Gagliardi has two tournaments to move up in the Angler of the Year standings to make the Cup on his home lake.

Currently 44th in the standings, the Prosperity, S.C., pro needs to get at least to 37th to be assured of a spot in the 2014 FLW Tour championship. A strong finish at Alabama’s Pickwick Lake next week or at Kentucky Lake at the end of June should propel him into the top 37 anglers invited to the Forrest Wood Cup.

Actually, the top 35 anglers on the Tour qualify, but some double-qualify, so 37 is the base number Gagliardi is shooting for, although he admits he’s dearly love to finish a little higher, especially if he can make it at Pickwick next week.

“The ranking Angler of the Year automatically gets a berth and Andy Morgan is up there now. Randall Tharp is pre-qualified because he won the Cup last year. If both of them stay in the top 35 then it goes to 37, so I still have to move up the same number of places,” Gagliardi said.

“I would like to be in a better situation, but I’m pretty pleased with the year I’ve had so far,” said Gagliardi, who finished 7th at Lake Hartwell in early March, 30th at Sam Rayburn in late March and 13th at Beaver Lake in April.

“I’ve been able to scratch and claw my way back up there to get the show going into these last two tournaments, but I can’t have any slip-ups at all or that would be the end of it for my chances to make the Cup at Lake Murray.”

Gagliardi would really like to finish in the top 20 at Pickwick, so the pressure would be off when the Tour moves on to Kentucky Lake, where he has scored one of his four Tour wins.

“I’m not looking to make the 36th spot,” he said, however. “I don’t want it to be that close. I don’t want to be counting points and watching the weights in the last tournament, I want to know when I weigh my fish at Kentucky Lake that I am in.”

Although his history at Pickwick would seem to indicate that he will still be needing to make up points by the time he gets to Kentucky Lake, Gagliardi is heading into the tournament next week with a lot of confidence.

His two previous Tour tournaments on the lake have resulted in a 46th place finish in 2012 and 49th in 2006, which was his worst finish on the way to winning Angler of the Year. He finished 13th in a FLW Series Eastern Division tournament in October 2007, but he was 66th in November two years earlier in the Rayovac FLW Series Championship.

“We’ve been there at different timesof the year, only once in the summer,” Gagliardi said. The lake is a whole lot more like Kentucky Lake at this stage with a love of 3-, 4-, and 5-pound fish in there.”

And, he added, conditions should be set up for the way he likes to fish next week.

“It’s a really good summertime lake and by the time we get there I think the water will have warmed up and the majority of the fish will have moved out. There probably will also still be a lot of fish up shallow, so I imagine it will be a pretty good tournament for every body.”

Gagliardi said he will look for a topwater bite early in the morning, then concentrate on the deep-water fish the rest of the day during the tournament.

“I will be looking for the big schools of fish. I think my best chance is to get in that deep water, cruise around and see if I can get on a couple of good bites each day. That is the way I like to catch them this time of year. I have a lot more confidence doing that than I would be trying to put tougher some type of flipping pattern.”

Enough of those big bites at Pickwick, he said, would mean all he would have to do at the season-sender at Kentucky Lake is maintain his position and get ready to fish the Cup at Lake Murray.

 

FLW Tour Major

Jun 5-8, 2014

Pickwick Lake

McFarland Park

www.flwoutdoors.com