Bass Pro Tour in 2026 and earns another berth to REDCREST (he’s qualified for the championship in all six prior BPT seasons), and competing on a fishery he knows so well offers a golden opportunity to amass points toward those goals. 

Even if he isn’t outwardly confident, history suggests he has a pretty good shot to do so. 

“If I don’t have a good tournament here, I’ve still had a pretty good run on this lake,” Gagliardi said. “So, I don’t really feel like it’s going to tarnish my reputation as a fisherman on Lake Murray. But I do feel the pressure just because it is here, and I want to make sure that I do as good as I can. It’s internal pressure more than anything.”