Thrift Ready To Do What It Takes To Win The Forrest Wood Cup On The Red River
About the only thing Bryan Thrift has not won in his seven years as a pro angler on the FLW Tour is the Forrest Wood Cup – and he’s come pretty darned close in that with four top 10 finishes in the six championships he has fished.
He has won five tournaments with 31 top 10 finishes in just 97 tournaments, was the 2010 FLW Tour Angler of the year, and he has picked up more than $1.1 million in prize money in his seven years on the FLW Tour.
He was 3rd – his highest finish in the Cup – last year on Georgia’s Lake Lanier and he has his sights set on moving to the top next week on Louisiana’s Red River out of Bossier City.
The only problem is the 2013 Forrest Wood Cup is on a body of water where Thrift suffered one of his worst tournaments. He finished 79th in a regular season tournament there in May 2011, the only time he has ever fished the Red River.
But that was then and the Forrest Wood Cup is now – that 2011 tournament can only be considered a learning experience.
When practice starts Sunday he will have one goal in mind – finding at least one good spot that holds a good bunch of fish.
“It’s summertime and this time of year the bite is so much different than any other time of year because the fish can be doing something that you are the least expecting them to do,” the Shelby, N.C., pro said. “It’s not like you can pinpoint anything. They could be 25 feet deep up to 2 feet deep.”
Thrift said he feels the best way to succeed in a summertime tournament is to locate that concentration of fish as a go-to spot during the tournament.
“I don’t feel you can win it all on one place, but I feel like if you can find a spot where you can catch about 9 to 11 pounds, you can then go try to catch two big ones. I think it will take that to win it.”
The Red River, he said, is like a lot of river systems, with the main river channel flanked by little ponds or oxbows, some from a mile long to four or five miles long.
“When we were here that May the main river was really muddy and had a lot of current, so it was hard to get bit. I was fishing the ponds then. I don’t know if they have had a lot of rain there, but I think the river might be clearer now and more of a factor in this tournament.”
He also made a tactical error that May, which served as the learning experience he will draw on in this one.
Two years ago he was making long runs, about 85 miles one way. Even though that left him a short period of time to fish, he weighed in a good limit the first day and was in the top 20. But the following day he made that long run and got discouraged when he caught shorter fish, only two of them keepers.
“So, I locked back up and tried to scratch out the rest of my limit,” he later told BassFan in an interview. “I should’ve stayed down there and beaten it out. I’d already committed myself by going down there, but in the end I didn’t really commit to it.”
He isn’t likely to make that mistake this time, although he could run just as long and as hard next week in the Forrest Wood Cup, he said.
“If I feel like I need to I will make long runs. Wherever I think I will do best is where I will go. If I figure I can win the tournament by fishing just an hour a day, that is what I am going to do.”
2013 Forrest Wood Cup
Aug 15-18, 2013
Red River-LA
Red River South Marina & Resort
