40th PLACE
42nd PLACE
“I stick to what brung me, pretty much,” he says. “I’ll put
a new twist on things, but it’s very seldom. I don’t modify
much. If Livingston, Zoom or War Eagle makes it, that’s it.
They’ve bit a damn plastic worm for 100 years, and they’re
not going to stop in the next 100 years.”
56
Fearless Fishing
When comparing the sport’s elite fishing stars, ability lev-
els tend to be more or less equal. They can all catch ’em, they
know how to execute, and they all know how to research
lakes and acquire help when needed to get on the right track.
The factor that separates them, besides occasional luck, is
confidence.
It took Morgan 18 years on Tour to win his first AOY title.
In that span, he came close numerous times, including a run-
ner-up finish in 2010 and five top-10 finishes in the standings.
He didn’t win his first AOY until 2013. Now he already
has three.
The competition hasn’t changed, but something else has.
His confidence.
“I guess after you win that first time you kind of get a little
fearless,” Morgan says. “You don’t fear ‘the zero.’ You start to
think, ‘Well if I don’t catch anything, I don’t catch anything.’
That helps a lot. You just learn to roll with it.
“Every now and then you get put back in check. You come
to a tournament and don’t get a check, and that kind of puts
you back in remission a little bit.”
6th PLACE
Funny thing is, Morgan’s track record doesn’t exactly line
up with his statement, specifically that part about not catch-
ing them. In fact, he seems to trend the opposite with his fish-
ing. While pros such as Scott Martin and Jacob Wheeler are
known for swinging for the fences and occasionally blanking
about as often as they occasionally win tournaments, Morgan
is more the type just to catch fish every day, stick around in
the standings until everyone else bombs at least once and he’s
left at the top.
So where does the fearlessness come in? In his approach,
mainly; Morgan is fearless in heading onto the water without
a plan and fishing by instinct, or in scrapping his plan (he
says the plan always goes wrong anyway) midday to find a
way to catch five. Most guys lack that kind of confidence, but
it’s the way that Morgan, David Dudley and Clark Wendlandt
fish every tournament, and they each have three AOY titles.
Nowadays, Morgan’s mantra might be: Catch five, and
eventually everyone else will screw up and leave the door
open.
Morgan admitted as much at Champlain. He recalled that he
might not have made the cut at Pickwick had 30 anglers not got-
ten stuck in the lock coming back from Wilson Lake, and that
could have changed his entire season. Plus, he trailed Jeff
Sprague for most of the year in the AOY race, and coming down
the stretch it looked as if Sprague was untouchable. Then
Sprague slipped at Kentucky Lake and finished 71st. Morgan
made the top 10, and Sprague couldn’t catch him on Champlain.
Eventual AOY runner-up Chris Johnston made his booboo
at Pickwick, where he finished 61st and missed a check – his
only cash-free event all season. Stetson Blaylock probably put
together the best-looking season without winning AOY. He
tied Johnston for points, but finished third by way of tiebreak-
er. He caught a limit every day of competition, cashed a check
at every stop and made the top 20 three times – an incredible
season. Yet, Blaylock had three sub-30 finishes, and he didn’t
quite earn the necessary points to hang with Morgan’s 20th-
place-f inish average.
Morgan also caught a limit in every day of competition in
2016. He had two sub-40 finishes, but his other four events
were top-20 cuts, including two top-10 cuts. He never missed
a check and finished 24 points ahead of both Johnston and
Blaylock.
The results suggest that while Martin and Wheeler might
not fear bombing, Morgan really does fear bombing, but he
avoids it with a fearless “just going fishing” attitude.
the Morgan dynasty
Looking back over his last four seasons, andy
Morgan’s worst tournament finish was in 2015, when
he took 81st at Lake Chickamauga. It dashed his hopes
for a third-straight aoy title and was the only tour
event in a four-year period spanning 2013-2016 that
Morgan didn’t cash a check. during that stretch he
earned 10 top-10 finishes.
FLWFISHING.COM I AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2016