BRYAN THRIFT | 51 LBS , 15 OZ
4
By Colin Moore
62
photo by chRIS bURGaN
A
t the Forrest Wood Cup’s opening
banquet on the tournament’s
eve, Bryan Thrift spent only a cou-
ple of minutes reflecting on his Angler of
the Year season. His comments were
brief, but starting the next morning, he
let his fishing do the talking. The North
Carolina pro went on to place fourth in
the event with 51 pounds, 15 ounces
and notched his sixth consecutive top-
10 finish in FLW’s crowning event.
Though Thrift tends to shy away from
the herring lakes of South Carolina and
Georgia, he fished a solid tournament at
Lake Murray that didn’t rely solely on the
problematic baitfish pattern. His two-
pronged approach to each day’s fishing
was based on a milk run in the mid-lake
area that targeted topwater fish and
others down deep. Thrift started each
morning lobbing a Paycheck Baits The
One pencil popper across the flats and
points where scattered bass were chas-
ing and feasting on bluebacks.
Once the topwater bite slowed
down, Thrift switched to a 10-inch worm
or a Damiki 6.5 Finesse Miki (watermel-
on candy) rigged on a 1/8-ounce shaky
head and fished on a 6-foot, 10-inch
Fitzgerald spinning rod with 10-pound-
test P-Line braid and an 8-pound-test P-
Line Tactical Fluorocarbon leader.
“It was about half of this and half of
that as far as how I caught my fish in the
FLWFISHING.COM I OCTOBER 2017