TOURNAMENT REPORT
NEW BEGINNINGS ON
FAMILIAR WATERS
s he looks over the top half of the 2020 Major League
Fishing Bass Pro Tour schedule, 2019 FLW Tour
Angler of the Year David Dudley might as well be
scanning a page out of his career record book.
Dudley has three top 10s on Lake Eufaula, the site of the
2020 Bass Pro Tour season opener (Feb. 7-12), plus four top
10s (including an FLW Tour win in 2007) on Lake
Okeechobee, where MLF will compete just two weeks after
Eufaula (Feb. 21-26).
It’s the same for 2019 FLW Cup winner Bryan Thrift: FLW
Series wins on both Eufaula and Okeechobee, and a total of
nine top 10s on the two fisheries where both he and Dudley
will begin their Bass Pro Tour careers.
For two anglers who are taking the plunge into a whole
new way of doing business in 2020 – new competition struc-
ture, new schedule, new field of anglers to compete against –
it seems logical that fishing the first lap of the season on
familiar waters would ease their crossover into MLF and the
“every scorable bass counts” format.
“At least I’ll know how to get to the ramps in the morn-
ing,” Thrift jokes.
Translating Success to Success
To say that Dudley and Thrift have been just “successful” in
careers based on a five-fish-limit format is a gross understate-
ment. Dudley is the only four-time winner of the FLW Tour
Angler of the Year award, is the highest-earning pro in FLW
history with more than $3.8 million in winnings and sits at No.
2 on the list of all-time money winners in bass-fishing history
with more than $4 million in cumulative checks cashed.
Thrift has the second-most top-10 finishes as a boater in
FLW history (64, behind only Andy Morgan’s 66), and trails only
Dudley in career FLW winnings, with more than $3 million.
Immediately upon agreeing in December to fish the Bass
Pro Tour, both Thrift and Dudley were flagged as anglers to
watch on Eufaula and Okeechobee (and, for that matter, the
64
By Joel Shangle
DUDLEY, THRIFT:
entire season) by none other than Morgan, who had the
third-best season (by winnings) of his 24-year career in 2019,
his first year in the MLF format.
“I wouldn’t bet against either of those two on Eufaula or
Okeechobee,” Morgan says. “I had some nerves starting out
in 2019 – you just don’t know for sure until you put a rod in
your hand – but I’m not nervous at all for either Dudley or
Thrift. I’m nervous for the 78 of us fishing against them,
because I know they’re going to catch ’em. Eufaula,
Okeechobee … hell, everywhere we fish this year, you’ll have
to worry about Dudley and Thrift.”
Ready to Roll
Thrift waves away the question he’s asked about adjusting
his mindset heading into the Feb. 7 season opener on Eufaula,
instead choosing to zero in on the same things he’s excelled
at the previous 13 seasons he’s fished as a tour-level pro.
“Am I going to change the way I prepare for tourna-
ments?” he asks rhetorically. “No, I don’t want to rush to
change anything for the format. I’m not going to come out of
the gate with the thought process that I need to change any-
thing at all, really. I’m going to practice and prepare just like I
always have, and adjust from there if I need to.”
Dudley goes one step further, lumping the eight fisheries
on the 2020 Bass Pro Tour schedule into the body of the
300-plus events he’s fished as a pro.
“No matter if you’ve been to Eufaula or Okeechobee one
time, 10 times or 20 times, you have to be able to think of
them as brand new lakes,” Dudley says. “Every lake has to be
a brand new lake. And that’s not just about the lake: You
have to be open about techniques, and the time of year. You
just let your instincts take over, no matter what the format is.
You have to be able to erase your memory of how you did
things a year ago or 10 years ago and keep your mind open,
because as soon as you start to think about ‘history fish,’ you
start to get into trouble.”
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