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Rose, the tournament leader after days two and three, brought five bass to the scale weighing 11 pounds, 1 ounce. His four-day total of 70 pounds, 2 ounces earned him a 2nd-place finish, worth $30,500.
“The first morning of the tournament I decided that I needed to fish slow and steady,” said Thrift, who earned the third Walmart FLW Tour victory of his career. “I had been catching a lot of fish on moving baits – crankbaits and ChatterBaits. I got up to my area on the morning of day one and two hours in I hadn’t had a bite. I knew something had changed. I started to slow down and pick everything apart.”
Thrift said that he fished an area that was about five miles long up the Angelina River. He estimated that he covered new water for about 3 hours each day of the tournament, targeting cypress trees and grass patches.
“Today I really focused on 10 particular trees,” Thrift said. “I would put my Power-Poles down on those trees and flip very slowly, every two inches, all the way around that tree. I was spending 15 to 20 minutes on each tree.”
Thrift said that his key bait this week was a Texas-rigged Damiki Knock Out with a 5/16-ounce weight and 20-pound-test P-Line fluorocarbon line. He flipped the Knock Out in both green-pumpkin and junebug colors. Thrift also said that he caught two or three key fish Sunday morning on a Z-Man Original ChatterBait.
“I hadn’t caught any fish on a ChatterBait until today,” Thrift said. “I caught two 3-pounders on it this morning and it calmed me enough that I could pick that Knock Out up and fish slow like I needed to.
“Finishing in 107th at Lake Hartwell left a bad taste in my mouth,” Thrift went on to say. “I never figured anything out and it seemed like every decision that I made was the exact opposite of what I should have been doing. After finishing 3rd at the Rayovac Series event two weeks ago at Santee Cooper and now winning here, I hope I’ve righted my ship and can get back on a streak of good finishes.”
Overall there were 42 bass weighing 109 pounds even caught by pros Sunday. Six of the final 10 pros caught five-bass limits.
Eric Self of Lawndale, N.C., won the co-angler division and $20,000 Saturday with a three-day total of 13 bass weighing 33 pounds, 11 ounces, followed by Kerry Barnett of Waldron, Ark., in second place with 11 bass weighing 33 pounds, 8 ounces worth $7,500.
Pros competed for a top award of up to $125,000 this week plus valuable points in the hope of qualifying for the 2014 Forrest Wood Cup presented by Walmart, the world championship of bass fishing. The top 35 anglers in the point standings from the six events on the 2014 Walmart FLW Tour will qualify. The 2014 Forrest Wood Cup will be in Columbia, S.C., Aug. 14-17 on Lake Murray and is hosted by Capital City Lake Murray Country. Anglers could win as much as $500,000 – professional bass-fishing’s richest prize.
A complete list of results can be found at FLWOutdoors.com.
Provided by Joe Opager