BREAKING DOWN BRYAN THRIFT
THE 2017 AOY
By Colin Moore
The first thing you’ re likely to notice about Bryan Thrift is the million-dollar smile, a warm smile that blinks on and off as circumstances require. Unless he’ s distracted or lost in thought, Thrift seemingly is always smiling. His is an enigmatic smile, suggesting friendliness, of course, but also a touch of defensive shyness. And to other tournament competitors, perhaps, it’ s also the sly smile of a fisherman who’ s about to put his considerable skills to work again, or else display their results.
Imagined or real reticence, Thrift’ s smile was in full force in 2017 when he put together another in a long line of solid seasons and won the FLW Tour Angler of the Year title. For some, such a year might seem epochal; for Thrift, merely inevitable. En route to winning accolades as FLW’ s most consistently excellent angler, he scored 1,275 of a possible 1,400 points and fended off a slew of the Tour’ s finest, most notably 2017 runner-up Andy Morgan.
Building on 2016
Although Thrift has flirted with the AOY title just about every season, it’ s eluded him since he first claimed it in 2010, the year his wife, Allison, gave birth to their son, Wylie, and also the year his father and longtime fishing mentor, Tommy Thrift, passed away.
It’ s tempting to think that Bryan’ s 2017 season was his retribution for 2016, when he registered what seemed for him a subpar season. He only finished 19th in the standings. It was his lowest annual finish since his Rookie of the Year season in 2007, when he finished 28th overall( since then, he’ s never finished lower than eighth in the standings, other than in 2016). But such an assumption would be wrong, because Bryan doesn’ t gauge a season by how high in the standings he finishes so much as how it affects his bank account.
“ Most of all I judge my year by how much money I make,” he confesses.“ As long as I can pay the bills I consider it a good year. Monetarily, 2016 was a great year.”
Indeed it was, and provided Bryan with enough cash to pay a lot of bills, with some left over for Wylie’ s college fund. He has averaged more than $ 150,000 per season in Tour and Forrest Wood Cup prize money since joining the Tour as a pro in 2007. In 2016, he collected $ 59,100 during the regular
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Tour season, but that wasn’ t all he earned. He boosted his income last year with a $ 37,600 check at the Forrest Wood Cup( fourth place), a $ 93,200 payday for a Costa FLW Series Southeastern Division win on Santee Cooper and $ 71,000 more for an FLW Tour Invitational victory on Lake Norman in the fall.
This year he’ s made $ 225,500 fishing the Tour( including $ 100,000 for the AOY) and $ 24,450 in the Costa FLW Series Southeastern Division, with the Cup and the Costa FLW Series Championship still to come.
A Self-Appraisal
The 37-year-old Thrift is at the apogee of his career. He can beat anyone, on any fishery, with rivers being the possible exception. Fishing talents aside, Thrift feels he has matured as a decision-maker, and disciplined himself into focusing on the event at hand, rather than allowing himself to be distracted by what might happen somewhere down the road.
“ I make it tournament to tournament. Each lake is different,” he says.“ Confidence and momentum play a role for a lot of guys, but for me it doesn’ t work so much. I fish every tournament like it was the most important one, like it was the championship. That’ s not to say I don’ t pay attention to what’ s going on. After Beaver Lake [ where Thrift finished third ], and because of where I was in the standings, I started putting more pressure on myself to not let up. I feel like I’ ve learned a little since 2010, but the playing field is pretty level, because the competition has learned, too, and I can’ t cut myself any slack.”
Thrift has disciplined himself to approach every fishery as if he’ s never fished there before. He’ s more inclined to overlay what he knows about bass and where they’ re likely to be based on his general understanding rather than what happened the last time he fished a lake.
Thrift’ s well-publicized weakness is figuring out rivers. Admittedly, he hasn’ t had that much experience fishing them. The problem with rivers is that fish are where you find them, and virtually every stretch of bank, be it on the main run or in a backwater, looks“ fishy.” River bass have their own reasons for being where they are, but it doesn’ t necessarily constitute a repeatable pattern elsewhere in the system.
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