Though this magazine will probably arrive to readers
about the time the Lake Eufaula Bass Pro Tour event is tak-
ing place, it’s worth digging a little deeper into Thrift and
Dudley’s stats on the fishery.
In April 2005, Thrift cut the second of back-to-back win-
ner’s checks fishing as a co-angler in an FLW Series
Southeastern Division event on Lake Eufaula. He finished
second in FLW Tour tournaments there in 2010 and 2013, and
won the Tour event held on Eufaula in mid-May of 2015, giv-
ing him a total of four first- or second-place finishes on this
Chattahoochee River impoundment.
Format and time of year aside, Thrift admits that he feels
good starting the 2020 season on the Alabama/Georgia bor-
der lake.
“I fish with a much clearer head there [at Eufaula] than I
do most places,” Thrift admits. “I feel like I jive with that lake
real well. I get along with that lake real well in April and May;
hard to say about February, but I think of Eufaula the same
way I would a Santee Cooper or Guntersville: It’s a lake with
big fish, and I always enjoy fishing there. Everywhere I go
there, I feel like I’m within a cast’s reach of a 5-pounder.”
Dudley earned one of his first 10 career top 10s at an FLW
Series Southeastern Division tournament on Eufaula in late
February 2001. He added fourth-place finishes in an FLW
Series event on Eufaula in 2002 and an FLW Tour event on
Eufaula in 2013, but each of those events was held one to
three months later than the Feb. 7-12 Bass Pro Tour opener,
a fact not lost on Dudley.
“I’ve never fished Eufaula that early in February,” Dudley
admits. “That’s a real good example of not being able to
judge a lake too much by its history. You have to judge it by
what time of year you’re fishing there, and whether you’re
comfortable fishing the techniques. Just knowing what I
know about general techniques you’ll catch fish on that time
of year, I’m comfortable going into that event.”
Stage Two Okeechobee
Dudley can trace his tournament history on Lake
Okeechobee back to January 1997, when he cashed a check
there in an FLW Tour event. He earned a third-place finish in
a B.A.S.S. Invitational on Okeechobee in 2000, notched top
Stage One Eufaula
10s in 2002 and 2004, and then posted one of his nine career
wins there in 2007 (FLW Tour).
Thrift claimed his first major career win on Okeechobee in
2006, exploiting a bladed jig before it was a known technique
and putting two 8-pounders on the scale on the final day of
an FLW Series Southeastern Division event there to beat
Florida pro Bobby Lane by 5 ounces. It was the first time
Thrift had seen the lake.
“Okeechobee is really hit-or-miss for me: I’m either top 20
or bottom 20,” Thrift says. “I don’t know how to explain that,
other than you just have to relearn Okeechobee every time
you go there. Nothing is ever the same. I’m glad we’re fishing
there in late February [Feb. 21-26]. We’ve fished it in January
a lot. It can be hard to be consistent anywhere in Florida in
January.”
Ready to Play “The Game”
Both Dudley and Thrift have some experience in a weigh-
on-the-water tournament format thanks to the former Toyota
Texas Bass Classic, which was the forerunner of the MLF
competition structure. Those events – in which fish catches
were called in to tournament officials via two-way radios and
cellphones – offered a taste of the real-time live scoring
updates that MLF’s SCORETRACKER provides on the Bass
Pro Tour.
It’s a wrinkle in the game that Dudley is looking forward
to when he goes to work in 2020.
“The TTBC was the only time I’ve fished where you could
hear the ‘radio talk,’ and I loved it,” Dudley says. “Back then,
they’d just call in an angler’s number anytime we caught fish,
but I memorized some of the guys’ numbers. I wanted to
know everything that was being reported. I told my marshal,
‘Man, turn that volume up.’ You have to play the whole game.
If guys aren’t playing the game with SCORETRACKER,
they’re not really in the game. I’m excited to play the game.”
Dudley and Thrift are both gamers for sure. They’ve navi-
gated numerous tournament formats with FLW in their
careers, and have seen just about every scenario a tournament
angler could have to deal with. And the one consistent thing
about their careers that foreshadows a successful transition to
the Bass Pro Tour is that they’ve always performed at a high
level. There’s no reason to doubt that’ll change this season.
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